sweet banana peppers are hot? - Ask Extension
I grow sweet banana peppers every year. I've been surprised, occasionally, when I pick one that actually tastes hot/spicy. Strikingly so. Most of the...
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sweet banana peppers are hot? #805695
Asked August 10, 2022, 7:59 PM EDT
I grow sweet banana peppers every year. I've been surprised, occasionally, when I pick one that actually tastes hot/spicy. Strikingly so. Most of the peppers are not, as they should be. My question is, what could cause this. Is there some regressive gene for capsaicin in sweet banana peppers? I would appreciate an answer from some pepper horticultural expert.
Travis County Texas
Expert Response
Hi Dan,
Thank you for this intriguing question. The banana peppers I harvested from plants I bought last year were consistently hotter than a normal banana pepper, confirmed by everyone that received my pepper gifts.
In my case it appears that they were mislabelled and I actually bought Hungarian peppers which are 2 to 3 times hotter as measured on the Scoville scale. (Banana peppers are generally in the 0 to 500 range on the Scoville scale.)
Researching this topic, I found that it is very possible that peppers cross pollinate via pollinators, such as bees, if bees have access to both plants. The seeds from this unintended crossed variety may have genes that are expressed as a high Scoville number. If these seeds are planted in nurseries and sold you may be getting a cross between a pepper and another type of pepper, such as Hungarian pepper (which looks very similar to a typical banana pepper).
In addition, there is considerably variation in how genes are expressed in all plants. The genetic codes of many plants are very complex and the complexity is what allowed various plants to survive in different conditions, and pass on their genetics.
It would appear that the role of capsaicin in peppers is to deter insect damage and deter fungal disease.
https://peppergeek.com/what-makes-peppers-spicy/
Scientists are still studying how expression of genes results in variations in color and other characteristics of peppers. The expression of gene characteristics seems to be complex. It is possible when conditions vary, such as temperatures in high 90s to 100s, the metabolic processes may shift to provide best chance of survival of the seeds produced. Variation on the amount of water available to the plant, the nutrients in the soil, how much organic material is present, or variations in microbial activity around root hairs of the plant could result in variations in characteristics such as color, shape, size and also the amount of capsaicin that is produced.
Hope this helps. Wishing you all the best!
Bob Kunkel
Thank you for this intriguing question. The banana peppers I harvested from plants I bought last year were consistently hotter than a normal banana pepper, confirmed by everyone that received my pepper gifts.
In my case it appears that they were mislabelled and I actually bought Hungarian peppers which are 2 to 3 times hotter as measured on the Scoville scale. (Banana peppers are generally in the 0 to 500 range on the Scoville scale.)
Researching this topic, I found that it is very possible that peppers cross pollinate via pollinators, such as bees, if bees have access to both plants. The seeds from this unintended crossed variety may have genes that are expressed as a high Scoville number. If these seeds are planted in nurseries and sold you may be getting a cross between a pepper and another type of pepper, such as Hungarian pepper (which looks very similar to a typical banana pepper).
In addition, there is considerably variation in how genes are expressed in all plants. The genetic codes of many plants are very complex and the complexity is what allowed various plants to survive in different conditions, and pass on their genetics.
It would appear that the role of capsaicin in peppers is to deter insect damage and deter fungal disease.
https://peppergeek.com/what-makes-peppers-spicy/
Scientists are still studying how expression of genes results in variations in color and other characteristics of peppers. The expression of gene characteristics seems to be complex. It is possible when conditions vary, such as temperatures in high 90s to 100s, the metabolic processes may shift to provide best chance of survival of the seeds produced. Variation on the amount of water available to the plant, the nutrients in the soil, how much organic material is present, or variations in microbial activity around root hairs of the plant could result in variations in characteristics such as color, shape, size and also the amount of capsaicin that is produced.
Hope this helps. Wishing you all the best!
Bob Kunkel
Thank you, Bob. I'm sure that you can get hotter pepper plants by crossing hot peppers with sweet peppers and planting the resulting seeds, but my situation is that I have at least one sweet pepper plant, that produces almost entirely sweet peppers, but OCCASIONALLY a hot pepper. So this isn't about having the wrong seeds.
