Different pepper names?? Different variant?? Same pepper??

[Edaxflamma]

Sorry for the 20 questions but this is something that is pervasive in a lot of hobbyist circles from carnivorous plants to poison dart frogs. In the carnivorous plant circles, we have seen the race for new hybrids in Nepenthes eclipse the continuation of pure species, effectively throttling any hope of continuing breeding programs without recollecting from the wild. There were a few people who specialized in only pure species crosses but between break ins and failing greenhouse heaters in winter, a lot of that genetic material has been lost.
 
I see similar trends in the pepper community where everyone is chasing new hybrids or whatever seed they can get their hands on with seemingly no concern of possible cross pollination or original lineage. Without isolation we run the risk of those original varieties drifting into wildly different directions like your example with the ghost pepper above.
 
So my big question is how do we as hobbyists make better, more informed decisions when selecting our starting material, and what can we do to be more conscientious in our breeding programs to help address some of these issues?

 

[PollenNut]

Grow wilds if you like wilds and value their ability to infuse new genetics through bridge crosses etc.
 
Ask questions of your vendors/hybridizers and compare phenotypes and lineages from one vendor to another before making a purchase... that is a big one. The differences are often glaringly obvious.
 
Understand, that some 'hybridizers' in the pepper community rely on placing their plants close to one another to ensure cross pollination. They then hope to get lucky rather make a cross by hand. While this is fine and good and can result in some unique peppers such as was done with Capsicum 'Wartryx' (M.A.) you will never be completely sure as to what went into that hybrid as bees don't tell many tales.
 
Be the change  you want to see. Provide multiple pictures of the fruits of each of your generations if you wish. Provide pictures of the conception/pollination of  your crosses. All of these things help to build credibility for your hybrid. They provide a link so others can see the evidence for the lineage you suggest your pepper has.
 
Realize that merely telling someone you have 100 generations in on a pepper cross means nothing if you don't also tell people how many seedlings were in each grow out. I recently read an article in here that suggests 128 seedlings per grow out or filial generation. But I'd suggest you take that kind of stuff with a grain of salt. Prove your pepper is stable and true breeding by growing out a batch of 100 over three generations and tell me there was no deviation or show me the deviations seen so people can know what to expect and I'll believe you might be on to something. Everything is relative to the breeders standard and you as the breeder get to decide your own standard.
 
Perhaps your standard is to grow 1 seedling from each generation and that is it. Another hybridizer might grow 1000 seedlings from each generation.
 
Different people, different standards. What is the phenotype you have selected for? Are the vendors getting the same? Are they even trying to keep the phenotype true?
 
 
Or, are they selling pet quality as show quality?
Are the vendors selling pet quality as breeding quality?
Without some personal standard.... whatever it is and without sharing that standard for that cross... what the fruit looks like, what the flower looks like, leaves, etc. Then we don't have much to go on when trying to ensure we as growers or vendors are able to keep to your standard.

 

[Ruid]

People are generally lazy so I'd suggest doing a numbered list of questions one should ask if they're buying seeds or plants. If it gets popular enough and your typical customer asks them, maybe vendors will step their game up.

 

[PollenNut]

People are generally lazy so I'd suggest doing a numbered list of questions one should ask if they're buying seeds or plants. If it gets popular enough and your typical customer asks them, maybe vendors will step their game up.

The number one question you should ask of a new hybrid being offered is obvious, "Who hybridized this chili pepper?"
 
If this question can't be answered for a new pepper, the pepper may be a renamed pepper. Give credit to the hybridizers. It is the least they deserve after chasing down a new stable and true breeding pepper.
 
Number two, what are the parents?
This will lose many vendors as secret, unknown, or bees..... are often the only answer that can be given.
 
The lineage is important. I can help you to chase down possible recessives in a hybrid.
 
Number three.... Has the plant proven itself to be stable and true breeding? 
if not, how many seedlings on average has the grower noticed do not meet the standard the hybridizer named his/her specimen for?
 
It is important that different variations on the phenotype that is acceptable are shown if there is some variation so we know what the standard is.
Pictures of the fruits, flowers, leaves, branching structure will tell you a lot.
 
If your vendor posts pictures of their plants and those plants look sickly then that might also be a warning sign. Needless to say, many vendors with sickly plants won't hazard to show them to you.
 
Be very leery of any statement that the hybridizer is not known when dealing with a new hybrid, not much is known about this brand new hybrid, lineage is secret, etc. We aren't dealing with specimens so old that their origin has been lost in time. We are in the digital age where many records often exist. A lack of one sends warning signs you could be dealing with a renamed specimen, bee pollinated specimen, etc. The very least one would expect to know would be the mom of a cross... unless we hear some convincing story otherwise.
 
