In Papantla, Mexico, once a major vanilla-producing city, the spice is still strongly tied to people's identity.
Long gone are the days when heaps of green vanilla pods were drawn into town by mules and laid out on woven mats to dry in the sun, perfuming the streets before being packed up and sold abroad. In this corner of eastern Mexico, known as 'the city that perfumed the world,' the aromatic spice once dominated daily life and contributed to Mexico becoming the world's leading supplier of vanilla more than a century ago.
Much of Mexico's vanilla fails to meet the quality standards to be sold abroad because the fruit suffers from fungus, poor weather or early harvest to avoid theft, said Angélica Hernández Ávila, the Papantla-based director of the center that supports agricultural innovation at the National Polytechnic Institute. But the biggest challenge is artificial vanilla.
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