By Clint Thompson
A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will help grow the vanilla industry in South Florida.
Alan Chambers, plant geneticist at UF/IFAS Tropical Research and Education Center, said the $300,000 grant is a vote of confidence from NIFA that it values his research and the potential future success of the industry.
“We are extremely fortunate to be awarded this grant. We are extremely thankful for USDA NIFA for providing it. It means a lot of things to us. Number one, it shows their confidence and their willingness to support these high value specialty crops that are in high demand, yet the market is still developing,” Chambers said. “That was greatly appreciated on our side as well as our growers. They really need the results we’re going to be generating.
“We can do certain things with a shoestring budget, which is how most of our crops operate. But this grant means we can be a little more ambitious and we can set our sights a little bit higher and try to get things a little bit sooner. We can potentially shave a few years off the development because we now have got people and money to do the tests now.”
The funding will support a graduate student and help train the next generation of plant breeders.
“He’s going to be looking at everything from what makes vanilla quality at the genetic level and then also working on, how to grow the plant; how to keep them healthy; as well as figuring out how to grow them faster,” Chambers said. “A lot of this work has direct impact to the economics for our growers.”
Madagascar supplies more than 80% of the world’s vanilla. The United States is the largest importer of vanilla beans from Madagascar. Once in America, those beans are further processed into vanilla extract. As a spice, it is the second most expensive and is the world’s most popular flavor.
