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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Pepper seed - Hot, or not?

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  • From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Pepper seed - Hot, or not?
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 08:39:02 -0600

I tried to weigh in on this issue earlier but I'm having troubles with my ISP, which I'm currently "fixing".
 
The compound capsaicin is responsible for the heat in hot peppers. If a pepper plant produces hot fruit, it has the genes for producing capsaicin in it's germplasm (DNA). It received those genes from one of it's breeding parents. Stray pollen can affect that change, particularly when you have bees working in your garden. They like peppers too. So if you save seed and you or your neighbors are growing hot peppers, seeds from your sweet peppers may produce plants that produce hot peppers. But, the pollen will not make the fruit hot on the mother plant. That's because we do not eat the seeds in peppers normally and almost all of the heat in hot peppers does not come from the seeds but from the tissue that the seed is attached to, the placental tissue, and the blister cells lining the inside of the pepper fruit pod. The fruit tissue has no genes from the pollen. The fruit tissue is identical to the mother genetically. None of Dad's "hot" genes will be found in the fruit tissue.
 
One example that confuses people is sweet corn. The color of the kernels is affected by the pollen of surrounding plants. Remember, a kernel is an immature seed. So if you're growing white sweet corn, and yellow or multi-colored corn is nearby, the kernels on your white sweet corn could be other colors. Some kernels will be white, others will not. Each kernel depends on a single pollen grain for color, because the pollen contributes genes, along with the mother plant, to the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the kernel. Each kernel will have its color determined by the unique match of the mother's genes and the genes donated by the single pollen grain from the father plant.
 
So the hot pepper tissue we know and love (I do!) is strictly "mother" tissue and it's heat is genetically determined by Mom. Dad has no impact on it's heat. So as one contributor offered earlier, you can plant hot peppers and sweet peppers right next to each other and the sweet pepper plants will produce sweet peppers, not hot ones. I've done it many, many times and never been burned. Just make sure the sweet pepper seeds/plants are true genetically and you won't get burned. By the way, there are hot bell pepper varieties. I've grown them and mistakenly handed them out as sweet. I got an earful over that!
 
Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Hort Research Center
535 Randall Road, St Charles, IL    60174
www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html
* PLEASE NOTE : Change address in your directory to
wshoemak AT illinois.edu to ensure uninterrupted communications*

Re: "hot" sweet peppers -- I've heard folks speculate that one source of this myth might be from people who'd handled hot peppers before touching sweet peppers... and so oils from the hot peppers on their hands transferred to the sweet peppers.

Ken Bezilla
Acorn
central VA



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