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chinense Capsicum migration and things like the Ghost Pepper

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

I am trying to get a handle on the term 'native' when it comes to peppers.  Gonna use Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper as an example, but really talking about all Capsicum chinense.  Please check me on this because I am not entirely sure I got it right.
 
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion is South American (New World).  it is Capsicum chinense.  Bhut Jolokia / Ghost pepper and many of the other super hots from EurAsia (is that still a word?) contain Capsicum chinense dna.

The British Empire was really fond of taking seeds from one location and raising them in another.  So going to assume their intentional activity moved Capsicum chinense to the area around India.

Snap forward hundreds of years, the Ghost pepper and other peppers with dna from Capsicum chinense are now deeply entrenched in the culture surrounding Nagaland / India.  Although Ghost Pepper has been cultivated there for some time, many of the other super hots from the area seem not to have been a part of any intentional commercial effort.

So the question is, how did Ghost pepper and some of the others come into existence?  Was it intentional with crossing and selective breeding or could some of them be the result of Capsicum chinense escaping captivity and crossing on its own or maybe even adapting to the new environment?
 
 
 
Moruga - On the pangia theory, thinking if the dna had been spread prior to humanity nobody would have recorded capsicum as a new world discovery.  On the other hand, I understand cocaine has been found in Egyptian tombs.  Ah, but I read that on the internet where i met my date the French model.
 
Capsicum is indigenous (in SA we use that term instead of "native") to South America and southern North America.  Anywhere else it is considered introduced.  However, being a food crop it has been spread all over the world.  In each of its new centers of introduction, cultivars (cultivated variety)have been derived - primarily to suit their needs of the growers.  The range of cultivars can more than likely be attributed to the variety of germplasm introduced (I say likely because I do not know of any research that has tested this proposed correlation but it does seem reasonable). 
 
From what I read ages ago (an article in Fiery Foods) C. chinense was introduced to India via a British Governor who was transferred from Trinidad to India.  He apparently planted a botanical garden of sorts there.  If you look at the CARDI version of a Scorpion and compare it to a Bhut Jolokia, and then compare an original 7 Pot and compare it to a Naga Morich you are going be struck by an apparent co-incidence.  They are very similar.  So much so that you would be quite hard-pressed with all 4 in hand and tell the difference reliably without knowing the origin.  They are all of the same origin.  Whereas in Nagaland they selected for certain characteristics, in Trinidad they selected for others.  The Bhut is somewhat different in that somewhere along the line it had an introduction of C. frutescens genes.  This does not appear to be a sustained event i.e. a continued introduction with the hope of breeding something but rather a once-off.  How?  I surmise that the Naga is one of the parents.  How this came about is subject to speculation.  Either it happened in Nagaland and a fruit was transported elsewhere or it happened where a pure Naga was transported to and the subsequent hybrid was better suited to the growing conditions that a pure Naga and so the Bhut became a cultivar selected by the community because it satisfied their needs.
 
One can never say a chili is "native" to anywhere other than the Americas.  A cultivar can be said to have originated somewhere.  One often reads how a certain thing is from here or there - Thai chili, Fatalii etc.  It give the impression that the cultivar is a species in it's own right and it is indigenous (native) to that place.  It is a cultivar that was selected and retained from germplasm imported from the Americas (at some stage: 10,20,100 etc years ago or thereabouts).  Some of these have become entrenched in the culture of that locus of introduction: Hungarian paprika, Thai chili, Indian chili, Naga chili initiation, etc etc etc.
 
And that is the beauty of Capsicum: it evolved a chemical defence to inhibit mammals from eating it and destroying its seeds; the same chemical that has has led to us craving it and spreading it around the world.
 
RobStar, do you recall the British guys name?  Using Ghost Pepper as an example because it is C. chinense and C. frutescens cross, would love to figure out if someone intentionally crossed or if it was a happy accident.  Either way, it amazes me that a relatively recent import entrenched itself so deep into the culture in the Nagaland area.

Not trying to belittle an entire religion.  They are mostly Baptists now.  But the whole giant snake deity connected to the super hot peppers n head hunting thing is mind boggling.  More so since the peppers could not have existed as long as the mythology of the peppers claims they have.
 
