Was Your Cinco de Mayo Spicy Enough for You?: Seminis Peppers May Add More

Edited by Jennifer L. Price

Hopefully you spent your Cinco de Mayo enjoying some Coronas and margaritas, salsa and fajitas.  While I’m sure you enjoyed yourself, would some extra spice in those peppers have helped?  Terry Berke, senior hot pepper breeder at Seminis Vegetable seeds, knows about hot peppers.

Berke knows so much about hot peppers, because he's spent the last 11 years breeding new varieties of peppers. Before he worked on peppers, he didn't even like spicy food. Now he eats peppers every day.  (For some that’s a dream job, the rest just cringe at the idea.)

Berke works on improving peppers at Seminis, wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto Company, which currently produces more than 24 types of hot peppers.

He's looking for peppers that are darker green, larger or that have other attractive colors like bright-orange, red, white or yellow. In some cases, he's making Seminis peppers hotter, and in others, he's taking the heat out. Seminis developed the first "heat-free" jalapeño in the 1990s; a pepper that has lower levels of capsaicin, providing a pepper with all the flavor of a jalapeño and very little of the heat.

"The trend is for milder peppers in the U.S.," said Berke, although he is looking into a hotter jalapeños because pepper producers have complained that some jalapeños aren't as hot as they used to be. The opportunity to mix hot peppers and sweet peppers together gives pepper producers more options for salsas and other packaged foods.

A lot of what drives Berke's breeding program is what consumers want when they're at the supermarket—which surprisingly is color more often than heat quotient.

"One trait we're working on is a darker green Serrano," said Berke. "The trend for hot peppers is darker color. I can make a very nice light green Serrano that's high in yield, with excellent firmness and good disease resistance, but no one will buy it because it's light green. They want dark green. I can't explain why, I just know I have to meet what the market demands."

For peppers that are harvested when they're orange, the breeders select for a brighter orange. For those that are harvested white, Berke's team selects for creamier whites instead of pale greens or pale yellow. Berke's working on a white variety of cherry pepper for a holiday pack. 

Who knew there was so much science in those peppers?

Regardless of which colored pepper you bite into, chances are you'll reach for a glass of water soon after. Instead, Berke recommends drinking a glass of milk before you chomp down. Since capsaicin and milk bind to the same receptors on your tongue, drinking milk ahead of time will saturate those receptors with milk. The capsaicin will have fewer receptor sites to bind to and your hot pepper salsa won't taste quite so hot.  

Keep Berke’s advice and all this info in mind the next time you’re at the supermarket trying to pick out the perfect pepper—whether that’s dark green and spicy, or orange and mild.  To learn about those peppers visit http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/layout/featured/cincodemayo.asp