Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
(which has all the fire of a cucumber). The presence of capsaicin, and to some extent its
concentration, depends on a single recessive gene. But it's not as simple as that. Chile pep-
per heat is devilishly complicated. Not only does it vary within a single variety, but it also
varies within a single farm.
And it can even vary within a single plant. Two seemingly identical peppers picked
from the same plant at the same time can contain different amounts of capsaicin. Predict-
ing which pepper will be hot and which mild is a problem that has confounded chile farm-
ers for centuries. The differences can be quite extreme. Little Japanese shishito peppers,
for example, are mostly sweet and mild. But about one in every dozen will be hot enough
to lift off the top of your head. Plant breeders are working on controlling heat, and they
have achieved some success. In the 1990s breeders in Texas succeeded in producing a
jalapeno with all the bite of a bell - a great boon to people who say they want salsa but
really prefer ketchup.
WHERE T H E Y ' R E GROWN: More than two thirds of the bell peppers grown in
the United States come from just two states - California and Florida, with the former hold-
ing a slight edge. Peppers are also an important import. About 20 percent of the Americ-
an supply comes from outside the country, mostly from Mexico. But a surprising number
of peppers come from Canadian greenhouse growers, whose exotically colored specialty
peppers have increased their American market share more than tenfold in the past fifteen
years. When it comes to chile peppers, almost half of our fresh consumption comes from
Mexico, whose exports to the United States have increased by 82 percent in the past dec-
ade, now totaling more than 425 million pounds.
H O W T 0 C H O O S E: Even though peppers of all colors are delivered to our
markets year-round, from all over the world, you need to be careful when choosing them.
