Mexican barbasco trade

The Mexican barbasco trade was the trade of the diosgenin-rich yam species Dioscorea mexicana, Dioscorea floribunda and Dioscorea composita which emerged in Mexico in the 1950s as part of the Mexican steroid industry. The trade consisted in Mexican campesinos harvesting the root in the jungle, selling it to middlemen who brought it to processing plants where the root was fermented and the diosgenin extracted and sold to pharmaceutical companies such as Syntex who used it to produce synthetic hormones.

The trade started when Russell Marker, a chemist looking for a plant source from which to extract diosgenin and saponin, traveled to Veracruz looking for the yam Dioscorea mexicana which he suspected might be suitable. He hired two Mexican campesinos to bring him exemplars of the tuber. When he discovered that the root was indeed a significant source of diosgenin he established Syntex, the first Mexican fine chemical company dedicated to producing semisynthetic hormones from Barbasco. Before this development, natural hormones were extracted from animal sources, such as urine from pregnant mares or women, or from bull testes; prices were consequently very high. With the development of the process of Marker degradation which allowed the production of hormones from vegetable saponin sources, Marker began a search for a plant steroid of the sapogenin class with a ring structure more like progesterone. With the discovery of the chemical properties of the barbasco root, world market prices for steroids and other synthetic hormones plummeted - making them feasible for large scale production of medicines for common ailments such as arthritis or Addison's disease, and eventually as the basis for the combined oral contraceptive pill.

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