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(American Journal of Botany. 2008;95:1040-1047.) doi: 10.3732/ajb.0800067 © 2008 Botanical Society of America, Inc.

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Neotropical roots of a Polynesian spice: the hybrid origin of Tahitian vanilla, Vanilla tahitensis (Orchidaceae)¹

² Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, California 92521-0124 USA ³ Wisconsin State Herbarium, Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1381 USA ⁴ Departamento de Biología y Geología (Area de Biodiversidad y Conservación), ESCET, URJC 28939 Madrid, Móstoles, Spain ⁵ Département Recherche et Développement, Etablissement Vanille de Tahiti, Raiatea BP 912-98735, French Polynesia ⁶ Centro de Investigaciones Tropicales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz 91019 Mexico

ABSTRACT

Absent in the wild, Tahitian vanilla (V. tahitensis) is a gourmet spice restricted in distribution to cultivated and feral stands in French Polynesia and Papua New Guinea. Its origins have been elusive. Our objective was to test the purported hybrid derivation and parentage of V. tahitensis from aromatic, neotropical progenitors. Nucleotide sequences from V. tahitensis and neotropical Vanilla were assayed for phylogenetic relatedness in two independently inherited genomic regions, the nuclear ITS region, and the trnH-psbA noncoding region of chloroplast DNA. As predicted to occur for early generation hybrids, placement of V. tahitensis was nonconcordant. All V. tahitensis clustered with V. planifolia from analysis of cpDNA sequences, suggesting V. planifolia as the maternal genome contributor. Phylogenetic reconstruction of ITS sequences showed that most V. tahitensis nested incongruently with V. odorata, but others remained sister to V. planifolia. Recovery of ITS clones in V. tahitensis related to both V. planifolia and V. odorata also supports its biphyletic origin from these two taxa. We interpret the high percentage (95%) of additive polymorphic sites in V. tahitensis relative to its parents as indication of a recent, and probably human-mediated, evolutionary origin.

Key Words: crop origins • French Polynesia • hybridization • Mesoamerica • Orchidaceae • Tahitian vanilla • Vanilla

Received for publication 4 March 2008. Accepted for publication 23 May 2008.

FOOTNOTES

¹ A debt of gratitude is extended to M. A. Soto Arenas, who helped initiate this research, and to Pacific Island Imports, for kind assistance with fieldwork. Financial support was generously provided to P. Lubinsky from the NSF-GRFP, UC-MEXUS, a UC-OP Pacific Rim mini-grant, and the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside. The final version of the manuscript benefited from suggestions given by two anonymous reviewers.

⁷ Author for correspondence (e-mail: plubi{at}hotmail.com)

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