Malabar's legendary black pepper is becoming extinct in Wayanad, the very place from where shiploads were once exported across the world and for whose monopoly several European nations sunk fortunes building armadas. A government-sponsored study to find out the cause for near total devastation of the crop in Wayanad has found the answer right beneath its feet -in the soil. Experts who analysed over 13,000 soil samples as part of the Sugandhi project found the pH value in majority of soil samples in Wayanad to be `extremely acidic' to `strongly acidic' mainly due to chemical-intensive farming. Also, phosphorous toxicity in soil has made vast stretches of once virgin lands in the foothills of the Western Ghats unsuitable for pepper cultivation. “As much as 15% samples had pH less than 3.5 which is ultra-acidic and majority of samples (55 %) had pH value between 4.5 and 5.5 which ranges from `extreme acidic' to `strongly acidic' pointing to the fact that acidification of soil is one of the most important constraints to pepper production in the district,“ K M Sreekumar, associate professor at College of Agriculture in Padnekkad, who headed the study, said. There has been a drastic decline in acreage and production of pepper in Wayanad, which had produced half of India's total pepper in the '80s with an output of over 40,000 tonnes. In recent times the yield went down drastically in the district from 17,915 tonnes in 2000-01 to just 2,287 tonnes in 2012-13. The area under cultivation also dwindled from 44,908 hectares in 2001-02 to around 17,000 hectares last year. “Our studies have shown that the chances of foot rot in creased with the increase in soil acidity as the disease causing fungus phytophthora thrived and become virulent in acidic conditions,” said Dr P Jayaraj, programme coordinator of Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Kannur, who was part of the multi-institution study.