Bhut Bih or Naga?

[smariotti]

The first pepper I tried to grow was a Bhut Jolokia. Ordered it from Hirt's Gardens and it got too hot over the weekend (I'm growing at work) and dried out and died.

I tried to re-order but they were out of Bhut Jolokias, so I gotta Naga Morich (two actually) instead and have been growing those at work. Both are doing great.

Now, here's the thing I'm confused about. According to wikipedia and the casual observer, Bhut Jolokia, Bih Jolokia, and Naga Morich are just different names for the same pepper. The super hot world record holder pepper from Assam India. In India they call it the "Bhut Jolokia" or "Bih Jolokia" and in Bangladesh they call it the "Naga Morich." Or so it goes.

I notice that people more illuminated in the ways of peppers talk about these names as three distinct varieties of peppers.

So this is my question: What's the difference? Originating region? Plant height? Fruit size? Hotness? Taste?

I know that the Dorset Naga is a variety that was developed in the UK from the original Indian pepper, and understand why this one is called out separately from the others. Can someone more in the know than myself shed a little light on this for us budding (heh!) pepper heads?

 

[imaguitargod]

Slight fruit shape difference. Same taste and heat level from my experience.

 

[LGHT]

Good question I wondered that myself. Another question is how different is the chocolate Bhut Jolokia? Just color or taste?

 

[lee]

The name is pronounced different in some regions in India, but it's the same pepper.

Of course the heat of a peppers is influenced by ambient conditions, so heat can vary in different locations

 

[POTAWIE]

I believe they're all the same pepper genetically but some have adapted to different growing regions which creates some differences

 

[Nova]

They are all different. It's hard to tell about the heat difference but i can tell you that they look, smell, taste and burn differntly.

Only this weekend gone did i have my head planted deep inside some big tupperware containers smelling the difference of the 4 kinds.

THEY ARE MOST DEFINANTLY DIFFERENT. Potowie makes a good point as most everything is a product of it's environment.

 

[chilliman]

I believe they're all the same pepper genetically but some have adapted to different growing regions which creates some differences

They are all different. It's hard to tell about the heat difference but i can tell you that they look, smell, taste and burn differntly.

Only this weekend gone did i have my head planted deep inside some big tupperware containers smelling the difference of the 4 kinds.

THEY ARE MOST DEFINANTLY DIFFERENT. Potowie makes a good point as most everything is a product of it's environment.

As I also stuck my head in same buckets ... totally agree, they all smell acutely different when dried- with my favourite being the BIH .. Though they all smell like super-hot goodness.... The Bih has a really sweet meaty smell with the Bhut, it smells sweet & fruity & with a sweaty feet undertone. IMO

CM

POST 666

 

[Pepper Ridge Farm]

I have only grown the Naga Morich and Bhut Jolokia so far but I am in the camp that they have evolved into distinct peppers that are very similiar genetically. The Bhut was much larger pepper for me than the naga. I am growing the Bih this year along side the other two from last year and the Bih looks more pure genetics than I had last year. I say this just on the leaf shape of a true Jolokia is different than most pepper plants. Longer thinner and greener leaves than other chinense I have noticed. The Dorset and Morich are closer genetically and the Bhut and Bih are the same. My take.

 

[patrick]

Now you know why everyone is pretty much confused. A couple say they're the same pepper, a couple say they're all different. I guess the real answer is who you talk to. Frustrating for sure.

I guess the only real way to find out is get some pure seed, grow all of them and sit down with one of each, a gallon or two of milk and have at it.

 

[POTAWIE]

Well in my opinion they are all the same pepper, and they are all different. They all appear to be C. chinense with some C. frutescens so if this were true it would certainly suggest that they are all the same genetically and have adapted differently in different areas

 

[POTAWIE]

Another point worth mentioning is that the Dorset was not "developed", it was only selectively bred so it is the same genetically as well

 

[smariotti]

Another point worth mentioning is that the Dorset was not "developed", it was only selectively bred so it is the same genetically as well

They can't be the same genetically if they're selectively bred, selective breeding changes the genetics.

Well in my opinion they are all the same pepper, and they are all different. They all appear to be C. chinense with some C. frutescens so if this were true it would certainly suggest that they are all the same genetically and have adapted differently in different areas

Adapted implies changes to genetics, I guess I don't understand what you're saying as it seems you're contradicting yourself with "they are all the same pepper" and "they are all different."

THEY ARE MOST DEFINANTLY DIFFERENT. Potowie makes a good point as most everything is a product of it's environment.

A product of the environment implies adaptations to different locations over successive generations, implying a change in seed over the years.

What I'm hearing is that they probably all started as some strain of C. Chinense hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but as people liked them and took them from place to place (and birds carried the seeds from place to place) they spread throughout the region and diverged from the original strain a bit based on area.

Bhut and Bih Jolokia are Hindi (?) names for the pepper. In Bangladesh, the similar pepper they have there is called the Naga Morich in Bengali, and the grower in England took one of these Naga Morich and bred a bunch of generations selecting for certain characteristics to create Dorset Naga?

That implies four lines, all related to the C. chinense that's probably distant cousin to the Habaneros at some point long ago?

Bhut Jolokia - long slender leaves, tall, big meaty peppers
Bih Jolokia - similar to Bhut, smells more like feet (?)
Naga Morich - wider leaves, smaller fruit
Dorset Naga - smaller plants, faster yield

Is that a fair assessment?

 

[AlabamaJack]

so what happens when all these peppers meet in the middle?

by that I mean I am growing all of these in the same area of my yard plus the "Naga Jolokia" I got in Key West last summer...

no one has said it so far, but isn't there some talk about the difference in pods per node produced by the different ones?

right now, the bihs, and naga morich have pods on, as do some of the dorsets and the bhuts are not far behind...I have not even transplanted the "naga jolokias" to 5 gallon containers yet...

this is going to be a great comparison year for me...hope you gents don't get bored with my findings...

