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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*
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-
[Market-farming] Pepper seed,
Pam Twin Oaks, 01/02/2009
-
Re: [Market-farming] Pepper seed,
Ken Bezilla, 01/02/2009
- Re: [Market-farming] Pepper seed - Hot, or not?, Bill Shoemaker, 01/05/2009
-
Re: [Market-farming] Pepper seed,
Ken Bezilla, 01/02/2009
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