Vanilla

Hengcang Zhou, Yunyue Wang, Hongyu Wang, Xurui, and Dexin Chen

History Vanilla Introduction and Industrial Development

In the early 1960s, Vanilla planifolia Andr. was successively introduced from Indonesia to the Fujian Institute of Subtropical Botany and from Sri Lanka to DanZhou in Hainan Province, and then to the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan Province. From this point on, the study of its planting, cultivation, and curing began in China.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the support of vanilla research institutions and their achievements in vanilla research, some companies were progressively established, dedicated to the industrial planting, and production of vanilla. By late 1999, the total vanilla planting area reached around 233 ha, mainly using intensive cultivation systems under artificial shading (Figure 23.1), of which 100 ha were distributed in various parts of Hainan Province and belonged to different companies (Chen, 2005), and 133 ha were distributed in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan Province (Figure 23.2), which included five plantations belonging to the largest vanilla producer in China, the Yunnan Vanilla Industry Ltd.

FIGURE 23.1 Vanilla growing in Hainan, China, showing an intensive cultivation system under artificial shade houses. (Courtesy of Chen Dexin.)

FIGURE 23.2 Map of China showing the regions of vanilla cultivation (black circles) in the Yunnan and Hainan provinces.

Owing to a high input in the early stages, a long production period, poor management, lack of capital support, unstable output, and natural disasters and so forth, many vanilla plantations were ruined. Until 2001, only about 30 ha of the vanilla plantations were running normally in Hainan Province (Mao, 2002). In Yunnan, the situation was similar with the bankruptcy of the Yunnan Vanilla Industry Ltd. in 2007; the intensive cultivation plantations and processing factory in Xishuangbanna were shut down, and only a few farmers were still planting vanilla. In the past, as the planting and production area frequently fluctuated, the volume of cured vanilla fluctuated greatly from very little to several tons each year.

On the basis of a summary of practical experience, Hainan and Yunnan researched and developed a “Company + Farmer Household” agricultural industrialization model to organize vanilla production. Vanilla producers and local government formulated preferential policies to encourage farmer households to develop market-oriented vanilla cultivation. The producers help farmer households to establish vanilla plantations and provide the relevant technical training and advice, and the farmer households sell their green beans to the producers at fixed prices. From 2002 to 2004, under this new cooperative organization and dispersed cultivation model, more than 70 farmer households in Hainan have planted over 14 ha of vanilla under areca or other trees, or in combination with artificial shade nets (Figures 23.3 and 23.4).

FIGURE 23.3 Vanilla growing in Hainan, China, showing a growing system under areca trees. (Courtesy of Zhou Hengcang.)

FIGURE 23.4 Vanilla growing in Hainan, showing farmer households growing vanilla. (Courtesy of Zhou Hengcang.)

The planting and production area of vanilla in Hainan Island (Figure 23.2) is now around 34 ha, which is divided into eight sections in Anding, Tunchang County, Wanning, and Qionghai City, and belongs to more than 100 farmer households or private companies. Depending on the management and growing systems, its average yield is about 75–300 kg of cured beans per hectare, and the total output is about 5 tons of cured beans per year, which can only satisfy China’s domestic consumption demands, with little left for exportation (Chen, 2009; personal communication).

Vanilla is now mainly cultivated and produced in the Hainan Region in China, since the bankruptcy of the biggest vanilla planting and production enterprise, the Yunnan Vanilla Industry Co., Ltd.

A Review of Vanilla Research in China

With the introduction of vanilla into China and the development of its industrial cultivation, the corresponding science and research academies and production corporations have done a good deal of work in many fields, including planting, manufacturing, pest control, biological characteristic research, and production research and development. By 2008, over 330 academic papers had been published in different periodicals; 7 masters’ degree papers and 2 monographs had been published; and over 10 patent applications and 4 national agricultural standards had been issued in China. Furthermore, the vanilla production corporations establish their own rules, regulations and standards on planting, manufacturing, and production.

The scientists of the Subtropical Plant Research Academy in Fujian Province were the first to focus on research on vanilla in mainland China. Their early works played a role in the foundation of vanilla research and industrial development in China. Meanwhile, their works initiated and promoted the industrial development of vanilla in China. As regards planting, they researched and established a model of intensive planting in artificial shade houses, which has been widely adopted in commercial vanilla planting in China. The research team published 36 papers, and edited and published the first monograph on vanilla, Vanilla Planting, in China.

The Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (the South China Academy of Tropical Crops before 1994) was also the first to focus on vanilla research. Its team of scientists is the main force in the field of vanilla research in the region of Hainan Province. Its research work directly promotes and supports the industrial development of vanilla in Hainan Province. At the same time, it provides references for scientific research and the industrial development of vanilla in the region of Yunnan Province. It published over 30 research papers about vanilla, and organized and edited national agricultural standards for vanilla in China.

Several organizations are engaged in vanilla research in Yunnan Province. These are mainly the Flavors & Fragrances Research Institute and the College of Plant Protection at Yunnan Agricultural University, the Tropical Crop Research Academy in Yunnan Province, the Kunming Botany Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Science, and so on. A research team in Yunnan Agricultural University has done a good deal of work, especially in pest and disease control for vanilla, and published a monograph on Pest and Disease in Vanilla.

Some corporations that plant and manufacture vanilla, especially the vanilla manufacturing corporations in Hainan Province, have also done some research work.

Present Situation Commercial Varieties and Genetic Resources

Vanilla planifolia has been introduced and commercially planted in China. A few other introduced and native wild vanillas are used only for scientific research. The main commercial varieties and genetic resources are as follows:

V. planifolia Andr.: introduced from Indonesia (1960) and Sri Lanka (1962); Vanilla somai Hayata: Taiwanese vanilla distributed in Taiwan in China; Vanilla shenzhenica Z.J. Liu and S.C. Chen: found in Shenzhen, South China.

It is akin to Vanilla somai Hayata (Liu et al., 2007); Vanilla siamensis Rolfe ex Downie: known as “Big Vanilla,” distributed in Guangxi Province and the Xishuangbanna and Hekou areas in Yunnan Province. A relative correlation exists between V. shenzhenica Z.J. Liu & S.C. Chen and V. somai Hayata. A natural population distributed in the Yachang orchid nature protection region in Leye County, Baise city in northwestern Guangxi Province is the biggest of the wild Big Vanilla group known so far at the highest latitude and the highest altitude (east longitude 106°19′13″, north latitude 24°48′56″) (Chen et al., 2007).

The Main Growing Regions and Their Climatic Characteristics

Hainan Province and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province are major regions in China, and are appropriate for vanilla planting and production. Xishuangbanna, which includes three counties, Jinghong, Mengla, and Menghai, is located in southern Yunnan, E99°55′–101°50′, N21°10′–22°40′, altitude 475–2429 m. This place lies on the northern edge of the eastern and southern Asian tropical region, with tropical and subtropical climate regions, multiple climate types, and complicated terrain. The tropical climate area in Xishuangbanna covers about 400 ha that are located below 800 m altitude, which represents only 20.4% of its area. Total annual precipitation is between 977 and 1655 mm. The annual mean temperature in Xishuangbanna has been 18.3–22.4°C for many years, and the average temperature of the coldest month (January) is 12.0–16.1°C.

Hainan Island lies between north latitude 18°10′ and 20°10′, and east longitude 108°37′ and 110°03′. It is part of the oceanic tropical monsoon climate, which is suitable for vanilla cultivation. Under the influence of the tropical monsoon climate and the terrain, the climate in Hainan is warm in the south and cold in the north, dry in the east and moist in the west. The annual mean atmospheric temperature is 23–25°C in most parts of the province. The average atmospheric temperature in January is 17–21°C. Annual mean precipitation varies between 958 and 2148 mm in parts of Hainan Island, and it is one of the highest of the regions of the same latitude. But it is not evenly distributed, being dry in the east and moist in the west, highest in the middle, higher in the east, northeast and north, lower in the southwest, and lowest in the west. Typhoons frequently hit Hainan Island during the June–October period, and the number of strong wind days per year is around 4.7–6.8.

On the whole, vanilla is more suitable for cultivation in Hainan Island than in Yunnan Province.

Different Cultivation Systems

In this method, the climbing stakes for the vanilla are made with bricks of 240 mm × 115 mm × 53 mm. Bricks are placed in groups of three, forming a triangle, and each layer of bricks is rotated by a certain angle relative to the previous. In this way, a hollow brick stake is built: the buried part of the stake should measure 0.5 m, the height above ground is 1.5 m, and the space between poles is 2 m. Then substrates should be filled into the empty space of the hollow stakes, and vanilla seedlings planted around the poles. This method was adopted in a 1 ha plantation in Xishuangbanna, and 8.25 kg of fruit were harvested from 100 m² of vanilla plants. The method proved effective for vanilla cultivation, but the vines finally became entangled, which influenced the growth, pruning, pollination, and harvesting of the vanilla. The method was therefore replaced by the one described in the next section.