I am faced with ONE PLANT that produces mostly sweet peppers, but occasionally a hot one. My understanding that is if a sweet pepper flower gets pollinated by hot pepper pollen, that won't make the pepper hot. It'll just make seeds that, when planted, might produce hotter peppers.
I am wondering if this is an example of"reversion", where one variety can reach into it's genetic bag of tricks and pieces of it can pretend to be another variety. Is this an understood issue, commercially, where a harvest of sweet peppers occasionally includes a hot one?
Dan
I am faced with ONE PLANT that produces mostly sweet peppers, but occasionally a hot one. My understanding that is if a sweet pepper flower gets pollinated by hot pepper pollen, that won't make the pepper hot. It'll just make seeds that, when planted, might produce hotter peppers.
I am wondering if this is an example of"reversion", where one variety can reach into it's genetic bag of tricks and pieces of it can pretend to be another variety. Is this an understood issue, commercially, where a harvest of sweet peppers occasionally includes a hot one?
Dan
On 8/11/22 10:42 AM, Ask Extension wrote:
Dan,
I investigated further but cannot find a easily accessed source as to why you are getting such variation on a single plant. To the best of my ability to investigate it does not appear to be a common problem with growers.
Just to make sure ... you don't have two plants intertwined with each other do you?
Likewise, you are not leaving some peppers on longer than others? (Which could account for the variation in capsaicin.)
FYI - some growers have been successful at grafting two types of peppers on a single plant, but this is not your situation.
I am waiting to see if I'm permitted to receive that research article on variations of capsaicinoid content in peppers but may not receive it since I am not in the research community.
Here is one comment about that research article:
A possible explanation is that the capsaicinoid content is a quantitative trait that is controlled by multiple QTLs and/or genes (Sarpras et al., 2016;Sweat et al., 2016). Nevertheless, understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms behind capsaicinoid content variation will provide an effective strategy for modulating the capsaicinoid content in pepper breeding. ...
Bob
I investigated further but cannot find a easily accessed source as to why you are getting such variation on a single plant. To the best of my ability to investigate it does not appear to be a common problem with growers.
Just to make sure ... you don't have two plants intertwined with each other do you?
Likewise, you are not leaving some peppers on longer than others? (Which could account for the variation in capsaicin.)
FYI - some growers have been successful at grafting two types of peppers on a single plant, but this is not your situation.
I am waiting to see if I'm permitted to receive that research article on variations of capsaicinoid content in peppers but may not receive it since I am not in the research community.
Here is one comment about that research article:
A possible explanation is that the capsaicinoid content is a quantitative trait that is controlled by multiple QTLs and/or genes (Sarpras et al., 2016;Sweat et al., 2016). Nevertheless, understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms behind capsaicinoid content variation will provide an effective strategy for modulating the capsaicinoid content in pepper breeding. ...
Bob
Thank you for the quick reply. No, no intertwined plants.The couple of especially spicy pepper were red and older, but I didn't think mature banana peppers could ever get that much. Now,they weren't mouth-burning hot. Just noticeably spicy. I have heard that leaving peppers on the vine longer increases capsaicin, though.
Is there any literature on how Scoville varies with maturity of peppers? Are we talking, say, a factor of two?
I'm still thinking reversion, though, where these banana peppers may have had, somewhere in their parentage, a spicy parent. I often see plants that put out dramatically different leaves (e.g varigated or non-varigated) on different stems.I'm guessing that if I planted seeds from the spicy sweet banana peppers, I'd end up with plants that produced ONLY spicy peppers.
Dan
Is there any literature on how Scoville varies with maturity of peppers? Are we talking, say, a factor of two?
I'm still thinking reversion, though, where these banana peppers may have had, somewhere in their parentage, a spicy parent. I often see plants that put out dramatically different leaves (e.g varigated or non-varigated) on different stems.I'm guessing that if I planted seeds from the spicy sweet banana peppers, I'd end up with plants that produced ONLY spicy peppers.
Dan
On 8/11/22 12:13 PM, Ask Extension wrote:
I could not find anything but anecdotal evidence on variation of capsaicinoid content as peppers mature. Interesting that Scoville charts have wide variations, so it is safe to assume there is considerable variation within each type of pepper. And I am not going to be granted access to the article in question. ResearchGate put me through a vetting process. Since I was not a published author, I was not granted access.
