Giant orange habanero chilli cross

September 26, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Last couple of seasons, I’ve been banging my head, trying to figure out the ancestors of chilli I bought on eBay. It was supposed to be Trinidad scorpion, but as well as we all know, there’s no way to receive the right seeds that way. I decided to collect the seeds and try growing them anyway, perhaps I could find out the difference in phenotype of the pods and figure out the related chillies. That did not happen, because the pods remained strange and similar to those last season, but they did start showing another, much larger pod phenotype.

Last season, my peppers had a really hard time ripening, and I was hardly able to collect enough seeds to start a couple of new plants this year. I later decided, I don’t really need many pods from that hybrid and I rather planted a whole bunch of superhots instead. The two plants I did plant, however, had grown into nice little peppers with above average number of pods. Last year, I have noticed that these peppers are heavy producers and this season the same thing repeated. On two relatively small pepper plants (they were more shaded than my other peppers), there was more than 1kg of pods, and there are new pods ripening as we speak.

The pods remained similar. They are still extremely hot, but not superhot. The pods have thin wall which makes them ideal for drying. They have less placental tissue than last year, but there is some, and there is quite some oil on the inner walls of the pods. The colour is deep orange, but can get a bit paler or darker, because of thin, semi-transparent skin. Skin texture is smooth and glossy. Most of the pods are elongated, but, like I mentioned, this season some of the pods became larger. Length remained nearly the same, but the pods got way fatter.

In late season, the pods were attacked by some kind of worms

In late season I have noticed a lot of pods that started to appear dark in the middle. When I checked the pods from inside, I have noticed some kind of worms that started chewing the seeds and created a webbing in which they were hiding after I exposed them. It seems that their thin skin makes them vulnerable. attacked pods started rotting from inside, which made them unusable. I tried to dry some of the healthy looking pods and later realised, that some of them started rotting. Each of those had a little worm inside. There is a way to minimise their damage though, you have to pick ripe pods as soon as you can, cut them open and freeze them. The best option is to use them as soon as they ripen completely.

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Crossing Chili Peppers

August 25, 2015 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

I’ve posted about Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chilli peppers not showing their original features. Instead they were different in appearance and had completely different pods. Trinidad Moruga Scorpions are supposed to be stable so they would grow more fruit and their physical appearance would be practically the same. I figured out that I most likely received first generation hybrids from Trinidad Moruga scorpion plant. Since I only grew one chilli the first season and the fact it’s self fertile with male and female parts on the same flower, I’m sure it was not cross-pollinated with another chilli. Weather was cold and wet most of the year and there were no other plants nearby, which means that pollination with pollen from plant growing nearby was highly unlikely.

A bit about genetics and making new chilli varieties

Hybrid chilli from self pollinated red chilli appeared orange because of recessive genes.

Chilli flowers are, as I mentioned above, self fertile, which means they are able to self pollinate, resulting in seeds that give very similar plants with similar features to their mother-plant. In case of cross pollination, chromosomes from mother and father plant mix and you can receive a plant, with combination of properties from both original plants. The first year, new plants usually show identical characteristics and there are no observable differences between the F1 (first filial generation) seedlings. These F1 seedlings will however show a mixture of characteristics from both, mother and father plant. Since F1 generation seedlings have the same combination of dominant and recessive genes, fruits can have nearly identical characteristics.
Things get more interesting the following season, when the first generation of seedlings produce new generation (F2) of seedlings. This time recessive genes kick in and the result is a vast amount of plants with different combinations of characteristics they received from their mother and father plants.
This way, it is possible to further promote peppers with good characteristics and throw away peppers that are either not appealing enough or have some kind of deficiency – sometimes they can even end up sterile or poorly fertile. When you take only seeds from good performing plants, you start creating new variety of chili peppers with features that you like the most. It’s important that next generations are self pollinated as well, so that the genetic material starts to stabilise.

