At its request, Spices Board was permitted to undertake development of vanilla and is engaged in this endeavour to add another item to the spice export basket. It has only few exclusive vanilla related programmes and they are supply of subsidized planting materials and on farm curing aids.

Having known the export potential of vanilla Spices Board during IX plan took up a programme to popularize the crop in Kerala and Karnataka. As a result by the end of the plan period about 320 hectares were brought under cultivation. The programme was extended with a targeted area of 5000 hectares for the X plan.