Armageddon, the newest chili to come from the chili breeding program of Tozer Seeds certainly set pulses racing. "It’s a new super-hot chili, the first British-bred hybrid and has been scored at 1.3 million on the Scoville scale", the company explais.
Super-hot chilies are challenging to grow but in breeding Armageddon, Tozer Seeds claims the variety to be quicker and easier to harvest, higher yielding and more uniform than traditional O.P. varieties. Dr. Jamie Claxton, Director of Plant Breeding explained that “Armageddon has been in development for 5 years and is just one of the chilies being developed in our Chilli Breeding Program, which aims to breed more niche varieties better suited to UK growing conditions”.
Tozer Seeds have been working with the UK’s largest grower of chili peppers, Salvatore Genovese who is based in Bedfordshire, for over 15 years. He is supplying Tesco with Armageddon this season and he is also trialling a range of varieties still in development including a very promising standard red chili.
James Hatherill, European Sales Director for Tozer Seeds said “As a company, we continue to source interesting and novel sweet and hot pepper material, either through our global contact network, or more recently from our own breeding program. Working with Salvatore and other UK growers, we can test these genetics with the hope that one of the UK multiples will then take the product to launch; Tesco has been instrumental in developing and promoting hard the `Super Hot’ types, which we applaud”.