Nylon netting with a 50–70% shading degree is used for the shade house, which is 2.5 m high. The stakes can be made of cement (15 cm × 15 cm × 2 m), wood, stone, or bamboo. The height above the ground for stakes should be 1.5 m. The field is divided into ridges: each ridge is 1.3 m wide, and the space between ridges is 0.35 m. Stakes are fixed along the middle of the ridges, with a space of 2 m between each stake on the same ridge. The poles on the same ridge are connected with steel bars, iron strings, or other types of strings. Vanilla seedlings are then planted longitudinally along both sides of each pole. All the shade houses in the vanilla plantations in Hainan and Xishuangbanna have adopted this method, which means full use can be made of the land, and the vanilla is easy to manage and convenient for handling. The disadvantage is that the cost is too high.

This method can be combined with the family courtyard economic system and makes full use of the scattered land in Xishuangbanna. Furthermore, different families can adopt different methods of planting. Some families build simple shade houses with stakes, some add tall grasses or oil palm leaves to the roof of the shade house; some plant the vanilla directly under trees, whether mango (Mangifera indica), litchi (Litchi chinensis), Baccaurea ramiflora, or pomelo (Citrus maxima); some even plant the vanilla in the Hevea brasiliensis forest, and others plant them in the secondary forest. These courtyard planting methods require lower input and are easy to build with a sufficient supply of organic matter and good ventilation. Only shading and pruning need special attention. The area using this kind of planting method reached 16 ha in Xishuangbanna. Now only a few families still plant in this way.

Vanilla Cultivation Practices

Vanilla producers in the Yunnan and Hainan regions apply almost the same technologies to vanilla production (Zhou, 2000). The most commonly adopted vanilla cultivation system for commercial purposes is an intensive one under artificial shade house conditions. In order to adapt to this cultivation system and the specific climate in different regions, a whole set of mature cultivation techniques has been developed. Through exchanges and experience sharing, Hainan and Yunnan have developed similar cultivation technologies. However, some differences in skill and the actual implementation of cultivation techniques still exist among different companies. According to the actual production of vanilla under artificial shade house conditions in the Yunnan and Hainan regions, a brief introduction to vanilla cultivation and curing techniques is given below.

Generally, vanilla is propagated by means of stem cuttings or tissue culture. Cuttings for propagation should be taken from plants that are healthy, robust, and have not yet flowered. The cuttings are usually 40–60 cm in length with 4–5 nodes, or 20–30 cm in length with at least two nodes, with the length depending on the amount of vines available. If there are not enough cuttings available, vanilla can be propagated rapidly and abundantly by means of tissue culture using shoot tips and nodal segments as explants. After the necessary hardening and acclimatization, seedlings can be transplanted into soil. In order to avoid seedlings becoming entangled and to ensure they are convenient for management, seedlings should be tied to bamboo sticks of around 50 cm in length.

The construction of a vanilla plantation over a large area with an intensive cropping system includes not only the construction of the plantation itself, but also its supporting infrastructures, such as irrigation systems and living facilities for workers, and so on, which should be considered comprehensively and carefully, and planned and distributed according to actual situations. It is vital to the optimal growth of vanilla in the Xishuangbanna region to develop irrigation systems and to water vanilla plants in the dry season, especially from March to May.

The construction of a vanilla plantation mainly includes excavating fields into planting belts (ridges) and dividing these into units or zones along with the construction of artificial shade nets, vanilla stakes, and pipelines for the installation of the irrigation system, and so on. For ease of operation, the processes should be carried out in turn. A vanilla plantation site requires a slope of a certain gradient, which should not exceed 15°. The planting land should be excavated in planting belts at the same distance apart, so as to prevent soil erosion and to improve soil fertility and water supply, and the width of each planting belt should be 1–1.5 m. Materials such as angle steel, cement or wood columns, which are connected by iron wires or steel bars, are usually used as supports for the artificial shade net with 60–80% shade. Along the planting belt, at intervals of 1.8–2 m, cement or wood poles should be erected and fixed at a convenient height, and connected by iron wires or other materials into a row, which provides a trellis for vanilla plants to climb up. The recommended height of the trellis is around 1.5 m above the ground, and that of the shade net is at least 2.5 m.