 
And now it gets interesting.  I read another paper by Bosland, Coon and Reeves ("Trinidad Moruga Scorpion’ Pepper is the World’s Hottest Measured Chile Pepper at More Than Two Million Scoville Heat Units") and I quote directly:
 
Thus, from the genetic similarity index values, it can be concluded that ‘Bhut Jolokia’ is not a ‘Trinidad Scorpion’ variety grown in India or that ‘Trinidad Scorpion’ is a parent of ‘Bhut Jolokia’. Instead, they appear to be unique varieties. Furthermore, none of the pepper varieties from Trinidad and Tobago are likely to be the parent
of ‘Bhut Jolokia’.
 
I know this is a bit of a digress from the original intention of the post.  However it does pose a few caveats:
 
1) Given that the Bhut is the product of hybrid introgression, it's position on the tree would be closer to annuum than the chinense clade. 
 
2) The sample size is very small
 
3) Are the enities sampled actually what they purport to be?  I would like to see the genetic analysis carried out with genuine ideotypes of the named cultivars.  I am still a bit iffy about the Moruga Scorpion.  I would like to see a genuine analysis done between it and the BrainStrain.  Also given how far off (on the cladogram in the paper) it is compared to the CARDI Trinidad Scorpion (which looks more like a Bhut than the Trinidad Scorpion we are all familiar with) what is it's origin?  Where does it fit into the picture of Trinidad landraces?  It is as far from the Jonah as an orange habanero is.  Surely this is worth testing?
 
OK gotta go to work.  Will continue this later.
 
RobStar, you probably know this, but in 1776 a botanist created the Capsicum chinense title because he mistakenly thought the thing came from China.  I am sure the whole Christopher Columbus was trying to circumnavigate the globe story had something to do with it.  A couple years ago, someone was hawking Carolina Reaper seeds when he claimed the dna was so pure it could be traced all the way back to China.  So nearly two and a half centuries after the mistake concerning the origin of what we now call Capsicum chinense was made we still have people who think the thing came from China.
 
The phenomenon is not just in botany.  I was speaking to a zoologist a decade or so back when I learned American rabbits are marsupials.  I thought no, rabbits are rodents.  After all, marsupials have pouches for their young.  She explained that the old way of classifying things was based on the looks of a thing.  The new way is via DNA.

I submit that what you are observing is likely a function of the change between the old way of classifying a thing by its physical attributes and the new way via dna.  Thoughts?

On a lighter note, right before reading your comment I had read a paper on capsicum migration via bird droppings.  I then read your comment, started hearing someone bang coconuts together, and imagined a swallow flying from South America to India before pooping out seeds.  Now my brain is stuck wondering what the average air speed velocity of a swallow is, how long it would take it to fly that distance, and how fast it poops out seeds.

If nobody gets this joke, everyone will think I am insane.  If you get it, ask me the follow up question about the two type of swallows. We will drive everyone else insane.
 
I get the joke - it's a brilliant scene from "The search for the Holy Grail" - one of many!  My personal favourites are The Knights of Nee and the Aspergillus hand-grenade scene!
 
OK back to DNA etc.  Wrt systematics, DNA is proving very interesting - it cannot necessarily identify new species (because we don't have the time, money and generally capability to understand that level yet) but it does show us a more realistic phylogeny - many families and even genera were based on artificial constructs that bore the legacy of one person's paradigms - there is hardly consistency between taxonomists on the characters that constitute worthiness when evaluating phylogeny.  Everybody has their own idea.  The problem with morphology is that completely different things have evolved the same thing independently (in terms of time, space and environmental cues).  It doesn't necessarily demonstrate a relationship. Think whales, seals and manatees.
 
DNA can be used to show how similar:dissimilar entities are to one another.  But here again the quirks of the taxonomists come into play:  two entities are very similar gentically, even look the same, yet they occupy different niches in different ecosystems of different biogeography.  They are considered separate ecological units and therefore separate taxonomic units.  They cannot interbreed (naturally) and therefore in the concept of a species they are not one entity. **hoping someone brings C. frutescens into this**
 
ajdrew said:
RobStar, you probably know this, but in 1776 a botanist created the Capsicum chinense title because he mistakenly thought the thing came from China.  I am sure the whole Christopher Columbus was trying to circumnavigate the globe story had something to do with it.  A couple years ago, someone was hawking Carolina Reaper seeds when he claimed the dna was so pure it could be traced all the way back to China.  So nearly two and a half centuries after the mistake concerning the origin of what we now call Capsicum chinense was made we still have people who think the thing came from China.
 
