Biography of the miraculous berry (Synsepalum dulcificum): travelers on the West African coast to pharmaceutical laboratories"

International audienceThis presentation aims to trace the course of a particular plant, from its original environment to museum collections, by questioning the development of the knowledge associated with it. Although Africa has remained marginal in the eighteenth-century scientific discovery movement, its coasts have been frequented since the sixteenth century by European navigators and merchants to trade mainly in slaves. At the end of the seventeenth century, on the Gold and Slaves coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, some travelers noticed and described the fruit of a little tree presenting the particular property of softening the acid or bitter. This characteristic made it easy to identify it with Synsepalum dulcificum, an endemic Sapotaceae of the Guineo-Congolese forest massif. This fruit, also rich in vitamin C, was able to intervene in the feeding of the slaves by allowing to consume the water of poor quality or acid citrus fruit fighting against the scurvy. Knowledge on this plant was progressively elaborated from the contributions of European travelers and residents on the West African coast. From the slaves trader to the botanist explorer, all participated individually, to varying degrees, in the collection of information, objects and plant or animal species, thus responding to the solicitations of scholars who remained in Europe. The Danish botanist P. Thonning, (1775-1848) in charge of developing a farm in the hinterland of the Gold Coast (Ghana), reported and determined the first herbarium specimens of this plant. It was first denominated Bumelia dulcifica and described in the Flora of Guinea published in 1827 by Heinrich C.F. Schumacher (1757-1830). However, it was not until colonial botanical explorations to refine the geographical distribution of S. dulcificum and the 1960s to isolate miraculin, its active ingredient. It is only recently that pharmacological research has shown its interest in the treatment of several diseases such as diabetes, obesity and certain cancers. S. dulcificum is now grown outside Africa, in Asia and South America. Paradoxically, on the coast of Guinea Gulf, where it was particularly present in the vicinity of dwellings, it appears to be more rare and less used in the diet, whereas sugar consumption has increased considerably. Tracing this plant from the African coast to pharmaceutical laboratories provides information on the history of science, environment and health, as well as that of humans since the arrival of Europeans in this part of the world to the instauration of colonial power