After the plantation has been established, rooted seedlings from tissue culture plantlets or cuttings grown in nursery beds can be used for planting. Long cuttings can be planted in an optimal season, when plenty of vanilla planting materials are available. Two cuttings are usually planted beside each trellis column. According to the cuttings available, the density of cuttings can be up to 4000–9000 plants per hectare. Comparatively, at the same distance between rows, if more cuttings are planted along each planting belt, this will help to achieve and sustain greater vanilla plant vegetative biomass in the initial stages. The optimal planting time is immediately before the rainy season, at the beginning of June in the Xishuangbanna region, although the vanilla seedlings could be planted in the other months. The seedlings should be planted 5–10 cm below the surface of the soil, while their rootlets should be situated and distributed at or near the center of the planting belts, stretching along horizontally.

From the initial planting, vanilla plants—especially flowering adult plants—need meticulous care and painstaking management. Only in this way can the desired high yield and sustainable production be obtained. The regular management of a vanilla plantation consists of weeding, fertilizing, mulching, irrigating, vanilla pruning and trailing, and plant protection. A farmer can usually undertake a management workload of 0.4–0.7 ha of intensive vanilla plantation. More workers are of course needed for artificial pollination according to the number of flowers during the flowering season.

Artificial Pollination

Owing to the unusual structure of the flower, in other words the separation of the stamen from the stigma by the rostellum, pollination must be done artificially with a bamboo splinter. There are two methods of artificial pollination. The first one is to push up the rostellum under the stamens and then press the pollen sac into contact with the stigma. The second one is to remove the cap-like rostellum directly and then press the pollen mass to adhere to the stigma. The “pushing method” is commonly used in the Hainan region, and the “removing method” is used in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan. Artificial pollination should avoid injuring the stigma or dropping the pollen mass, for both the “pushing method” and the “removing method.”

Supplying Nutrients and Fertilization Management

Being a surface rooting plant, vanilla is greatly dependent on favorable mulching to obtain available nutrients. The mulch and decomposed organic materials are the main source of nutrients for vanilla plants, and are helpful in retaining sufficient moisture and forming a loose soil aggregate structure for the roots to spread. Reasonable manuring is vital to obtaining an early, high, and sustainable yield. According to the mulching materials available and the plants’ growth, manuring is usually combined with mulching. The fundamental principles of supplying nutrients and fertilization are the application of organic manures combined with chemical fertilizers, foliar spraying of chemical fertilizers, and correctly supplementing plants with trace elements, and so on. Mulches used and available in the main regions of China include the humus litter layer from the rainforest, coconut shells, wood chips, sugarcane bagasse, and rice straw. Some enterprises have researched and developed specialized vanilla fertilizers. In combination with the trimming of planting belts, mulching should be carried out at the end of the rainy season and completed before the cold season begins.

Pruning and Training of Vanilla Plants

The pruning and training of vanilla vines is one of the main agronomic measures required to regulate vegetative and reproductive growth, to reduce the occurrence of vanilla disease and to provide propagation cuttings and so on. Depending on different pruning purposes, the main parts to be pruned may include the infected portion of a plant, or weak and flowered vines.

The disease-infected leaves, stems, and fruits should be removed as early as possible so as to check the spread of the disease. Aging vines need pruning periodically to stimulate the induction of offshoots and the promotion of vegetative growth. The tips of slim vines and juvenile plants reaching a height of over 50 cm should be nipped off. With this method, more than one offshoot will come out and the branches will become stronger. However, more water sprouts and branches should be removed or inhibited by pruning, especially during the flowering and fruit development period. Branches that have flowered and borne fruit and have no living axillary buds can be cut off, since they will not produce any flowers. A specific pruning of hanging branches on adult plants is generally carried out 3–4 months before the flowering season—around November to December in China—to encourage the production of inflorescences in the axils of the leaves on the hanging branches. When the desired number of fruits per inflorescence has been reached after pollination, the remaining buds and the tip of inflorescences should be removed.

As essential as pruning measures are, vanilla vine training is also helpful in facilitating the even distribution of the vanilla vine on the climbing trellis in order to maintain a sustainable biomass and yield. Generally, the vines of the initial planted seedlings attached to the column of the supporting trellis or the erected bamboo sticks beside it always grow upward. When the vine or branch climbs up and reaches the top of the trellis, it should be brought back to the ground, and the portion of the vine with 4–5 nodes should be covered with surface soil or mulch, which will induce the vine under ground to take root and thereby support the whole plant in order for it to grow well. Thus, the vines are looped up and down, and evenly distributed on the supporting trellis, but do not accumulate on the top half of the trellis. Gradually, vanilla plants develop into a row along the planting belt, reaching as high as the trellis. Vanilla vines can be trained along the whole trellis within the same row.

