Madagascar is the most important country for vanilla production—the fragrant ingredient that is a favorite flavor for ice cream, cakes and cookies. The vanilla orchid is cultivated in the tropical northeast of the island. Over the past five years, a research team from the University of Göttingen and the University of Antananarivo has been studying vanilla cultivation and its impact on people and nature. They found that vanilla cultivation in agroforestry systems, in which the vanilla grows under trees providing shade, has benefits for both humans and nature compared to other forms of land use. However, this is only the case when vanilla is planted on fallow land that has already been deforested. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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Source: Phys.org