And very important, to me at least, are we dealing with an intraspecific hybrid (same species x same species cross)?
 
Or are we being sold an interspecific hybrid (different species are mixed together to form this new hybrid such as Capsicum annuum 'Scarlett's Chili' x Capsicum chinense 'Datil' 
 
Once you have an interspecific hybrid that you know is 50% one species or another it will remain an interspecific hybrid due not only to independent assortment of chromosomes, but also because of chromosome crossover that occurs during meiosis I.

 

[Edaxflamma]

I would have to agree with what Ruid and PollenNut both said but I don't think the vendors or the community are able to answer those questions right now. If you were to try to limit yourself to someone who can answer all those questions, you would never be able to find seed.
 
I think instead we need to start encouraging everyone to start documenting their hobby a bit better so we can actually start applying some of those criteria during our seed selection process.
 
Part 1 of 2

 

[Edaxflamma]

Temporary spreadsheet log for DB input
 
This is a simple log of seed I have received this year. Each seed lot gets its own ID. Once each pepper grows out, it will be given its own PlantID number. So now that plant has a SeedLotID associated with it and an individual PlantID to log morphological characteristics and other relevant data. Once I start breeding, two parent plants each with their own PlantIDs, can be crossed and create a unique CrossID. Seeds generated from a cross will be assigned their own SeedLotID, and the cycle continues. This way we have traceability.
 
I'm currently fleshing out a properly normalized seed tracking database in Access. If I can ever get the time to devote to it I'll share the bones of it with the community. My hope is to also include in-coming and out-going "invoices" so you can also track who you send and receive material from. Other add-ons include tracking soil types, container types, fertilizer applications, germination %, germination rate, transplanting dates, plant yields, fruiting body characteristics, plant characteristics, etc. But because I would ultimately want to share it, I am trying to do without VBA which is making it a bit more difficult. But that's neither here nor there.
 
Long story short, I think we all should strive to collect more data. My guess is that those of us who want to preserve the specific lineages and dig deep with the whole genetics aspect of the hobby, will start to look at supplier credibility in new ways. Like PollenNut said either in this thread or another one on a similar topic, we basically need to be the change we want to see and find a way to set standards. 
 
Part 2 of 2

 

[PollenNut]

Temporary spreadsheet log for DB input
 
This is a simple log of seed I have received this year. Each seed lot gets its own ID. Once each pepper grows out, it will be given its own PlantID number. So now that plant has a SeedLotID associated with it and an individual PlantID to log morphological characteristics and other relevant data. Once I start breeding, two parent plants each with their own PlantIDs, can be crossed and create a unique CrossID. Seeds generated from a cross will be assigned their own SeedLotID, and the cycle continues. This way we have traceability.
 
I'm currently fleshing out a properly normalized seed tracking database in Access. If I can ever get the time to devote to it I'll share the bones of it with the community. My hope is to also include in-coming and out-going "invoices" so you can also track who you send and receive material from. Other add-ons include tracking soil types, container types, fertilizer applications, germination %, germination rate, transplanting dates, plant yields, fruiting body characteristics, plant characteristics, etc. But because I would ultimately want to share it, I am trying to do without VBA which is making it a bit more difficult. But that's neither here nor there.
 
Long story short, I think we all should strive to collect more data. My guess is that those of us who want to preserve the specific lineages and dig deep with the whole genetics aspect of the hobby, will start to look at supplier credibility in new ways. Like PollenNut said either in this thread or another one on a similar topic, we basically need to be the change we want to see and find a way to set standards. 
 
Part 2 of 2

 
 
I love what you have done here and there will be different information that is valuable to some that is  not valuable to others.
 
For instance, what filial generation something is means squat to me without also knowing how many seedlings were in each filial generation and  out of those seedlings how many were grown to maturity?
 
Again, 1 seed could constitute an entire generation. I've seen it mentioned that 128 might be the magic number for each filial generation where we might hope to see some stabilization over 8 magical filial generations.
 
The trouble is, we have this thing called chromosome crossover which is a recombination of actual chromosomes or poker cards and Uno cards if you will if your working with an interspecific cross (cross between different species such as C. chinense and C. baccatum). 
 
What chromosome crossover does is equivalent to taking an Ace of Spades from one deck and putting that spade in the center of a Skip card. 
 
