Cinchona ledgeriana (high-yield cinchona)
Cinchona ledgeriana (quina de alto rendimiento)
- Date
- 1865 · confidence high
- Place
- Apolo (Caupolicán province), La Paz, Bolivia
- Credited to
- Manuel Incra Mamani and Charles Ledger
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Seeds of a Bolivian cinchona with 8-13% quinine, collected by Manuel Incra Mamani for Ledger and sold to the Dutch in 1865. It was grown in Java and displaced the Peruvian and Ecuadorian cinchonas.
Credit usually goes to Ledger (who sold the seeds), but Mamani, his Bolivian assistant, located and collected them; sources differ about his later fate. The Dutch took up the seeds; the British preferred others.
What it led to
- Java cinchona plantations and the Dutch quinine monopoly
- Abundant quinine against malaria in tropical colonisation
- Loss of Andean control over cinchona