EVALUATION OF ELITE HOT PEPPER VARIETIES - IPMS ...

1. INTRODUCTION
Capsicum has been known since the beginning of civilization in the Western Hemisphere. It
has been a part of the human diet since about 7500 BC (Mac Neish, 1964). Hot pepper is
produced in all the continents except Antarctica, and historically associated with the voyage
of Columbus (Heiser, 1976). Columbus is given credit for introducing hot pepper to Europe,
and subsequently to Africa and Asia. On his first voyage, he encountered a plant whose fruit
mimicked the pungency of the black pepper; Piper nigrum L. Columbus called it red pepper
because the pods were red. The plant was not the black pepper, but an unknown plant that was
later classified as Capsicum. The crop spread rapidly across Europe into India, China, and
Japan. The new spice, unlike most of the solanums from the Western Hemisphere, was
incorporated into the cuisines instantaneously. Probably for the first time, pepper was no
longer a luxury spice only the rich could afford. Since its discovery by Columbus, The crop
has been incorporated into most of the world's cuisines. It has been commercially grown in
the United States, when Spanish colonists planted seeds and grew Chile using irrigation from
the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (DeWitt and Gerlach, 1990).
The genus Capsicum is a member of the Solanaceae family that includes tomato, potato,
tobacco, and petunia. Capsicum was domesticated at least five times by prehistoric peoples in
different parts of South and Middle America. The genus Capsicum consists of approximately
22 wild species and five domesticated species. The five domesticated species include, C.
annum L., C.frutescens L., C. Chinenses., C. baccatum L., and C.pubescens R. (Bosland and
Votava, 2000). On the other hand, capsicum species can be divided in to several groups based
on fruit/pod characteristics ranging in pungency, colour, shape, intended use, flavor, and size
Despite their vast trait differences most cultivars of peppers commercially cultivated in the
world belongs to the species C. annum L. (Smith et al., 1987; Bosland, 1992).
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