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breeding Fatali x Tabasco Hybrid Confirmed

djsketchie

djsketchie

My suspicions have been confirmed...the fatali that I decided to put in a 5 gallon bucket was crossed with a tabasco last season. It is a MONSTER of a plant (I guess hybrid vigor) that looks like a chinense, but the fruits definitely favor the tabasco, only they are 2-3x the size of your average tabasco. They have the distinct tabasco characteristics where once they are ripe they almost fall off the pedicel by themselves, and they are super juicy. They are ripening red, and don't seem to show any signs of fatali genes in appearance or taste other than being larger than your average tabasco. I was kind of hoping they would at least ripen yellow, but mother nature does what she feels like...oh, and the seeds look like chinense seeds and not frutescens seeds.

I'll post pics later today, but just thought I'd go ahead and share this morning.

Oh, and it's producing like a mad man...
 
Sounds awesome... I was thinking about trying this cross myself, if only because I had the plants.

From my understanding ripening to red tends to be a dominant trait... you might get more of the Fatalii expression in subsequent isolated seed generations.
 
Want a C. chinense packed with compact-sized, yellow, hot peppers with great flavor? no need to cross. grow Datil.
 
So true Omri - I will putting them back on my grow list for next year - My chilihead friends are asking for more of the Datil relish - I even have them offering garden space - so yeah I'll grow'em again.
 
+2 on the Datil... tons of pods on those guys. They're just starting to ripen for me so I'll get to taste them soon. Can't wait.

Still, I am curious to see this cross.
 
It wasn't an intentional cross Omri, just a happy accident. I actually grew datil peppers last year, but they didn't make the cut this year for some reason...

I'm pretty sure my bhut's are crossed this year as well, perhaps even with the datil, but there's no way to know for sure. Basically a smaller version of the bhut, with the musky/earthy taste and smell, but not the face melting heat. Still hot enough though!

Pictures will be forthcoming, just gotta charge the stupid camera battery.
 
Finally! (Had camera issues):

35alx09.jpg


So the fatali on the top left and the tabasco on the top right joined forces to basically make a monster tabasco. Everything about the hybrid except for the size of the fruits, the seed shape, and the plant itself comes through as a tabasco. All tabasco flavor, no fatali flavor. The bottom pics were some bonus shots of barrackpore 7 pot and white habanero. It's really weird how the barrackpore 7 pot looks almost chocolate in the pic, because to the naked eye, it looks like the same red as the hybrid. Cameras do funny things...

Enjoy!
 
djsketchie said:
Finally! (Had camera issues):

35alx09.jpg


So the fatali on the top left and the tabasco on the top right joined forces to basically make a monster tabasco. Everything about the hybrid except for the size of the fruits, the seed shape, and the plant itself comes through as a tabasco. All tabasco flavor, no fatali flavor. The bottom pics were some bonus shots of barrackpore 7 pot and white habanero. It's really weird how the barrackpore 7 pot looks almost chocolate in the pic, because to the naked eye, it looks like the same red as the hybrid. Cameras do funny things...

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Spiffy. I'm assuming the heat is also on par with a Tabasco?

This kind of reminds me of the Super Datil cultivar... blasphemy in my opinion, but that aside... maybe you should be looking at this as an opportunity to make a Super Tabasco, ha.
 
Let's suppose I wanted to keep this hybrid going in the future. Other than overwintering the plant or cloning it, how would one go about repeating this? I am assuming that a second, intentional cross with the fatali as the female, and the tabasco as the male would not necessarily result in the exact same type of pepper? Kind of like siblings coming from the same parents...no two look exactly alike. In other words, how do they keep F1 hybrids the same phenotype from year to year like the super chili?

Honestly, I like this cross better than the regular tabasco because I think it is slightly hotter, and none of the fruits have that occasional bitterness I come across with regular tabasco peppers.
 
It's my understanding that with most commercially available F1 hybrids, two stable parent lines are used such that the phenotypic expression of the F1 generation doesn't vary. With any non-hybrid named variety, in most cases you can be fairly certain that the genes have stabilized and are suitable for this purpose.

So yes, in order to keep producing this particular cross you would need to cross the Fatalii and Tabasco for new seed every year, being consistent about which is the mother/father. As you mentioned, this can make a difference in the resulting cross.

If you wanted to stabilize the line and make something that could self-seed and produce uniform offspring, you're looking at something around 7 to 8 generations of inbreeding minimum to be safe. The advantage here is you could tweak the characteristics of the resulting plants, selecting only those you find desirable.
 
If you like this, you should grow my accidental Naga Morich x Tabasco hybrid, it falls off when ripe like yours and is fruity and juicy:
P1170151.jpg
 
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