Have I by mistake "developed" a new chili pepper variety?
A year ago I bought a bunch of chili seeds that I planted and then kind of left to its own devices on my balcony together with 3 other types of chili pepper. I watered the plants but I didn't give them any other love.
Despite my negligence the plants thrived and some of the chili peppers developed a very particular appearance.
Perhaps 1 out of 10 fully grown peppers kind of resembled a flower with petals around its base. They aren't suppose to look like that.
https://i.imgur.com/Km2GFu3.jpg
I saved the seeds from the largest and most distinct "flower chilis" and planted them to see if the odd appearance of the peppers would come back in generation 2...and so far 5 out of 5 developed fruits have the same flower appearance. Some only have 2-3 "petals" around the base of the fruit but some have 5-6.
My four gen 2 plants have perhaps 60 more peppers in development (out of 100 flowers) and this year the gen 1 plant only have 2 out of 30 peppers that have the flower appearance.
I have only found one pic on the internets of the same base variety that have a hint of a "petal" but none that look like mine.
I know that new chili varieties aren't considered to be stable until gen 6-7 so I have more planting to do :) but which steps do I need to take to solidify the variety except replanting seeds and growing new generations?
Your methods are definitely how people have curated and tamed varieties of plants. This definitely doesn't look like any variety I have seen before. When in doubt, isolate it and only help it self-pollinate.
Another question you want to ask (or didn't talk about) is 'is it tasty/worth propogating'? I've had some fruit (I use the broad term) that was just strangely shaped because of either a mutation or because I harvested seeds that were from plants. Most modern plants we have (apples, oranges, peppers, pretty much anything you find in a grocery store) are usually grafts and not grown from seeds so sometimes you plant a seed from a fruit and get some strange thing because it's not supposed to be grown from seed but instead grafted to something else.
Thank you for the reply. I have kept two of the gen 2 away from my other plants to make sure there are no cross pollination.
The gen 2 plants was grown in a home hydroponics system and from seed to plants with hints of flowers only took 1½ month. They are now 3 months and are starting to develop peppers so I can get new generations quite fast.
The peppers from last year didn't taste that spectacular, a bit spicy, waxy, slightly bitter with a hint of sweetness. Almost like a spicy green paprika. The original variety are mostly grown for the peppers black or deep purple color and not for cooking and its flowers smells wonderful. But it would be fun to try to cross breed it with a similar colored pepper that have a more interesting flavor.
Do you know where I can read more about this? Not so much the grafting part, which I was aware of, but the sorts of things you get if you try to plant the seeds. Sounds really interesting.
Nothing crazy will happen if you plant the seeds, they'll just be a mix of whatever variety of fruit you were trying to grow (i.e. Granny Smith apple) and another random plant of the same species, which may not have the same size, quality or flavour.
I will say that apples are probably the least likely to be true to seed. Small annuals like tomatoes are probably close if not true to seed. Trees, you should just buy from a nursery if fruit is your goal.
I know this is true of pretty much all apples, but I was not under the impression it's true of all produce in a grocery store. Many grocery store fruits and vegetables are/can be grafted, but it's not as universal as it is for apples specifically. Plenty of fruits and vegetables for commercial farming are grown from seed and hybridization through cross-pollination is absolutely a thing commercially.
Related fun fact, before Rudolph Hass' patent expired in 1952, absolutely every commercially available Hass avocado was grown from grafts taken from his original mother tree. But AFAIK even now most commercialy grown Hass avocados are produced by Hass grafts onto more heartier root stock varieties.
Really? Mind dropping some keywords+links to go down that rabbit hole?
It's not a new phenomena so there's not much discussion around it. Certain plants grow 'true from seed', others require grafts to obtain the same result.
Many fruits cannot be grown the same from the seeds they produce, as well as many ornamental plants like cherry blossoms, rose bushes etc. The only way to propagate these is to take cuttings and/or graft the plant. Plants which produce sexually can't produce seeds that will result in the same fruit due to obtaining half their genetic information from another parent plant.
The fun fact is that every single apple, cherry, orange etc tree of a specific cultivar are genetic clones of one another!
Discussion on the what, why and how of seed vs grafted fruit
AskScience discussion on why some plants can be true to seed and not others.
Wonderful!
Thanks!
IMO you should get in contact with your nearest college/university botany program, or local government agricultural office. They might be able to give you some more definitive answers, offer you advice on how best to further develop the variety, and may even want a sample for themselves to test if it is indeed a totally new mutation. Botany students live for things like this. :)
Those peppers look fascinating! How's the flavor, heat level, and productivity? Peppers pollinate promiscuously and mutate easily - their gene pool hasn't been as heavily selected as most commercial crops. There's recent evidence that agricultural selection may lead to accumulation of more deleterious traits, so I'd be really curious about how those peppers perform.
It's pretty common for seed companies to get interesting stock from backyard hobbyist plant breeders. But you'll want to save seeds from a few generations to verify that the flower-petal trait is stable. You'll also need to isolate your plants from other sources of pepper pollen. It's a bit of a struggle to ensure isolation by distance alone, so the strategy to get a pure pepper variety is to tent the plants and hand-pollinate. Check out Seed Savers Exchange, and you may be able to share your seeds with others who can help!
The peppers from last year didn't taste that spectacular. A bit spicy (jalapeno-ish), waxy, slightly bitter with a hint of sweetness. Almost like a spicy green paprika. But my growth climate aren't ideal for peppers.
Not great, not terrible. :)
Two of the gen 2 plants was grown in a hydroponics system away from my other plants. It only took 3 months from seeds until they started to get peppers.
Black ouch-ids
These look magical and I hope you succeed with making them available at a store near me because want.
I did this with some Jalapeños last year, which I thought were heirlooms but obviously were hybrids. The seeds produced a waxy pepper that resembles a Jalapeño in shape, size, and thickness, but is yellow like a banana pepper, and then slowly ripens to orange - though not as bright an orange as habanero.
Still not sure what sort of pepper the Jalapeños were hybridized with. Or perhaps they hybridized with my habaneros last year? Seems more likely that they were hybrid from the start though.
What you're doing is good already. I think all I'd add, is you could try to isolate that plant a bit and see whether it retains these characteristics. I used to grow peppers, and my folks took over the garden after I left, so they've continued for many years. We saved seeds each generation, and would sometimes "go back" when the plants started to develop in directions we didn't want. That worked out pretty well and allowed us to have some consistency/control over what got produced. Didn't stop the plants from managing some hybridization, so we've allowed some to continue as they were and just track how they continue to develop.
Edit: I was showing these to my dad (he maintains our garden these days), and we landed on calling them "xenoneros" lol