one plant in ten (super chilli) all pods started yellow

[growyourown]

hey everyone!

i'm still a newbie member here, but i love all the stories and advice given on this site; it really is a helpful and encouraging community here with one common goal, to bring the heat! so, a quick search for "yellow" in growing forum did not give me anything meaningful; thought i'd take a chance and post a new topic for you wonderful people to hopefully give some insight into.

the basic question is how can only one plant in the whole garden grow all of its 20+ peppers starting out dull yellow in colour (like picture yellow string beans, we call "wax beans" here), instead of the expected bright lime green (or baby tomato green if you will) that the other 9 plants of the same type grown from seeds of the very same plant exhibit?

so i am growing almost double the amount of plants as last year, but in the same container space. these are three wooden crates, each with about 5 square feet of surface area (2x 1'x5' and 1 2.5'x2'5) and with about 15-18 inches deep of soil. but i don't think crowding plays a part in the problem because 1) all the plants are normal and seem to be producing well, and 2) the plant in question was the first to have peppers appear of all the plants.

the only negative thing i saw before planting in the beds that had last year's soil in them was that there was a slight amount of white crust on maybe 5% of the total surface of each bed. i read a little here saying the crust equals bad minerals etc, but we didn't have that much snow this year and the beds were covered with wood lids made for the crates, so i dont suspect a huge mineral influx. anyway so i ignored the white and just turned the old soil in with some new (albeit grocery-store) soil and manure before planting all of my peppers. to be honest though, pretty much all of them have taken off quite well, of which this yellow one was the first to show fruit, so i really don't know what's going on...

extra info/grog: each crate has 7-8 plants in it, which i know is a lot for their size, but it's because my in-laws have a new greenhouse and offered to start some plants from seeds i've collected from dehydrating peppers the last two years. it turned out my seeds made 10 super chilli plants (all from one very productive plant two years ago), one habanero (currently has one absolutely huge pepper on it and just a few others starting to form), 8 jalapeno plants (each has 4-8 peppers and doing well), and one that refused to grow and was culled. in addition i have two hab plants and two ghosts purchased from a greenhouse (and the ghosts are doing wicked amazing, 30+ on one plant with half being hecking huge pods, the other started producing a bit later but now has around 15 pods looking mad healthy also).

so my garden is doing pretty sweet, and if these yellow pods don't come to fruition its fine and only 10% of my super chillies, but i'm just curious if this is familiar to anyone who knows how this could happen and if it's good/bad/neutral? could the white crusty stuff have just burned the one hot zone if i didn't mix well enough and thus everything around it is okay, is that a thing? i'ts only my third year growing any type of plant, so any ideas and thoughts welcome.

live long and pepper

 

[CaneDog]

If I understand your question you have a bunch of plants of the same variety from the same seed source and all but one have lime green immature fruit and the one has more of an ivory-yellow immature pod color. Is that right?
 
Immature fruit color is controlled by an allelic series at what is termed the "sulfury-white" genetic locus, which regulates the amount of chlorophyll present in the immature fruit. Immature pod colors range from ivory through dark green due to the sw series. I believe the alleles producing more chlorophyll (darker green immature pods) are consistently dominant to all alleles producing less chlorophyll in the series, so, if the allele for lime green is paired with the allele for ivory-yellow you will get a lime green immature pod.
 
Getting to your question directly, you could have a variety that is, for whatever reason, not fully stabilized at the sw locus, i.e., there are still a few of the recessive ivory-yellow alleles floating around. In most cases, the seeds would have two dominant lime green alleles at the sw locus or a dominant lime green would pair up with a recessive ivory-yellow. In either case the immature pod would show lime-green.  Only in the less common event that two recessive ivory-yellow alleles lined up would you see an ivory-yellow immature pod. This is typical of how recessive genes can hang around for generations without showing themselves and then suddenly appear, seemingly out of nowhere.
 
The sulfury-white series has no affect on mature pod color unless you have a particular recessive mutation that cause the chlorophyll to remain rather than degrade in the mature pod, so you will likely see similar final pods.

 

[solid7]

What's up with all of the nerds on this forum with their techno-babble. 