 

[POTAWIE]

They can't be the same genetically if they're selectively bred, selective breeding changes the genetics.

Selectively bred just means that they are "bred" by selecting pods for seed which have desired qualities, but they have not been hybridized.
As far as I know they tried to get a PVP(plant variety protection) for the Dorset Naga but they couldn't since they did no breeding only selective "breeding" so there was no change in the genetics

 

[PatchenPepperMan]

You can get a change in genetics without hybridization between distinct varieties. For that matter, a plant can pollinate itself and the offspring will still be genetically different (similar, probably, but not a clone) due to the effects of meiosis and fertilization, along with crossing over and recombination.

The details get a bit technical, but remember that in general a plant has two copies of each gene, one on each of a paired set of chomosomes. (Actually, some genes have multiple copies on a single chomosome, so a plant has more than two copies of the gene). In order to make the sperm found in pollen or the eggs found in the ovules, the chromosome number is halved (meiosis), taking one chromosome from each set, more or less at random.

Now, suppose the plant had version A of a gene on one of its paired chromosomes and version a on the other. Thus its genetics could be represented as Aa. But it could happen that it self-pollinates with a pollen grain that got the A copy, onto an ovule that also got the A copy. Thus the offspring will be AA (after the sperm and egg merge in fertilization), genetically different. (Just as easily, the offspring could be aa, as well as of course Aa like the parent).

That example assumes chromosomes stay intact, so all the genes on a chromosome travel together and so we are a little limited in terms of how much unique reshuffling we can do by just moving chromosomes around. In fact, while they are paired up during meiosis, chromosomes can swap analogous pieces with each other (crossing over), allowing recombination even between genes on the same chromosome.

Now, the more often a plant has identical copies of a gene on both chromosomes (called being homozygous), the less potential there is for genetic reshuffling. Plants that breed true tend to be homozygous at a lot of locations, whereas what we most commonly refer to as "hybrids" are heterozygous at a lot of locations (and thus tricky to breed true from seed, unless you instead cross the two parent varieties each time you want to get seeds). But there's always going to be some degree of heterozygosity, and that's where you can get genetic change even without crossing "distinct" varieties.

 

[POTAWIE]

Good point, I should have said: no new genetic have been introduced, instead of "no change in genetics"

 

[Josh]

PatchenPepperMan,
First off welcome to the forum. Being that you seem fairly knowledgeable on the specifics of pepper reproduction, I was wondering if you had anything to add on what traits tend to be dominant or recessive?
Thanks,
Josh

 

[PatchenPepperMan]

PatchenPepperMan,
First off welcome to the forum. Being that you seem fairly knowledgeable on the specifics of pepper reproduction, I was wondering if you had anything to add on what traits tend to be dominant or recessive?
Thanks,
Josh

I don't really know much about the genetics of peppers specifically.

However, one way that dominant vs. recessive traits may be important in something like the transition from a Bhut jolokia to Naga Dorsett may be as follows:

It's rather hard to eliminate recessive genes from a population, because they are "hidden" in heterozygotes. This is especially true in populations where there is a lot of outcrossing (here I mean outcrossing as in between different individual plants, but within a variety) - the rarer the recessive allele gets, the more often you'll find it in heterozygotes as opposed to homozygotes, so it's really hard to remove those individuals from the population or prevent them from breeding.

On the other hand, if you want to select FOR a recessive allele, it's easy. Only the homozygous recessive plants will display the trait you want, so if you only allow the plants with the desirable trait to reproduce, within one generation you can get a population where everyone is homozygous recessive.

So I'm GUESSING the transition from Bhut jolokia to Naga Dorsett may have gone something like this:

There is probably one or more trait for which there is a dominant allele that leads to a "better" pepper in the Indian environment, and a recessive allele which is masked in heterozygotes but leads to a "better" plant in England and a "worse" plant in India when in a homozygote. Such alleles could persist at low frequency in India for the reasons above. Once a population was started in England, the initially rare homozygous recessive plants would be most of the "better" plants whose pods were harvested for the next generation, and pretty quickly you'd have a locally adapted population.

 

[Philipperv]

They can't be the same genetically if they're selectively bred, selective breeding changes the genetics.



Adapted implies changes to genetics, I guess I don't understand what you're saying as it seems you're contradicting yourself with "they are all the same pepper" and "they are all different."



A product of the environment implies adaptations to different locations over successive generations, implying a change in seed over the years.

What I'm hearing is that they probably all started as some strain of C. Chinense hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but as people liked them and took them from place to place (and birds carried the seeds from place to place) they spread throughout the region and diverged from the original strain a bit based on area.

Bhut and Bih Jolokia are Hindi (?) names for the pepper. In Bangladesh, the similar pepper they have there is called the Naga Morich in Bengali, and the grower in England took one of these Naga Morich and bred a bunch of generations selecting for certain characteristics to create Dorset Naga?

That implies four lines, all related to the C. chinense that's probably distant cousin to the Habaneros at some point long ago?

Bhut Jolokia - long slender leaves, tall, big meaty peppers
Bih Jolokia - similar to Bhut, smells more like feet (?)
Naga Morich - wider leaves, smaller fruit
Dorset Naga - smaller plants, faster yield

Is that a fair assessment?

Sounds to me like you just answered your own question.

 

[bigt]

I'm growing Bhut, Bih and Dorset this year and so far, they all look different. As Cappy said above, the Bih (seeds from THSC) appears to have longer thinner leaves. My Bhut has the widest leaves so far, almost like a Chocolate Hab. Time will tell. Good thread.