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hybrid Crosses; a question for the master growers.

As the title says, I have a question for the expert taxonomists among the forum denizens.
 
If two different peppers (but both C. Chinense) cross-pollinate, is it possible the combined traits (without going into detail about dominate and recessive genes) manifest in the pod created, or must one grow out the seeds from that pod to see the effects of the cross-pollination?
 
Thanks in advance.
 
I got into a discussion about this with someone on Facebook recently.
They posted pics of pods saying the pic was evidence of the immediate cross. They were claiming that the pods could show some of the traits right away. When I asked about where they learned this/got their info, it was from other well known growers (but un named).
I still don't believe it.
 
I have a friend that said he crossed a bhut with lettuce and got spicy lettuce that year. I let him run with it for a month or so til I pointed out his cross was not from growing them close, it was from cutting then with the same knife. Grow the seeds.
 
alkhall said:
As the title says, I have a question for the expert taxonomists among the forum denizens.
 
If two different peppers (but both C. Chinense) cross-pollinate, is it possible the combined traits (without going into detail about dominate and recessive genes) manifest in the pod created, or must one grow out the seeds from that pod to see the effects of the cross-pollination?
 
Thanks in advance.
Not calling myself a master grower, but here is my answer anyway...
You really cannot leave out the dominant/recessive apsect, since this knowledge is the key to figure out in advance what traits will be expressed in the pods on the F1-plant. Say, you cross a stabile variety with yellow fruit with a stabile, red fruited one. Since we know that red fruit color gene is dominant over yellow, the F1-pod will be red. When growing out the F2-generation, according to Mendel's Rules of Inheritance (http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm), statistically 3 out of four plants will be red, and 1 out of 4 will be yellow. This is a qualitative gene, but then there are also quantitative genes such as heat/hotness, which is not a simple question about yes/no (red/yellow), but will show a lot of results, no two plants will have exactly the same amount of heat, but varying degrees of it. Still we know that heat is dominant over non-pungency, which I am experiencing this year in some crosses between a sweet pepper and a hot pepper, the result is a hot pepper. Next year I will be searching for non-pungent plants in the F2-generation. A list of genes here: http://www.chilepepperinstitute.org/content/files/Genes%20of%20Capsicum(1).pdf
 
How about orange color in F2? Got a cross in (I assume) F1 generation that appeared red. Not even one of it's seedlings is red, most are orange and one will most likely become yellow when ripe. How can dominant gene perish that way? I can only think about sterility of seedlings with that 'Red color' dominant gene for whatever the reason might be.
 
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