Can hot peppers make sweet peppers hot

[Worth1]

Pepper seeds aren't hot it is the placental material around the seeds, this just so happens to get on the seeds and it makes people think they are hot.


Worth

[guruofgardens]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Pepper seeds aren't hot it is the placental material around the seeds, this just so happens to get on the seeds and it makes people think they are hot.


Worth

Thank you! Worth. Exactly correct. It's the placenta. Most of my seeds are very hot and when planting, it's a good idea to wear any sort of gloves.

(How soon we forget when planting seeds in the Spring!)

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by guruofgardens

Thank you! Worth. Exactly correct. It's the placenta. Most of my seeds are very hot and when planting, it's a good idea to wear any sort of gloves.

(How soon we forget when planting seeds in the Spring!)

When I plant mine I use a BBQ skewer and wet the end with my tongue that tip gets hot.

Somewhere here there have been people put out lists to the hot scale of peppers.

Two goofballs on youtube had Bulgarian carrot peppers.
They had looked up the scale and it was 2000 to 5000 scoville.
They gobbled the peppers up and found out real fast the scale was wrong.

Worth

[Ozark]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Pepper seeds aren't hot it is the placental material around the seeds, this just so happens to get on the seeds and it makes people think they are hot.
Worth

Thanks, Worth - you're right. I've done some reading now and found that living pepper seeds generally can't survive going through mammals' (rodents, cows, us) digestive tracts. If they pass through a bird's much quicker system, though, they come out still viable and even land on the ground surrounded by a bit of fertilizer. Unlike mammals, most bird species aren't sensitive to capsaicin and they don't even notice it. Ain't nature amazing?

So the capsaicin in peppers is a mammal-repellent (that doesn't work very well on me). As you say, the greatest concentration of capsaicin in a hot pepper is in the placenta to which the seeds are attached, so if there's capsaicin in a pepper the seeds get coated with it.

I still think that in a sweet pepper/hot pepper cross, the fruit's 'reproductive system', the placenta AND seeds, would show the traits of the next generation and have heat - as the seeds would be coated with capsaicin (mammal repellent). The sweet pepper fruit itself, though, would not be hot in that generation.

[Worth1]

I have only had one crossed pepper it was between a cross of a hot jalapeno and sweet cherry pepper.
This all came about with container growing.
The next spring baby pepper plants come up from seed in the last years cherry container.
I collected the seedlings and they ended up a slightly elongated cherry pepper that was very hot.
It fooled a lot of my local friendly neighborhood pepper thieves.

Worth
.

[ilex]

I've never seen it myself and don't see how it could happen. I grow hots among sweets.

What is true is that some sweets get hot if conditions are difficult, specially after cold weather. Famous "Del piquillo" is one of those.

[greenthumbomaha]

A biologist that posts here at TVille explained the genetics of heat in peppers in my recent thread Germinating Imposter Hot Peppers. This and the references he provided should answer your question.

- Lisa

[4season]

I just went to the (25th) New Mexico Organic Conference. NO, I am not certified, but don't use chemical pesticides. There was lots of talk about root exudates feeding beneficial fungi and bacteria. Hot peppers leaking hot compounds into the soil to be acquired by the next plant over seems even more reasonable than before.

[Deborah]

Except for a few cautious drops of tabasco sauce in a taco or burrito, I'm not into hot anything. But one time at a salad bar I tried something called a pepperoncini (sp?). It was rather good. Was it raw or pickled or what? It was limp and cold so I don't know and as you know I'm not a good cook who could tell.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Deborah

Except for a few cautious drops of tabasco sauce in a taco or burrito, I'm not into hot anything. But one time at a salad bar I tried something called a pepperoncini (sp?). It was rather good. Was it raw or pickled or what? It was limp and cold so I don't know and as you know I'm not a good cook who could tell.

It was pickled.


Worth

[Deborah]

Thanks. That must be the one I've seen in the stores in a jar.

[Ozark]

Originally Posted by Deborah

But one time at a salad bar I tried something called a pepperoncini (sp?). It was rather good. .

I grow pepperoncinis every year and pickle my own I like them on sandwiches along with lunchmeat and cheese. This season, though, I'm growing shish!to instead, a Japanese variety that's similar to pepperoncini. Both peppers have very mild heat, but about 1 shish!to pepper in 20 will be hot, for unknown reasons.

It seems science hasn't quite figured out everything that governs heat in peppers.

[Deborah]

No one just uses them raw?

[Ozark]

Originally Posted by Deborah

No one just uses them raw?

Oh, sure. Pepperoncini-type peppers are used just like any other mild pepper that has just a bit of heat, raw and every other way too. I pickle most of the ones I raise so I'll have them year-round.

I've read that like the Spanish padron variety, the shish!to peppers I'm growing are popular in their home country of Japan as a snack, sauteed in a frying pan in a bit of oil then sprinkled with sea salt. I'm looking forward to trying that - peppers can be used so many ways.

[Deborah]

That sounds good. I might buy a jar for tacos and burritos. Although there's not much difference-I use hot refried beans for tacos rather than ground beef.