The First International Congress on the Vanilla Business was launched on November 11-12 2003, at the Radisson Hotel, Princeton, NJ. The meeting was organized by Daphna Havkin-Frenkel, Ph.D. and Visiting Scholar, Rutgers University, and New Brunswick, NJ. Two hundred seventy conferees from 25 countries were in attendance.

The objective of Vanilla 2003 was to create an overall perspective as well as discussion of specific issues of the vanilla business. One burning issue was the economics and trading of cured vanilla beans, because of skyrocketing prices of cured vanilla beans. Speakers assessing the situation acknowledged that though the present situation has created an economic pressure on user companies, new vanilla plantations would bring the price down in few years.

Additional topics were vanilla cultivation in different global regions, assessment of vanilla flavor and applications of vanilla flavor.

The section on biology and technology of vanilla and vanillin revealed new developments, including a description specialize vanillin forming cells in vanilla beans, biotechnology approaches for vanillin biosynthesis and control of the vanilla plant biology as well as aspects of vanillin physics and chemistry.

Feed back revealed an almost unanimous enthusiasm. Conferees felt that the meeting created a framework and context for the Vanilla community. Conferees were also complementary with regard to the program, the high caliber of the presentation and the organization of the conference.
Many expressed a desire for follow-up meetings and, subsequently, arrangements were made for Vanilla Europe, to be held in Grasse, France, the end of September 2004.

Please visit the website for more information on conference and speakers: http://www.aesop.rutgers.edu/~vanilla2003/