Pepper genus offers enough variety for all
There are four additional major domesticated species: C. baccaum; C. chinense, which includes the scorching hot Scotch bonnet and habañero peppers; C. frutescens, whose best-known member is the Tabasco pepper; and C. pubescens. The latter is the only species that will not cross-pollinate with the others.
2014 has been a momentous year for the pepper as researchers have pinpointed its area of origin and new light has been shed on its diversity after sequencing the genomes of both wild and domesticated varieties.
In March, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reported that Chinese researchers from Sichuan Agricultural University discovered the pepper genome consists largely of transposons, referred to as “jumping genes,” because of their tendency to change positions. Fully 81 percent of the pepper genome is made up of transposons, which explains its genetic diversity.
The next month, PNAS published a paper by an international team of scientists led by a researcher from the University of California, Davis. The group used four lines of study to pinpoint the location of origin of the domesticated chilli pepper to central-east Mexico more than 6,500 years ago.
The four tracks of evidence included the examination of archeological remains from areas of documented earliest use, genetics, a distribution model based on environmental suitability and linguistic evidence of chilli pepper cultivation that took 30 indigenous languages into consideration.
Christopher Columbus is credited with introducing C. annum to Europe. After wholeheartedly embracing peppers in their cuisine, it was the conquering Spanish who brought it back across the Atlantic to introduce chilli peppers to northwestern Mexico and the American Southwest.
A chest-thumping “mine’s hotter than yours” subculture has developed around the ability to grow increasingly hot peppers and eat them. Heat is calibrated using Wilber Scoville’s Heat Unit (SHU) scale developed in the early 1900s — on which my favourite, Carmen, rates a zero. The Guinness World Book of Records reported in November that the Carolina Reaper, grown by Ed Currie of the PuckerButt Pepper Co., is the hottest known pepper on earth, rating an average 1.6 million SHUs.
Source: columbiatribune.com