Breeding Peppers

[Hawk]

Does anyone here breed peppers?

Same steps as with tomatoes basically?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I am breeding open pollinated landrace sweet peppers. They were developed the same way as my other landraces: Plant dozens of varieties and save seeds from those individuals that grow best in my garden.

I am not hand pollinating. There is more than enough natural cross pollination to keep the genes mixing and to provide new and interesting types each year, and to adapt the population to my garden. (Studies I have read estimate the cross pollination rate of peppers at between 15% and 40%.)

I maintain three landraces...

• A sweet bell pepper landrace which ripens to red, orange, or yellow. There is a chocolate color and a blue color gene floating around the genepool, but they haven't been prolific enough
  to be well represented. Because my growing season is so short, these are typically picked as green peppers. I have deselected all of the huge-fruited varieties because they were so prone to rotting or sunburn prior to harvest.
  
• A small-fruited sweet early ripening landrace with red and orange fruits. I grow this landrace primarily so that I can offer colored fruits for people that want to include color in their preserving project.
  
• A banana/bell landrace with fruits that are yellow as immature fruits. I grow these for my family to eat.
  

I grow sweet peppers for seed saving in a different field than hot peppers. I am not working with hot peppers.

[Hawk]

What you are doing sounds great! For sweet peppers I have become quite fond of the long tapered sweet peppers like Marconi Peppers and Golden Treasure Peppers... For some reason I have the best luck with these varieties compared to most bell peppers that I have grown.

Here is a picture of some of the peppers that I grew this year:



I grow both sweet and hot peppers. I try to isolate them from each other. I keep hot with hot and sweet with sweet...

This year in 2012 I am going to try to make some determined crosses using selected parents.

I also plan on using your natural cross method. I will grow all of my sweets together in one plot and all of my hots in another that is at a comfortable distance. I am not bagging blossoms or using cages. I am building some cages for isolating any segregations that look promising.

This is a pepper that I plan on working with:



Judging by information that I received from the source of this pepper this should be the F7 grow out from a hybrid called Topaz. The seeds came to me from a friend in the Philippines. This pepper has great sweet flavor with 1/3 of the heat of Cayenne. It is mild enough that I have enjoyed this pepper as a great addition to salads for an extra kick.

If you have any pictures of your peppers I would love to see them! I will keep in touch and post pictures of anything that I can contribute.

Thanks,

Jason

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's photos from my pepper landraces this summer.

Yellow Pepper landrace:



Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue Bell pepper landrace:



Small Red pepper and small orange pepper.





I really liked the taste of very long tapered peppers. Didn't save any seed this year though because they were not very productive.

[Hawk]

Those are great pictures! Thanks for sharing!

[steev]

Hawk, that F7 pepper is gorgeous!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Seed Crop From 2014:

Oct 11, 2014 23:56:49 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

I transplanted about 8 week old seedlings into the garden today which were grown from seeds of these fruits. I really like the increased selection power that growing sibling groups gives to me. I grew them out fruit-to-row: Almost... I planted 24 sibling groups in the greenhouse, but when I got done planting into the field, there were only 12 sibling groups. I had planted them in the greenhouse into 6 packs, 3 plants per sibling group, but I combined two sibling groups when I planted them into the field. Oh well. I'll still be able to distinguish between many of the groups. I'll just have to pay attention.

I noticed when I was planting them that it was odd that in some cases one side of the 6 pack had larger plants than the other side. Serves me right for working in the sun.

I also planted some bulk seed from these and other fruits. I screened these plants heavily for quick early growth. I culled the slowest growing 75% of the seeds that I planted. I also collected a group of the most precocious and quickest growing which I planted in the place of honor in the patch. Be interesting to see if they do any better than the others. Whenever I plant a patch of some crop that is part of a breeding project, I have what I think of as "The place of honor". It's on the edge of the patch were I start planting. I put the plants that I have the most hope for there, and then I plant the runners-up, and finally on the far end of the patch I plant the stuff that's barely good enough to bother with.

[swamper]

I too have only relied on selection of random or insect crosses, and would like to hear tips on creating intentional crosses.