PEPPERS
Chilli varieties without limits in all imaginable sizes, shapes and colours – each with its own level of pungency.
Health, wealth and happiness of peppers
– all about growing and consuming peppers
Peppers are native to Mexico, Central and South America and were introduced to Europe by Columbus. They belong to the genus Capsicum which is a member of the Solanaceae family. Peppers are the most widely used spice in the world.
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eppers are a popular warm-season vegetable with many culinary uses and the fruit can contain up to six times as much vitamin C as oranges. Consumers are getting more and more interested in the unique fruit shapes, flavours and colours found within the various segments of both sweet and hot peppers. Peppers require similar growing conditions as tomatoes and perform best in a long, frost-free season. In most cases chillies are easier to grow than blocky peppers and most green blocky peppers are produced in the open field. Some fruit of high quality is also grown in shade-net structures. Growing peppers in plastic tunnels can be advantageous, because tunnels extend the growing season that increases opportunities for colour development. Coloured peppers produced in tunnels will also have a higher percentage of first-grade fruit. The profitability of this crop can be very dependent on value-adding at farm level and “hobbies” can sometimes grow into very successful small businesses.
PRODUCTION CHALLENGES Production challenges on peppers vary from environmental conditions and the presence of insect vectors that cause virus infections, to bacterial and fungal diseases. A few viruses to
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take note of is the Tomato spotted wilt virus, Cucumber mosaic virus, Tobacco mosaic virus and Potato virus Y. Bacterial leaf spot is an important bacterial disease that needs to be noted – new varieties have now got resistance to race 0 to 10. Phytophthora capsici is another disease that can cause severe losses in a short time, from seedlings throughout the lifecycle of the plant. The severity of this disease is strongly related to over-irrigation in fields and can spread through irrigation water. Newer varieties have intermediate resistance to this disease. Fungal diseases like powdery mildew can in a short time cause severe yield loss in pepper and chilli crops, as the disease affects the leaf canopy. It reduces the productivity of the plant, resulting in smaller fruit with thinner wall thickness. In severe cases, the plant canopy can be completely defoliated and the delay in productivity can be as long as 6 to 8 weeks, which in most cases is not profitable. Seed companies are also now developing new varieties with good resistance to powdery mildew with very positive results.
GROWING CONDITIONS AND HARVESTING The production of peppers and chillies are very similar but
VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2021
