Wondering if anyone else has experienced chocolate reapers & what your theory is on how they formed. I had one plant turn up from seeds I got from Pepper Joe. It was a scrowney little plant, but I think that is because it had a problem with grubs. Saved the seeds I could and regrew. Horrible germination rate and I think i screwed many up by letting them dry out while away. But what did grow gave me chocolate pods. Saved the seeds and they are about two inches out the ground under lights.
Trying to see if anyone else observed this, I googled the heck out of it. I found one person here in the states that saw the same thing happen. On UK sites I found the seed being sold in seed shops. So trying to figure out where they came from. Here is what this DNA laymen came up with. Please keep in mind the sum total of my knowledge of DNA comes from the explination we got in public school about eye color and fruit flies.
1. Unintentional Cross Breed - Yes, many people grow the same peppers so a few might experience the same unintentional cross breeding. But I put up insect netting before they started to flower and their neighbors were corn. The only brown / chocolate pepper was 100 feet away and under its own netting. Also, if it were an unintentional cross, I would not imagine the seeds growing chocolate again.
2. Recessive Genes - Even if Pepper Joe's seeds are grown in isolation, that usually means that a variety is isolated from others.. not from itself. Peppers are not usually clones, so their genes are different from plant to plant. Yes, self polination is the most likely thing to happen but maybe a bee went from one plant to the next and carried a recessive gene from one plant to another with that recessive gene.
Again, my knowledge about dna is about grade school. I am trying to learn more, but at this point I am at the two brown eyed people can have a blue eyed baby because blue eyes are recessive genes and can be carried by brown eyed people.
Thoughts?
Trying to see if anyone else observed this, I googled the heck out of it. I found one person here in the states that saw the same thing happen. On UK sites I found the seed being sold in seed shops. So trying to figure out where they came from. Here is what this DNA laymen came up with. Please keep in mind the sum total of my knowledge of DNA comes from the explination we got in public school about eye color and fruit flies.
1. Unintentional Cross Breed - Yes, many people grow the same peppers so a few might experience the same unintentional cross breeding. But I put up insect netting before they started to flower and their neighbors were corn. The only brown / chocolate pepper was 100 feet away and under its own netting. Also, if it were an unintentional cross, I would not imagine the seeds growing chocolate again.
2. Recessive Genes - Even if Pepper Joe's seeds are grown in isolation, that usually means that a variety is isolated from others.. not from itself. Peppers are not usually clones, so their genes are different from plant to plant. Yes, self polination is the most likely thing to happen but maybe a bee went from one plant to the next and carried a recessive gene from one plant to another with that recessive gene.
Again, my knowledge about dna is about grade school. I am trying to learn more, but at this point I am at the two brown eyed people can have a blue eyed baby because blue eyes are recessive genes and can be carried by brown eyed people.
Thoughts?