Vanilla beans maturing on vanilla vines in a Kerala plantation in India. This is where the vanilla flavour you taste in your ice creams comes from!

Vanilla is a tropical orchid, cultivated for its pleasant flavour, which is one of the costliest spices in the international market. Though more than 50 species of vanilla exist, only three are important as sources of vanillin. Vanilla planifolia Andrews is the most preferred commercially and therefore, cultivated widely.

The Indian farmers started vanilla cultivation in the mid- to late 1990s, prompted, mainly by the falling profits from rubber and coffee. Besides, vanilla could be grown even on small plots of land and the initial investment required is small. Today, India stands sixth among the world's eight vanilla-exporting nations, up from eighth in 1998. In 1998, India contributed just 0.034 percent of world vanilla exports. Indian exports of vanilla multiplied rapidly thereafter and by 2002, it accounted for 1.86 percent of world vanilla exports. Between 1998 and 2002, India's vanilla exports registered a phenomenal annual average growth rate of 139.68 percent. In 1997, a kilogram of green vanilla beans earned US $3. During 2003, The Indian traders were paying more than $70 for a kilogram of vanilla beans.

Karnataka leads in the country's vanilla cultivation followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Sixty percent of the 1,000 hectares under vanilla cultivation in India, is in Karnataka.

Source: http://www.keralaagriculture.gov.in/htmle/bankableagriprojects/ph%5Cvanilla.htm

In the Western Ghat zone in the State comprising of Kodagu, Chikmagalore, Shimoga, Hassan, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, which are having the typical tropical condition, the farmers are resorting to cultivation of the crop as mixed crop in the existing coconut/ arecanut/ coffee gardens. The main crop provides the requisite shade conditions and also the support for the vines. However, of late, enthused by the high prices and income d