First generations of seedlings (except the uniform F1 generation) show many different characteristics and those differences start to fade with each additional generation. After 8 generations of seedlings (F8), variety gets almost homozygous. Homozygous means, that the plant is having identical pairs of genes for any given pair of hereditary characteristics. Those plants are again mostly uniform and will show recessive gene characteristics only in small amount of seedlings. Only then after all the years, you can finally call your seedling a brand new chilli variety.:)

… And my Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chilli hybrid
In case of my seedlings I have no idea about what the mother and father plant looked like. Since I have bought Moruga chillies, I can presume, that the mother plant is Trinidad Moruga chilli. Based on characteristics, that will show up later in the process, I may be able to figure out the other parent. Most likely, the seeds have been cross pollinated continuously before I received them, so even the original plants might already have been hybrids.

Self pollinated F1 motherplant

Self pollinated parent plant — Self pollinated F1 parent plant

F2 seedlings

Seedling 1

Seedling 2

Seedling 2 with almost ripe orange pod — Almost ripe orange pod

Opened pods show some hot oil and quite thin wall

Ripe and unripe pods of the second seedling.

Seedling 3

Seedling 4

Seedling 5

Ripe pods - seedling no. 5 — Ripe pods – seedling no. 5

Seedling 6

Despite poor conditions, chillies started ripening in large numbers in the fall

Seedling 7

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Trinidad Moruga Scorpion grown from last year’s seeds

July 26, 2015 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

I collected seeds from my Moruga Scorpions last year. Seedlings were planted a bit later because of late spring, but summer soon brought much warmer weather than last season, with less rain and abundance of sun.
This year seedlings had serious issues with aphids and curling leaves. When the plants finally got established enough in the late July, first fruits emerged and I noticed they were not all the same as they were last year. I haven’t been growing any other chilli plants around it, so it came as a surprise to notice completely different fruits on one of the plants. 6 of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chilli plants seemed to grow chillies that were shaped the same as last year, only one of them had elongated fruits.

Elongated chilli looks completely differrent.

Closest paprika plants were growing around 20m away. There were no chillies around, except if one of the neighbours planted them, but again, they had to be quite far away. It will be interesting to see the size, color and shape of ripe fruits.

When I saw how different the plants were growing and especially the huge difference in size, shape and number of peppers, I thought that perhaps I received first generation of cross pollinated chillies. If their mother plant was indeed Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chilli, there might have been something else growing nearby and my only surviving seedling might have been a first generation hybrid. In second generation, many features of original plants that were cross-pollinated appear, which could be the cause of different growth pattern of my chilli seedlings.

If it’s in fact some kind of hybrid, strength and taste might also be different. I’ll update when it comes to that and later try to post about my findings and a little bit about genetics and hybridization in a new post. 🙂

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Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Chili

July 8, 2014 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Trinidad moruga scorpion (Capsicum chinense) is one of the hottest chili peppers in the world. I’m not sure if I want to taste it, but it’s nice to have such a powerful plant around.
It originates from Trinidad and Tobago. In warm places without freezing temperatures during the winter, it can grow as perennial, but even the lightest frost can completely kill it, so it’s usually acting as an annual plant in temperate climate. Perhaps I’ll try to place it into large pot during autumn and winter and try to keep it alive during the cold part of the year.

[GARD]

Chili was growing slow at first, but got quite vigorous when sun got a bit higher in the late spring. It liked baking in full sun at high temperature, but it also needed a lot of water. I’ve made a mistake and kept it inside the same pot for too long, which resulted in strong and a bit congested root system. When I planted it outside, it took quite some time to actually start growing again – I’m not sure if it was low temperature and excessive rainfall or the fact that it got root bound while still inside it’s pot.

Powerful chillies getting ready for harvest

When it started growing again, it soon set up a couple of blossoms, which were pollinated and first fruits started to develop. Trinidad moruga chili has very small flowers, compared to other chilies I’ve tried growing, but in the end, chilies were not small at all. They seem to flower in waves, just as first fruits are starting to turn red, the next wave of small flowers started to emerge. Sadly this summer is one of the coldest and it’s constantly wet, which means that chili didn’t have the best growing conditions, but it seems the second batch of flowers should ripe before cold weather kicks in.

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