Boosting a flavorful bean: entrepreneurs in Veracruz, Mexico, are cultivating the comeback of the region's formerly lucrative vanilla industry.

• Author: Murphy-Larronde, Suzanne

A rutted dirt road descends a steep hillside to Tlan Nacu, Victor Vallejo's vanilla plantation on the outskirts of Papantla, in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. Two years ago, this former head of the Veracruz Vanilla Council and ardent bean booster converted his six-acre farm into an experimental station for the development of new technologies to revive Mexico's sagging vanilla industry and restore its clout in the international market. "And why not?" exclaims the Mexico City native. "Our vanilla is the best in the world. We have the right combination of soil and sun, and we have our nortes that, vanilla growers in other countries don't have. According to Vallejo, it's those nortes, the November and December cold fronts that blow in from the Gulf, that shock the orchid plants into increasing production of the many flavoring agents that give Mexican vanilla its distinctively potent flavor.

At the moment, the seventy-one-year-old Vallejo, who travels locally and as far as New Jersey in the U.S. to promote his product, is busy talking with a group of local farmers and several journalists who have come to learn about his cutting-edge growing techniques. "What has amazed me," be notes, "is the discovery of just how flexible the vanilla plant is. It's as if it were saying to me: 'Don't be stupid! Look at me and find better ways for me to produce.'" Because "the old ways of growing just aren't efficient anymore," Vallejo set about implementing strategies he learned from the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agricolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP) in neighboring Martinez de la Torte, another vanilla-growing center where similar experimentation is taking place.

With the help of his mostly Totonac crew, "some of the world's greatest, farmers," Vallejo has set aside specially amended, irrigated acreage for high-density planting, eight thousand cuttings per acre instead of the usual five thousand. In one plot, orchid plants climb traditionally used pichoco trees, but in others, short bamboo posts provide the support. In some fields, protective shade cloth is suspended above the crop and in others, the net-like material has been extended along the sides as well, simulating the controlled environment of a hothouse. The coddled vines on Iris experimental acreage are lushly green and thick with healthy pods, and best of all, some fields have delivered their harvest a full year ahead of schedule. "This is all about producing more vanilla in a shorter time period and at lower costs," Vallejo tells his listeners as he leads them to a shed where new curing methods are being carefully implemented and monitored

Hundreds of years before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, vanilla, the cured fruit of a wild climbing orchid known today as Vanilla planifolia, was first produced for commercial use in these same tropical lowlands. The Totonac Indians had already evolved sophisticated techniques for processing the rare, chartreuse-colored flower, which they called...