 

[CaneDog]

 

[growyourown]

thank you for the fast and fantastic answer. and yes, you did understand my situation/question completely perfectly.
 
it never even occurred to me to consider a genetic expression being the cause. but i understand exactly what you are talking about because i've gone down the wikipedia rabbit hole on a few occasions where i learn 50 tabs worth of new things in a day.
 
does anyone have any idea whether this condition might cause any knock-on effects re taste or heat level, and whether i should attempt to segregate the seeds from this particular plant either to eliminate or purposely select for?
 
way to go canedog! also, the simpsons rule!

 

[solid7]

should attempt to segregate the seeds from this particular plant either to eliminate or purposely select for?

Genetics isn't my area of expertise, but in my mind, when you're dealing with an expression of a recessive trait in a self-pollinating specimen, it seems that you don't give prominence to the recessive trait, unless you selectively breed it with another plant having the same recessive traits.  And then again, and again, and again...  So basically, hybridizing the recessive trait.
.
Please correct my line of thinking if I haven't got that right...

 

[growyourown]

another super quick answer, thanks solid7.
 
mostly i was only asking to make sure these peppers aren't going to taste like crap and whether i should keep the seeds out of the mix when i harvest and dehydrate the bounty.
 
i very much doubt i would be hardcore enough to get into the science of trying to breed for a specific feature, but i know that the peach- or white-coloured peppers are sometimes superior or sought after, so i wondered if there might be any reason to treat them specially. but if, as canedog says, they most likely will all end up the same colour at maturity anyway, there's probably no point differentiating.
 
if they do wind up not turning a red colour, does that change things?

 

[solid7]

another super quick answer, thanks solid7.
 
mostly i was only asking to make sure these peppers aren't going to taste like crap and whether i should keep the seeds out of the mix when i harvest and dehydrate the bounty.
 
i very much doubt i would be hardcore enough to get into the science of trying to breed for a specific feature, but i know that the peach- or white-coloured peppers are sometimes superior or sought after, so i wondered if there might be any reason to treat them specially. but if, as canedog says, they most likely will all end up the same colour at maturity anyway, there's probably no point differentiating.
 
if they do wind up not turning a red colour, does that change things?

 
 
Well, yes, I understand your original question, I was only weighing in on that particular part.
.
I'm not sure that I understand the entire question, but if you end up with something that you find particularly desirable, you may wish to pursue the more scientific undertaking of trying to selectively breed it.
.
I don't know how to answer the last part of the question, other than to say that there is always, in my experience, a taste difference associated with a color difference.  Can't think of a single exception.  If the end color is what you expect, the taste will probably be the same (or very close), also.  But who knows, until you get a pod...

 

[growyourown]

thanks again.
 
yeah i am just going to let it play out, and no doubt i'll find a way to use them regardless.
 

 

[CaneDog]

So, once you have a recessive trait expressed at a particular locus, that means no dominant allele can be present. In many cases, that means the plant is already stabilized for that trait because there are only a dominant and recessive allele available and if you see a recessive trait manifested phenotypically that means no dominant alleles remain to ever "appear" later.
 
In the case of the sw locus, there are more than 2 alleles. There's a series of progressively darker ones that from what I understand are each dominant to all lighter ones. If you're seeing your variety generally stable for lime-green, there's probably only ivory/light yellow and pure ivory that are recessive to the lime green.  While it's possible your ivory-yellow could be the result of an sw1 (ivory) and sw2 (ivory-yellow) allele pairing with the dominant sw2 making the immature pod show ivory-yellow, it seems much more likely the sw locus is a pairing of 2 sw2's thus no other alleles (dominant or recessive) are available in the genome and if you self pollinate the plant it will continue to produce an ivory-yellow immature pod, i.e., it will be stable for that feature.
 
As to taste, I agree that different in color will create difference in taste. But immature pod color is based on the concentration (or absence if sw1 ivory) of chlorophyll in the immature pod.  As your mature red pepper ripens, the chlorophyll will degrade, disappearing from the ripe pod and therefore no longer available to influence taste.  There is a recessive mutation "cl" which prevents chlorophyll from degrading, causing it to remain in the mature pod - and thus affecting taste - but your variety doesn't have this if it matures red. One of the colors that "cl" creates in a mature pod is brown, which is the result of green chlorophyll remaining in a pod and mixing with red carotenoids at maturity.
 
There's lots of cool things that can be done with breeding peppers and colors, but it can be a lot of effort too, especially when dealing with some of the uncommon colors.
 
Glad to have you aboard GYO, and post some pics if you get a chance. I'd be curious to see the immature color of the yellowish pods.