The phenomenon is not just in botany.  I was speaking to a zoologist a decade or so back when I learned American rabbits are marsupials.  I thought no, rabbits are rodents.  After all, marsupials have pouches for their young.  She explained that the old way of classifying things was based on the looks of a thing.  The new way is via DNA.

I submit that what you are observing is likely a function of the change between the old way of classifying a thing by its physical attributes and the new way via dna.  Thoughts?

On a lighter note, right before reading your comment I had read a paper on capsicum migration via bird droppings.  I then read your comment, started hearing someone bang coconuts together, and imagined a swallow flying from South America to India before pooping out seeds.  Now my brain is stuck wondering what the average air speed velocity of a swallow is, how long it would take it to fly that distance, and how fast it poops out seeds.

If nobody gets this joke, everyone will think I am insane.  If you get it, ask me the follow up question about the two type of swallows. We will drive everyone else insane.
 
 
 
Click to expand...
 
 
Actually rabbits aren't rodents either but that's neither here nor there. Good thread.
 
ajdrew said:
... I had read a paper on capsicum migration via bird droppings.  I then read your comment... and imagined a swallow flying from South America to India before pooping out seeds.  Now my brain is stuck wondering what the average air speed velocity of a swallow is, how long it would take it to fly that distance, and how fast it poops out seeds.
Click to expand...
When i was trying to picture what influences a bird's transport of seeds would have on a pepper, where specimens were setting fruit near the limit of their growing range, i used a local tree species, Arbutus menziesii, as a model/analog for peppers.

We're at the northern limit of this species' range -- about 50°N. Latitude on Vancouver Island. The fruits are bright (orange) colored, about 0.5cm (1/4 inch) in diameter, and about as bird-friendly as wild Capsicum fruit. In other words, you could say their progeny fly on the same airline, on a similar airport schedule, as a pepperseed. The air fare is the same price (a gram or two of sugary fruit is the fuel/delivery cost), and Arbutus berries use tannins as a selective deterrent to mammals, whereas Capsicums use capsaicinoids.

My Arbutus model for Capsicum seed dispersal was an attempt to determine the likelihood of a Capsicum chinense strain occurring that would set fruit in a climate like mine: the Andes's terrain makes a hash of USDA maps' zonings, and a bird can traverse a climate zone in a kilometer of flight path (by flying straight up- or down-slope of a mountain). I felt like i was using a single-axis scalar unit to measure a 3D plenum... because i was, pretty much....

I don't think any instance of a bird eating a berry is going to cause Arbutus seed to be deposited very far north of a tree in fruit (for one thing, i'd have to postulate a bird species migrating north while fruit is ripe -- that's in late summer...). At a guess, i'd say less than 30 miles if the bird went in a straight line. Probably less than 10 miles, since the bird is mostly travelling to forage berries, and the berries must be digested as fuel to further the bird's travel distance.

In any climate (in this case, in India) where peppers can be dispersed by birds, establish plants long enough to flower in the wild, and cross-pollinate with other domestic field-grown peppers, it's easy to picture a bhut jolokia variety being "created" by accidental cross-breeding.
I'm not sure where Capsicum frutescens enters into this picture, Robstar, but what you've stated so far is very intriguing, and of interest to my own (admittedly haphazard) line of research. Mankind and birds are the 2 main vectors of seeds for the Capsicum genus, and i can't quite connect the dots between the 2 vectors for a better idea of what happened to create the bhut jolokia.
 
Bird distributed seed - generally by fruit-eating (frugivorous) birds is actually a relatively short dispersal method if one considers the distance a bird can cover in a day.  The truth is most seeds cannot endure the digestive process.  Whilst granivorous (seed-eating) birds include some gravel or other abrasive material in their intake and also have a crop (where the softening of the seed takes place) and are predisposed to digesting seeds, frugivorous birds don't.  They eat fruit for the fruit pulp not the seeds therein.
 
Research on frugivorous birds here in RSA has shown that the average retention time of the seeds in the brid is two minutes.  Then it regurgitates the seed.  This is done from a perch site.  Generally bird-dispersed plants are found under trees and large shrubs or around the edges of bush clumps.  Basically anywhere a bird will perch and jettison the unecessary bulk that is the seed.
 
If you look at how the tepin often grows in the wild - in the light shade of larger shrubs, you will see how this dispersal mechanism works.  I have found that those hard-seeded wild forms (such as tepin) germinate way better when they are clumped together in a pot - 5 or more seeds sown in one hole.  Similar to a pile of bird vomit landing on the soil.
 
