This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A rare wild pepper endemic to Madagascar and prized by international chefs is facing an uncertain future, a victim of its own success and the destruction of its forest habitat. With its subtle, aromatic flavor, voatsiperifery pepper grows on vines that reach into the canopy of the island's natural forests, which shrank 27% between 1990 and 2025, according to the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization. To reach the peppercorns without having to climb, harvesters often tear down the vine and, in many cases, the trees supporting it, contributing to the relentless retreat of Madagascar's forests. "At times, I tell myself I should never have made it known," acclaimed French chef Olivier Roellinger, who first encountered the spice 30 years ago, told AFP.
"This pepper blew me away right from the start with that piperine punch that brings out a note of peat, resin, even citrus; it's incomparable," he said. "On a fruit salad, it's absolutely delicious." Madagascar pepper sells for 150 to 200 euros ($169 to $225) per kilogram in France, its main export market. Roellinger, the founder of the Epices Roellinger spice boutique, is collaborating with efforts to certify authentic pepper based on strictly regulated harvesting zones in Madagascar.
But he was "under no illusions" about the risk these rules could be circumvented, he said. The village of Ambongamarina, northeast of the capital, Antananarivo, was at the center of a rush two decades ago for the pepper, which has a characteristic woody tail, a remnant of its stem. From a ridge on which the village sits, farmer Maminiaina Rabearison pointed into the distance.
"Until 2010–2012, it was still covered in natural forest," he told AFP. "People used to go into the forest and, for 10 to 20 weeks a year, at least 100 kilograms (220 pounds) were sold every week at the market to a trader," the 45-year-old said. That trader has not visited in a long time.
Harvests have dropped as the forest has been consumed by bush fires, charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture, or torched in protests against the distant central government. The destruction of the vines has also forced harvesters to go deeper into the forest to find the plant, which in Malagasy is called tsiperifery, meaning "that makes wounds not exist," a reference to its medicinal use for generations. Now, "you have to walk almost a full day to find pepper in the forest," said 51-year-old Herinaina Randrianarimanga, another farmer from the village, which is only 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the capital but takes five hours to reach in a four-by-four vehicle.
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