Can you imagine taking one of the world’s hottest peppers, the Naga Morich, and crossing it with a huge, sweet bell pepper?  The offspring could be a super hot bell pepper, or a mild, thick-fleshed Naga, or anything in between …

Welcome to the world of crossing and breeding your favorite plants!

Our Scandinavian scholar of the Scoville, Jukka Kilpinen, returns with this amazing guide to crossing chili peppers!

The Joy of Plant Sex

It’s a really special feeling when you cross one plant with another and create something entirely new and unique – a variety that no other grower has!  And creating your own crosses is a very easy project for many types of plants.  It puzzles me why more growers don’t do it!  To perform the actual crossing takes a matter of minutes. After that it’s mostly waiting and observing the interesting results!

There are literally thousands and thousands of different chili plant varieties to choose from, and you can mix any of them!  Believe it or not, I am actually crossing the aforementioned example of a Naga Morich and a Bell pepper.  I can’t wait for the results!  And remember, that’s just a cross with those two varieties.  Then you can start breeding the results of different crosses together, or back-crossing with one of the originals.  The mind boggles!  Even very common species can be mixed together to create something completely unique.  It’s also possible to cross some plants from different species but I recommend selecting varieties from within the same species first.  It’s much easier to learn that way compared with mixed species.

The word “chili” or “pepper” is often used to refer to plants of the genus “capsicum.”  Capsicums are in the Solanaceae family (the same as tomatoes, egg plants and potatoes.)  Within the genus “capsicum” are various species, such as C. annuum, C.chinense, C.pubescens etc., and within each species are cultivars, or individual plant varieties.  Jalapeños, for example, are members of the C. annuum species.  You can cross them with another member of their species, or with some other species in the Capsicum genus.  For an inter-species compatibility matrix visit my website: Fatalii’s Growing Guide.

First, here’s some simple, basic information about the anatomy of the chili pepper flower that’s good to know before starting the actual project. Chilies produce ‘complete flowers’ – that is, they contain both the “male” (stamens) and female parts (pistil).  Usually the flower opens up and the stamens would release pollen on to the pistil and self-pollinate.  We want to stop that happening so that we can introduce pollen from another chili plant instead.

a.) petals b.) stigma
c.) pistil d.) stamens
e.) blossom end f.) calyx

The Breeding Process
1. Select a flower from the variety you want to use as the “male” with the breeding. This simply means the variety from where you will be collecting the pollen from.  It needs to be a flower that has just opened so you can get a good dusting of pollen. On this example, I’m going to use C. annuum var. ‘Bird’s Eye Baby’ as a male.

2. Next, select a flower from the variety you want to use as a female with the breeding. This should be a flower that hasn’t opened yet but looks like it’s going to open soon. I chose a species with a larger flower to work as a female because this makes the project much easier.

3. Use forceps to remove the petals from the closed female flower bud.

4. Ok, now it’s time to remove those stamens before they open up!Use your forceps to pick off the stamens, but be very careful not to damage the pistil on the middle of the blossom end.  It’s a bit like playing “Operation” – you’ll need a very steady hand!  A magnifying glass might be useful here, especially with smaller-flowered varieties.

5. Removing the last stamen. You can now see the pistil left on the flower.  Only the female part remains – the pistil.  You may wish to repeat this procedure on multiple flowers on the same plant to increase your chances of success!

6. Use a cotton stick to collect some pollen from the stamens of the variety you’re using as a male, in this case, Bird’s Eye Baby.

7. Transfer the pollen you just collected to the stigma (tip) of the female flower (Aji Cristal), and we’re almost done!  (Pollinate all of the emasculated flowers you have on this plant.)

8. The final stage is to label the cross.  You may need to use a twisty tag to label the individual flower that you pollinated.  The first variety name on the label will tell which one is the female.

At this point it would be a good idea to repeat the steps for any other unopened flower buds on the female plant, just to maximize the possibility of succeeding!  I usually pollinate two to four flowers at once.

Within the next week or so the stems of the pollinated flowers will fall off if the cross won’t take.  In this case, just repeat the stages above.

The After Party

If the crosses take, the chili pod will develop and mature in exactly the same way as if it had pollinated itself.  That is, it won’t look (or taste) any different from the other self-pollinated chilies.  You’ll need to wait for the crossed pod to mature and collect the seeds from it!  It’s these seeds that contain the genetic information from both parents.

After germinating the crossed seeds you’ll be able to see the results of the cross.

It’s good to know that every single seed from this pod will produce a different plant which can be anything between Aji Cristal and Bird’s Eye Baby.  If you used several flowers, the chances of getting very different crosses will be much higher.  I will germinate all the seeds from the crossed pod and label each seedling “Aji Cristal x Bird’s Eye Baby F1 #1” and “Aji Cristal x Bird’s Eye Baby F1 #2” – the #1, #2, etc denotes the phenotype – this is just another name for an individual instance of a plant.

Here’s one project as an example which includes Dutch Red (Capsicum annuum) and Orange Habanero (Capsicum chinense).

I wanted to have some properties from the Habanero (the productivity and heat), mixed with the cold tolerancy of Dutch Red.

Here are the pods of the parent plants:

Dutch Red

Orange Habanero:

The scientific way of naming the cross would be:

C. annuum var. `Dutch Red` x C. chinense var. `Orange Habanero`

This describes that the Dutch Red was used as the “mother” or “receiver of the pollen” and it was pollinated with pollen collected from Orange Habanero flower.

About one week later, I could tell the cross took and the pod on the Dutch Red started to form from the flower I had pollinated with Orange habanero.  It took some time for the pod to grow and ripen properly before I could collect the seeds.  After the pod had finally matured. I dried the seeds on a warm place with a good air circulation. After drying I could start growing my own cross!  A few months later, I could see the results on my plant:

The cross I made is called Dutch-Habanero F1.

I wanted to have prolific plants that would tolerate large ranges in temperature. Here are some results from the greenhouse!

The plant above was actually taken from this Bonchi (Bonsai chile) which works as a motherplant:

As you can see, this variety has the ability to adapt to different conditions! With a smaller pot, the pods are much smaller compared to hydroponic growing. Even though this is just the first generation, it turned out to be one of the best chili plants I have grown!

F1 describes the fact that this is the first generation. When I harvest mature seeds from the F1 plant and germinate them, the result will be F2 plants, and the seeds germinated from F2 plant will result… yes, you guessed it, F3 plants and so on.

You can also see that this project was a cross between two different species, C. annuum and C. chinense.  C. annuum being related to most common chile peppers like Cayenne, Jalapeño, Serrano and also non-pungent bell peppers.  C. chinense is a group that includes the hottest varieties like habaneros and even the hottest variety of them all, Naga Morich.

Next time, I’m going to take a look at the breeding and selection process in more detail!  Make sure you check it out.

Got the Breeding Bug?

We certainly have!  Everest dashed into the UGM garden and immediately set about crossing his Bolivian Rainbow (seeds generously supplied by Jukka at www.fatalii.net) with some Californian Wonder and Bell Peppers.  We’ll let you know if they took or not.  (The latter being apparent if Everest is conspicuously silent on the matter!)