Weeding

Weeds in vanilla plantations do little harm to vanilla plants. The aim of weeding is simply to prevent competition for nutrients with vanilla plants. There are many different species of weeds in newly established vanilla plantations that grow in abundance, especially during the rainy season. Weeds should be cleared before blossoming and fruit bearing, and can be used as mulch and organic fertilizer after fermentation. With manual weeding, the quantity and species of weeds will gradually diminish to a lower level until the third year.

Other Maintenance

In Xishuangbanna and some regions of Hainan Province, the annual alternation of dry and rainy seasons leads to soil compaction, poor root growth, and the incidence of diseases. Depending on the soil water content and moisture, in combination with mulching, adequate irrigation during the dry season is essential for vanilla plants to grow well. Lack of irrigation would lead to the death of aerial roots, and even the death of the plants suffering from water deficits. It is recommended to irrigate plants by frequent and low-volume sprinkling during extended dry periods, and to avoid waterlogging, especially in the rainy season.

Typhoons in the Hainan region from June to October, and especially from August to October, and monsoons in the Xishuangbanna region from February to June, occasionally damage vanilla plantations. It is therefore necessary to strengthen and maintain plantations to prevent damage by typhoons or monsoons.

Furthermore, it is necessary to replant where the plants have died or been destroyed by livestock or poultry, and so on. Measures should be taken to keep them away from plantations located near to dwellings.

Diseases

In different vanilla-growing regions in China, vanilla diseases, especially Fusarium root rot caused by F. oxysporum f. sp. vanillae (Tucker) Gordon has been a limiting factor to vanilla production. The integrated control measures for vanilla plantations in practice put prevention first, combined with treatment.

The measures recommended to prevent and counteract vanilla diseases are as follows:

• Avoid choosing low-lying and clay soil for growing vanilla plants, but choose gently sloping land that is well drained with a thick surface layer of humus.

• Use healthy seedlings for planting.

• Create a favorable environment for vanilla plants, especially better soil conditions by organic mulching in the rhizosphere.

• Do not trample on the planting belts when carrying out pollination or other operations.

• Regularly remove the disease-affected portions and apply necessary medicament treatments in emergency cases.

• Compartmentalize the plantation into different sections to prevent the disease spreading once it has occurred.

• Apply comprehensive measures, such as pruning and training plants, regulating shade, water drainage, and controlling flower numbers for pollination and so on, in order to rejuvenate vanilla plants and enhance their resistance to stresses and pathogens.

By applying the above measures, it is possible to reduce disease occurrence to an acceptable economic level and to guarantee long-term production.

Pests

Comparatively, insect pests do less damage to vanilla plants and are easier to prevent. Among these pests, coccidia must be promptly removed once they appear in the plantation, as their large-scale spread would destroy the vanilla plantation; it is hard to kill them since they are covered and protected by a waxy layer. Furthermore, terrestrial molluscs, snails and slugs, may cause certain damage to the tender parts of vanilla plants. Their population size can be efficiently controlled by attractant trapping and manual mass killing.

Harvesting

After planting, vanilla usually starts flowering in the third year. Vanilla plants growing in China bloom once a year, reaching the peak flowering stage in April, and are harvested during November to January of the following year. Depending on the degree of maturity of the beans, the right time for harvesting is when the beans turn a pale yellow color at their distal end. Harvesting earlier or later would have negative effects on the quality of cured beans.

Curing

The harvested green beans have no aroma or flavor; this will develop after curing.

Careful processing of beans will take 4–5 months depending on the climatic conditions. Various companies in China have developed different methods and capacities for processing vanilla beans. Although, different methods are used in different companies, they are all fairly similar.

The following takes the method employed in the former Yunnan Vanilla Company as an example to present an overview of the processing method in China, which consists of cleaning, killing, fermenting, slow drying and conditioning, grading and packaging.

• Sorting: According to length, appearance, and degree of maturity, the green beans are sorted into four types.

• Cleaning: Applying special mechanized high-pressure cleaning equipment with a vibrating screen, batches of different types of beans are cleaned and loaded onto stainless-steel mesh plates.

• Killing: The plates full of beans are immersed into an automatic temperature control water pool for several minutes. The temperature and duration of the “killing” stage are dependent on the size of the different types of beans.