So instead of the 1000's of km dispersal we are instead looking at a few 100m to a km (depending on vegetation density and height).  If they were dispersed over long distance it would be by increments of the above distances and we would encounter founder populations all the way along the route. 
 
Interestingly, as mikeg noted, birds are not receptive to capsaicin.  Mammals are and thus the chemical evolved to deter us with crushing teeth and very effective digestive tracts from eating them. But we have endorphins.  And capsaicin and endorphins........hmmmm hand in glove (sorry listening to The Smiths whilst typing this).
 
mikeg the frutescens conundrum is as follows:  the Bhut Jolokia is an introgressive hybrid between chinense and frutescens, an evnet that was most likely a once off and a long time (or more correctly, many generations) ago.  As I posted above:
 
DNA can be used to show how similar:dissimilar entities are to one another.  But here again the quirks of the taxonomists come into play:  two entities are very similar gentically, even look the same, yet they occupy different niches in different ecosystems of different biogeography.  They are considered separate ecological units and therefore separate taxonomic units.  They cannot interbreed (naturally) and therefore in the concept of a species they are not one entity. **hoping someone brings C. frutescens into this**
 
The fact that chinense and frutescens have crossed surely ( ;) ) shows there is a breakdown of the barrier that maintains them as separate species.  This implies two things:  (1) they are the same thing or (2) they are diverging but have naturally been geographically or ecologically (habitat, niche) separated and so never interbred.  The separation between the two is the presence of a constriction on the annulus when the fruits are ripe (prsence = chinense).  Hardly a red flag when one considers the range of character states in other taxa.
 
BUT: other taxa will hybridise and produce viable offspring.  So reproductive exclusivity alone does not necessarily equate to a species.  It is the sum of characters that will show us the apparent distance between two apparent species.  And these characters must show specialisation or the lack thereof - i.e. basal state or derived (evolved).  If you look at annuum - which hybridises readily with chinense, there are sufficient charaters which separate it out from chinense - the flowers, the number of flowers per node.  They are close and recently derived from a common ancestor.  However there is enough to show they are not the same thing.
 
OK they gonna fumigate here now (damn Argentine and white-foot ants).  I'm off for an early start to the weekend.  We can continue this discussion on Monday
 
Fascinating! I had no idea that two minutes's retention time in a bird was normal... it seems they take less time to regurgitate, after ingesting a pepper, than some people in the more vulgar pepper-eating stunts on Youtube!

RobStar said:
Research on frugivorous birds here in RSA has shown that the average retention time of the seeds in the brid is two minutes.  Then it regurgitates the seed.  This is done from a perch site.  Generally bird-dispersed plants are found under trees and large shrubs or around the edges of bush clumps. Basically anywhere a bird will perch and jettison the unecessary bulk.
Click to expand...
I assume that a wild Capsicum's ecological niche in the Amazon river basin is one whereat a fallen tree has cleared a large patch of ground for a few years, and that frugivorous birds which forage these clearings for fruit manage to vomit some seeds in new locations and (less often) in entirely new clearings.Thus, amazonian birds manage to deposit some seeds in sunlit clearings, just as their counterparts in Mexico and the southwestern USA manage to deposit tepin seeds in an optimal amount of shade.
This would also account for the fact that most peppers, though perennial, are short-lived perennials, as these jungle clearings tend to get filled with sapling trees fairly quickly. Tepins and Capsicum pubescens would be longer-lived as a direct result of an environment which encourages selection for longevity. (C. pubescens' environment has been closely tied with human cultivation, but that's a niche that is very selective indeed!)

I have MANY questions, but i'll have to do a bit of research, simply to ask meaningful and informed questions.
Thanks, RobStar. This has been quite informative!
 
This is becoming the coolest thread.

OK, so no chance a bird (be it African or European) could have migrated chinense from the New World to India.  Must have been humanity, but who and when?  Credit goes to the Brits, but the lore in and around Nagaland has included the things since before the Brits.  Or did they?  I wonder if maybe the peppers of Nagaland mythology might have been lacking the chinense dna, made it into their legends, and then were transformed by escaping chinense dna.

Mikeg, not being able to connect the dots is what makes it so damned fun.  Chinense in the pre British mythology in and around Nagaland is as fun as the whole tobacco and cocaine in Ancient Egypt paradox. 
 
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