Wired UK – September 2019

PLANT RESEARCH

Exotic crops

Inside a WUR greenhouse at

Bleiswijk, a small town 20km from

The Hague, Filip van Noort (shown

above), a crop specialist with Wagen-

ingen’s Plant Research facility,

points to a cluster of green pods

poking out from the vanilla orchid

far above his head. This is part of

the “Nethervanilla” crop: proof that

growing and harvesting it can be

achieved in Dutch greenhouses.

Vanilla is considered the world’s

most popular flavour and its second

most expensive spice, after saffron.

However, drought, cyclones and

dangerous farming conditions

have threatened the Madagascan

market, where roughly 80 per cent of

vanilla beans are grown – driving up

vanilla’s price. In early 2018, the price

per kg breached the $600 (£470)

barrier – more expensive than silver.

Vanilla is not the only high-value,

exotic crop growing under glass in

Bleiswijk. Van Noort has recently

been involved with a range of exper-

imental projects, from papaya and

avocado to wasabi and indigo. The

idea is to mirror the success of the

greenhouse tomato: since the end

of the second world war, the tomato,

which originates in South America

and grows best in temperate,

un-Dutch-like climates, has become

the poster child of agricultural

innovation in the Netherlands – the

world’s second-biggest exporter of

tomatoes (after Mexico), by value.

With each crop that comes across

his desk, van Noort is tasked with

solving a riddle. Most of the plants

that his team now grow are not

commonly cultivated in green-

houses, so they must study how a

plant grows naturally, to determine

how best to mimic the temperature,

light and rainfall of its place of origin

• through LEDs, hydroponics and
  mist. They need to know how to make
  the flowers blossom, and whether or
  not those flowers need a pollinator.
  With vanilla, the pollinators are
  the researchers themselves. Vanilla
  blooms can be unpredictable – and
  when a flower opens the team have
  only until midday to hand- pollinate
  the flower before the petals close.
  Flowers that go unpollinated will
  never bloom again, and their pods
  will hang useless on the vine. At
  Bleiswijk, the vanilla crops are
  monitored seven days a week (even
  on public holidays – in Easter 2018
  there was a bloom of 1,500 flowers).
  Every day a lift takes a researcher up
  and down the vines, as each opened
  flower is delicately tended to. �

FILIP VAN NOORT AND HIS VANILLA CROP

IN THE PLANT RESEARCH FACILITY

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