Pepper fruits changing color from year to year

I planted an Aji Oro, a rocoto, in a bucket last year and it made yellow almost orangish fruits that were really flavorful and extremely juicy. This year it's larger and red. Very red. It's a 2 year old plant that got frozen when the greenhouse failed and returned from the dead. The same happened to a lot and despite me planning a new 50 plant cycle I decided anything that survived the frost killing was worthy to live again this year. I'm curious if anyone has ever seen that before. I can pretty much promise that I never moved the bucket because I had an injury that kept me from walking for nearly a year that began right about now last year. It's sitting in exactly the same spot it was last year so I'm certain the roots go into the ground.
 
Any thoughts?

Maybe the yellowish orange pods were not fully ripe on the one year old plant that is now mature and capable of bringing more fruit to full ripeness earlier in the season.
Just a guess.
 
The plants first year is spent growing a substantial root system a main structural support system as well as trying to produce fruit. a second season or better plant already has most of this or a great head start. more energy can go toward fruit production.

Are you positive it is the same plant, and not a volunteer seed?

Gorizza said:

Are you positive it is the same plant, and not a volunteer seed?

Click to expand...

 

Its a 2 year old plant.

I've had a rocoto throw two different colored pods when ripe before in the same season, at the same time. I've kept this same plant alive for years, and the pods are always red, but 2 years ago it was throwing orange and red. IDK the cause, but the pods were the same size, flavor, amd heat level. I gave out seeds of the abnormal orange pods to some friends, and their rocoto plants grew red pods.


I grew several Peru Bitdumi rocoto plants last year, which are normally red, and one of the plants put off yellow pods, while the rest were the rest of the plants were red.


It is definitely weird for a plant to change ripe colored pods year over year, though....

I am now 100% sure it is the same plant. You can see where I pruned the main stem from last year about a half inch above the soil and then two thick main stems coming off right beneath the soil level. It is next to the other Aji Oro I grew last year and that one is just as bright orange as it was. It tasted like the Aji Oro from last year despite being red. I have a fruit from both so I'll do a side by side taste comparison tomorrow I guess.
 
I had a foot injury that made it so I couldn't walk right for about 8 months and I was unable to really move the buckets around and so I had left the rocotos where they were and just filled the areas around them. When the greenhouse failed (the smell of chlorophyll and death was strong that day) I eventually got around to taking stuff out but then my foot flared up again so I just grabbed what I had to to make a walking space and left it as it was for a few months. I came back later and saw a bunch of stuff had sprouted so I started pruning the dead stuff and ended up with about 15 plants that survived (including my now 3 year old hot lemon AND my 40 year old rubber tree, it's older than me).

So I'm pretty convinced that it's the same plant making now red fruit.

In the picture are the 3 that survived from last year. The left one which has an orange fruit on it and the middle one are Aji Oro. The middle one is the one that went from orange to bright red. The white bucket is a costa rican red and it's ALREADY larger than it got last year. The bottom 2 are 2 Aji Oro's I planted from seeds I kept last year. There's another Costa Rican Red on that row not pictured.