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What causes abortion of fruit and black, moldy growth in peppers?

U

UltraZelda64

I'm just wondering, because I picked two affected peppers earlier (a ripening Fatalii which was extremely tiny compared to the rest on the plant and an immature 7 Pod that the plant was aborting). I've noticed this kind of thing numerous times in the past (including once or twice already this year), but I never thought much of it. What causes a plant to just abort a developing fruit? I know there are probably many reasons, but what are the most likely causes? And what causes black mold to start growing inside them?

Strangely, as mentioned the Fatalii was extremely tiny, sort of deformed looking, so I wouldn't be surprised if the mold *was* the primary cause of its small size... but the 7 Pod seemed to be doing alright. By the time I noticed the 7 Pod's stem was turning brown and took it off the plant (it literally just popped off, no pruners required, the plant gave up on it), I noticed that the pepper had a small browning spot on its outer skin (who knows, maybe this is why it aborted it, if it's been infecting it for a while).

I was sort of disappointed to cut them up and see that they're pretty much unusable, but on the bright side... both plants are showing some serious promise and are loaded with fruits.

If I had to guess, I would assume that a plant will somehow sense that something is wrong with a fruit (ie., infection), and abort... but I've seen so many seemingly fully ripe peppers affected as well, so it seems that there could be other factors or limitations in the plants' sensing of these fruit infections.
 
I'm thinking two things - one is inconsistent soil moisture - I do it all the time, miss one watering and pods stop growing and just ripen. One of the reasons I'm never doing container growing again.
The other, not sure what they're called, maybe a borer but these tiny black things that get in your fruit and make it rot from the tiny holes it puts in it.
Try getting one of the bad fruit, put it on a flat surface and place a glass or something over it. See if you get weird things making a break for it after a few days - then you know you got a bug problem.
 
I was overwintering a bhut jolokia and it had a few flowers still so I didn't prune it back, I just put it in a sort of greenhouse and barely watered it for a few months. I just wanted to see what would happen. The one pod that developed was tiny and had its tip all sucked in. It took a long time to ripen and when it did the top of the pod turned red and then the red colour took a very very long time to finish off the bottom of the pod. I finaly picked it and cut it open and it was all moldy inside.

I'm still yet to get a viable bhut pod that I've grown myself. My first one had a worm in it and the next few aborted and then this one.
Got a few seedlings going for this season though :D
 
Thanks, that's some useful information guys. I think I'll add that this has happened to very few peppers so far (and only on maybe 3 or 4 plants total), typically the small and immature peppers are the ones aborted. They are all growing in containers, but the majority of peppers on the plants are looking good, very big and beginning to ripen. All of my plants are literally exploding with growth and are getting huge, so I originally thought that maybe that could be it... somehow maybe the plant thought that a particular fruit was doomed (maybe it did get infected, like before enough capsaicin was produced or something?), so it gave up on it since there were so many others? Heh. Overall, I was just curious since I never really read about why rotting and fruit abortions happen, I don't think it's going to really be a common occurrence (at least so far it doesn't seem to be).

I've been wanting to take pictures of all of my plants for my own future reference, if I can bring myself to do it, but it's so hard to just walk around on the porch to water/fertilize them, let alone move them around to take pictures and deal with trying to get good photos. The things are growing outright wild... my porch is a jungle. If I get around to it I might post them in new topic.
 
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