So, thanks to chromosome crossover in meiosis I, you now have cards that did not exist in either deck.
 
Now too confound matters worse those cards/chromosomes are mixed and shuffled through independent assortment each generation and in each seedling differently.
 
This continues to happen in each successive generation so that snippets are added and subtracted and replaced by one card or another from the two decks.
 
What remains the same however is the fact that the mitochondria and the chloroplasts will be from the mom/fruit bearer that was used in the cross.
 
So, order of the cross is extremely important. Which came first! The mom (fruit bearer) is always written first, but don't assume the hybridizer or the vendor nows this. Ask questions.
 
So, we know filial generations really don't tell us the whole story even when all the data about how many filial generations someone has worked with as it could be one seed in each generation or one thousand seed in each generation. We just don't know without asking.
 
But is the filial generation important? Do we need to know what filial generation something is?
 
We do if we are hunting for recessive traits and trying to figure out the probability that they might be in there and how many seedlings we might want to try to grow out to get those recessive traits.
 
But if the information on recessive traits is not shared with us... the filial generation has little meaning unless we ourselves know what recessives a parent used in the original cross was.
 
And given that the f2 is where all that magic happens... we really only need to know if we have an f1 or an f2.
 
What is a true mark of stability and the question very few will answer is how many seedlings are not as they should be?
 
How many seedlings grown out of 100 fail to conform to the hybridizers standard?
 
Some vendors won't even have a clue what the standard or won't care as they brazenly post pictures of C3P0 that are not the original Mustard that was hybridized and brag and boast about how the shape is not even stable  on this newer renamed Jigsaw pepper. In fact, the newer C3P0 is not even hybridized by the original hybridizer which is either Michael Christensen or some person who has not been named.
 
So, when your recording data, take pictures of those deviations so you have a record of different leaf colors, variegation, flower color, fruit color, and shape.
 
When you have something that breeds true and stable we need to know what that true and stable is in relation to.... i.e. how many generations bred true and stable and without deviation and if deviation was seen... show us the acceptable deviations.
 
We need to see representative samples of the dog/pepper in question so when we are sold a Hound as a Siberian Husky we might be able to ask some intelligent questions.
 
I don't really care who my seeds came from as much as I care about does my seed look like the hybridizers standard or does it deviate from that standard.
 
It is always first and foremost... what did the hybridizer intend? 
 
For older specimens, many of those are legend and very well documented by multiple vendors over the years. Much of their history may even be lost.
 
But for new hybrids, those are the ones we have a chance at preserving the history of. We have a chance of preserving who the actual hybridizer was.
 
All of this takes pictures, documentation, and descriptions of as many steps along the way as we can. More pictures = more evidence.
 
But pictures are not enough for me personally, I want to see the purpose for the cross. I want to see traits/genes from both species in the end product or at least at some generation in-between or what proof do I really have? Why make an interspecific hybrid if not to borrow genes/traits from one species to another?
 
Why do we see interspecific hybrids in the pepper world named after a species as if they were discovered in the wild and their interspecific nature was merely conjecture?
 
We know, or we should know, when an interspecific hybrid has shown traits/genes that have borrowed from another species. 
 
The variegated Capsicum chinense dominant looking hybrids you see, from what I have heard, are all interspecific hybrids. If you want to create an interspecific variegated hybrid that looks baccatum or chinense... it still makes sense to borrow those genes from C. annuum that has 6 different recessive genes for variegation.
 
Why aren't more crosses like this being done? Why are so many crosses in doubt? It is largely because bees did a lot of the work and a lot is just guess work.
 
Let's take the guess work out of it folks.
Let us show a conception shot, show the folks that we actually know what pollen is and where pollen is located. Let us show the people that we know we need to emasculate the flower before it opens if we want to pollinate and not after.
 
I have actually seen a fellow selling hybrids he created with pictures of intact flowers fully labeled as being crossed... that is not how we do it folks.
 
Isolation for the purpose of selling seeds is also great. You can do that with a bag over the flower, branch, or even a net over the entire plant, but if the plant you are dealing with is highly unstable and results will vary.... well then....
 
This is why we don't use  open flowers and even those that are closed... can sometimes have pollen that is ripe. I've seen that and taken pictures of it. So if you are looking to create hybrids... emasculate early, but also check to make certain that at least no visible pollen can be seen. Then realize, that even with the best of intentions, things can happen. You need to prove out your cross by seeing those traits you intended to breed for.
 
Lets try our best to make certain our new hybrids actually stand out in some measurable way to others and are not simply renamed Jigsaws with highly unstable phenotypes.
 
