Super Thick Flesh Pepper Breeding

[Weston Adams]

Greetings,
I wanted to start a thread where we could discuss super-thick-flesh pepper breeding.

From my (incomplete) evaluation of peppers varieties, the thickest flesh I've ever observed in C. annuum was in the Lesya peppers. And the thickest flesh I've ever observed in C. baccatum was in "Apple Crisp."

I'm honestly suprised that breeders haven't made more progress in getting pepper flesh to be, say more than 1 cm thick. And in the cases where I've seen it up to 1 cm thick, it was on a large pepper. If a Jalepeno had 1 cm thick flesh, that would be incredible!

Is anyone aware of folks working on this specifically? Or of varieties that rival the ones I already mentioned?

To me this seems like an area in pepper breeding where tangible improvements could be made.

[Tim DH]

Hi Weston,
     Thanks for posting. ... I'd not heard of Lesya peppers, but now I've found a seed source and will try them next season.

Tim DH

[Steph S]

I haven't tried the ones you mentioned but I do like the idea..
Pimento family generally are thick fleshed so there are some thickness genetics in that group, as well as the bells.

One thing I've noticed is that thicker fleshed peppers take longer to ripen.
When we were having colder summers and I was growing peppers indoors, I especially looked for thinner fleshed sweet peppers that still had the 'crisp' texture vs fryers, in hopes of ripening in a short season (Petit Marseillais for example, was quite productive in short time frame).  I did grow a number of pimento types too and similar small round thick fleshed peppers (eg Alma, Doe Hill), and in spite of small size they all took much longer to ripen than thinner walled peppers.  Thus my perception that thick flesh might be closely correlated with time to ripen.  Could be wrong though.

[AndrewB]

Honestly in the world of peppers there is a lot of stuff available, but I think as a crop it has not had as much breeding attention as tomatoes overall, so sky is the limit for new combinations. One cross that could be interesting would be to find the world's largest bell or widest pepper and cross it with the world's longest pepper.

I have a suspicion that the thicker the flesh and the longer the pod (unless super thin) the longer they will ripen. In my climate here I have a decent amount that should work fine, but I'm not sure how far I can push it before size becomes a self selecting trait.

But I am planning on a large pepper evaluation next year. Mostly focusing on new Mexican green chile pod types new Mexican landrace chiles, my own f1 cross growout, and now I'm adding in a few Italian sweet roasting peppers. Ambitious I know, but I'm determined. I'm highly leaning towards using the extra hot ones to cross with the sweet Italian types to create a new fusion of both roasting / peeling genetics from each side of the world. I want a little heat, but I probably don't want too much.

The landrace types are interesting because they have a high dihydrocapsaicin to capsaicin ratio which is unique, so that is also of interest and may help with better flavor and less intense heat.

[Klaus Brugger]

Cool idea!

The UPOV example variety for very thick flesh is 'Solario' F1. I haven't grown it yet, but it looks interesting.

Maybe it would also be worthwhile to have a look at what the giant vegetable growing community has got. These record heavy peppers are not terribly large.

Only historically interesting is 'Teufelsauge' introduced by Edmund Mauthner (Budapest) in the early 20th Century. It was claimed back then to be the most thickfleshed pepper ever bred and the illustration from their seed catalogue of 1913 is quite impressive. I'm not sure it's too accurate though. There are also illustrations of perfectly smooth celeriac in there.

[Tim DH]

Hi Weston,
    Have you come across Gogosari Peppers? I'd not heard of them until today! Looks like they are thicker than  normal.

Tim DH

[Diane Whitehead]

I grow Lesya.  Two other peppers I have seeds of are described as having very thick walls - Osmarsko with "an excellent sweet taste"  and Pizza which is mild.  I haven't grown them yet.

Pizza is sold in the U.S. by Territorial Seeds.  They wrote:
It is the heaviest, most thick-walled pepper we have ever seen.

It is sold in Canada by Atlantic Pepper.