• Fermenting and rapid drying: After killing, the beans are transferred to a drying chamber compartment, in which the specific temperature and humidity conditions are controlled. During this operation, the beans lose some water, turn deeper brown, and become supple with a perceptible aroma. This is the so-called “sweating” of the traditional method, rather than a true microbial fermentation.

• Slow drying and conditioning: This procedure is carried out in a clean room at ambient temperature. It is a process to continue the aroma development and browning, and the beans slowly lose more water. Ultraviolet sterilization is used to prevent microbial damage to beans at this stage.

• Grading and packaging: On the basis of the sorting of green beans, cured beans are sorted into grades according to their length, appearance, vanillin, and water content. The vanillin or water content is mainly affected by curing, therefore, the length of cured beans constitutes the real difference between grades. Cured beans of different grades are packed and labeled, and then stored in a special warehouse for sale or delivery.

The production capacity of this semiautomatic line in the former Yunnan Vanilla Company was at least 300 tons of green beans per year. It was built in 1997 and unfortunately dismantled when the Yunnan Vanilla Company went bankrupt in 2007. In Hainan, several companies own vanilla production lines or equipment with different capacities, and they usually cure their own green beans and those they buy from local farmers.

Use and Marketing

Vanilla growers in China include companies and farmer households. Usually, green beans are cured by a few companies that own their equipment or production line for vanilla processing. These companies sell cured beans directly to customers or market their own processed products from vanilla. Some companies are therefore not only vanilla growers, but also the main users of cured beans.

Vanilla beans and their derivatives are mainly used in the cigarette and food industries, such as in coffee, wine, sauces, baked foods, and confectionery, especially tea products. Furthermore, vanilla beans are also used for cooking, although there are few people in China who use vanilla for cooking as they are unfamiliar with the exact usage and unaccustomed to using it for cooking in Chinese foods. With the development of information technology and the rise in the living standards of the people, more and more common people are becoming acquainted with vanilla and beginning to learn to use it for cooking or other purposes. At scenic spots in the vanilla-growing region, a lot of vanilla beans are directly marketed as local tourism products and sold to tourists.

Owing to the increasing domestic demand and limited output, vanilla beans produced in China are seldom exported. In the past, only a few batches of cured beans produced in Yunnan were exported to Japan and other countries by the former Yunnan Vanilla Industry Ltd. In recent years, Chinese production has only just covered domestic demand for vanilla bean.

Prospects

The rapid development of vanilla industries in the past years has met with diffi-culties and problems in many respects. However, the industrial development of vanilla in China has great potential and many advantages. Over the past 49 years of research and development and in over 10 years of vanilla industrialization, China has fostered and established the market for vanilla and its related products, and has developed a whole set of mature cultivation and curing techniques. In recent years, the vanilla industry has begun to show a new trend and has maintained steady and sound growth. With the support of vanilla companies and local government, an increasing number of farmers are beginning to plant vanilla in Hainan Province. We have full confidence in the prospects for vanilla development in China. The vanilla industry will have broad horizons and bright prospects for development.

National Agricultural Standards for Vanilla in China

For promoting the development of the vanilla industry, the following agricultural standards for vanilla were issued by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture in 1999. They were drafted by the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences.

NY-T 362-1999 Vanilla seedlings

NY-T 483-2002 Vanilla NY-T 713-2003 Determination of vanillin in vanilla beans NY-T 968-2006 Technical rules for vanilla cultivation

References

Chen, D. 2005. About vanilla bean, topic 111 Survey papers on present situation of Chinese vanilla bean industry. Flavor and Fragrance Cosmetics 5:32–36.

Chen, D., Liu, S., Deng, Z., Lan, Y., and Ling, C. 2007. Exploration of the largest wild population of Vanilla siamensis Rolfe in the world, and its implication for the development of vanilla industry in China. Flavor and Fragrance Cosmetics 5:49–52.

Liu, Z., Chen, S., and Ru, Z. 2007. Vanilla shenzhenica Z. J. Liu & S. C. Chen, the first new species of orchidaceae found in Shenzhen, South China. Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica 45:301–303.

Mao, G. 2002. Suggests of promoting vanilla production in Hainan island. Journal of Yunnan Tropical Crops Science & Technology 25:22–26.

Zhou, H. 2000. Technique and Operating Regulations of Vanilla Producing. Enterprise Standard, Yunnan Vanilla Industry Ltd.