 

 

[Ruid]

If people need to grow nearly 130 of a cross every year for eight years to stabilize it properly, that cuts out a huge portion of growers. Guys like Trent can pull it off but a lot of people are really limited on grow space. That's a lot of the same peppers going to waste because a lot of these are too hot for your average person and with that many, you couldn't hope to give them all away.

 

[PollenNut]

If people need to grow nearly 130 of a cross every year for eight years to stabilize it properly, that cuts out a huge portion of growers. Guys like Trent can pull it off but a lot of people are really limited on grow space. That's a lot of the same peppers going to waste because a lot of these are too hot for your average person and with that many, you couldn't hope to give them all away.

 
When it comes to numbers, no one every said you have to grow out all of a generation in a single year.
 
You could grow up 50 seedlings in a year from your f2. Select out your bests and clone, graft, or otherwise keep the best safe. Save seed from all 50 back. The following year, group up another 50. Save seed back from those 50. Etc. Or, you could enlist the help of other growers. Have a few friends interested in the cross grow some out. If you found 14 people all willing to grow out 10 plants of a cross...... Where there is a will there is a way.
 
And one important consideration, you can get even a C. chinense to bloom and fruit in a 4 inch container... so you that is something to consider as well. 
 
Never mind simply grafting your best plants to the stock of a single plant... save on space and create a nice grafted specimen.

 

[Edaxflamma]

I feel like one could argue that someone's desired morphology of a specific plant/pepper (specifically not the breeder's intention) and the likelihood of offspring expressing that specific morphology are the bare minimum someone needs to at least start the process of tracking this kind of data.
 
For example, if you were to find a wild type or an unexpected morphology in your personal population from a random seed lot, you can't speak to the breeder's intention or show proof of the cross. You can however start by documenting its growth habits, morphology, any information you have relevant to it's origin such as: Where did the seed come from? What else was growing near the parent plant? etc.
 
In my opinion, it's ok to not have all the answers as long as you are providing all the information to the best of your ability to anyone else who will be growing it after you. 
 
I'll even go so far as to say that stability in't imperative as long as I know upfront, I have a detailed description of the ideal morphology of the parent, and I know I'm working with isolated seed. Again, my opinion only. Any one of those data points can be fudged as easily as anything else - including photos.
 
The only reason I say all this, is because asking someone getting into the hobby or better yet, a breeder or hobbyist 20+ years set in their ways to take photos, document the life history of the lineage, set up a team of growers to grow out a specific cross, or intensively cycle generations to validate a specific cross is a herculean task. The chances of someone buying into that kind of system are slim to none.
 
While I would like to see a set of best practices implemented, they would need to be actionable by everyone from the most casual of hobbyist to the top breeders. They would need to be exceedingly easy to use, make logical sense, and generate worthwhile information for the user and community. Like defining best practices for a company, you can have the noblest of causes and ideals behind a set of perfect protocols, but without buy-in and the knowledge of why things should be done in a specific way, your employees will never actually implement them. 
 
Long story short, I'm ok with a slow asymptotic approach towards perfection. Collect as much data as you can, pass it along the best you can, strive for continuous improvement, and encourage others to do the same. If enough of us do that only then can we really start to expect more.

 

[PollenNut]

Standards are easy.
 
1st. The hybridizer takes pictures of the pepper and the variations they accept as still being under the name of the stable and true breeding pepper they have created
 
2nd.  The hybridizer shares those pictures. Any pepper that does not fall into that variation isn't fitting the standard. In the same way you would say a hound dog born of a Siberian Husky isn't meeting the standard to be a Siberian Husky. Even if the hound dog has blue eyes... it is not got the correct phenotype over all.
 
This is not a complicated task in todays world where where everyone who has a phone has a camera and the ability to upload them to the web.
 
If you fudge a photo, the proof is always in the pudding. If I grow your seed and you claim it is stable and true breeding according to the hybridizers standard and they match... the proof will be in the grow out.
 
I'm not certain how hard it could possibly be to take pictures for someone who hasn't been doing it for 20 years other than the fact that perhaps those relying on bees and best guesses are going to have a harder time figuring out the lineage than perhaps someone who has taken the time to emasculate and pollinate and if your going to take the time to do it right... why not take a picture?

 

[PollenNut]

You may very well have a hound dog/pepper, but you won't have the hybridizers standard an AKC Siberian Husky if the phenotype is not the same. 
 
These things are not complicated matters, but very easy things that many people can easily get.