What is a new pepper?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

In the US, we have the Plant Variety Protector Act.  Other nations have other laws that are kin.  If you create a new variety, you can protect it.  The Red Savina went that route.  Since the Red Savina, I do not think any of the record holders have been protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act.

In addition to stability, one of the things a person has to demonstrate for protection is that the new variety is unique in some way.  Have read the naga viper was not stable enough.  I wonder if the others just weren't unique enough.

Gotta admit, a few of them look a lot alike and after a certain SHU taste buds just sort of scream.
 
Fortunately most people don't take that route. I imagine it's costly and not practical. Fatalii states his fatalii gourmet jigsaw is "NOT FOR RESALE IN ANY FORM!," but I'm not sure if he patented or is just claiming that. I think he says the same for his aji fantasy. If anyone knows what protection they are under, I'd like to know.
 
Edit: it states on his website that the aji fantasy is. Personally this turns me off on varieties.
 
http://www.fatalii.net/Chile_Peppers/Aji_Fantasy
 
Dulac, wow you just touched a hot topic.  I've never seen the statement about not for commercial use on the Puckerbutt site.  Lots of people say they did.  Thing is, Pepper Joe sold CR seeds from the very beginning without the statement.  So was much confusion.  I think I read one guy burnt a crop of CR over it.

Oh but here is the punch line.  Pepper Joe sells jigsaw pepper seeds without the statement.  There is this guy in Finland who is selling them, claims he got his from some jigsaw grindings sold without a disclaimer and he grew them to create seed stock.  Then there are all the people on ebay who could be selling green bells as jigsaw for all I know.  Point being, I think with so many people selling them that this fall we will see a repeat of the insanity.
 
Hot Pepper - Yep, Red Savina expired but the creator had a good many years of exclusivity.  I think that is great because he is the one that put the work into developing it.  Great pepper, not just flavor but health wise.  The thing grows well for me.
 
TrueNorth - About Ed Currie getting a trademark on Carolina Reaper, he did the exact opposite.  He trademarked the term 'Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper' but officially disclaimed 'Carolina Reaper'.  The all caps come from the patent office, not me.
 
"NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "CAROLINA REAPER" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN"

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:4l9vmt.2.1

No clue why, but there it is.  He said he has no claim on the term 'Carolina Reaper' outside of the whole name 'Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper".  I suspect it is one of those business things that smart people decide that I can not figure out cause I am not one of them.
 
ajdrew said:
"NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "CAROLINA REAPER" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN"
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:4l9vmt.2.1

No clue why, but there it is.  He said he has no claim on the term 'Carolina Reaper' outside of the whole name 'Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper".  I suspect it is one of those business things that smart people decide that I can not figure out cause I am not one of them.
Click to expand...
 
He does not decide that USPTO does. Well unless he filed wrong.
 
It means "Carolina Reaper" is not a TM by itself. This can happen if you file wrong, or if they need to exempt words from your mark from exclusivity. If you do not agree, they do not move forward with the mark.
You're mixing TM and PVP now though. 
 
Hot Pepper, as with the other conversation that went sideways, was not trying to mix the two up.  Someone jumped in with trademark, which as you mentioned is not PVP.  Just thought to answer what he said.

Again, I have no idea why the trademark is what it is.  But I can not imagine it was a mistake.  Mr. Currie seems to be a very smart business man.  I think I read that before Puckerbutt took off, he was an investment banker or something like that.  I have to figure he has teams of lawyers who specialize in these things. 

Still pondering why it is that with so many new peppers, that nobody seems interested in protecting a new cultivar.  Am wondering if some of them just arent different enough for the regulations.  Gotta admit some of the seven pots look a lot like other seven pots.  Then again, there is a lot of renaming going on.
 
Business sense.  That is the driver.  Does it make good business sense to go through the process of registering a cultivar as new and thereby gaining exclusive use for a time period?  The answer seems simple enough but the truth is far from.
 
Firstly the cost implications.  It's not just about having something and saying it is "new".  What is new?  Being au fait with the SA application (which is basically similar to Europe, Australia and New zealand - not sure about the US but I'm sure there's some overlap) I will use it as an example.  Here (as in EU, Oz & NZ) we have Plant Breeders Rights (PBR).  In order to gain a PBR you have to prove that your "creation" is sufficiently different to anything out there and prove that you made it.  This means that a sport that pops up in a batch of seedlings cannot be PBR'd - you have to grow it and stabilise it over a period to prove that it is stable.  Variegated plants or colour variants are the two most common here.  This is the one avenue for variation - "natural" mutation - and by far the most common.
 
The other is selective breeding and or hybridising.  Here it is easier to gain a PBR as you are creating something new that didn't exist and most likely would not exist if it weren't for the breeder manipulating the reproductive process of the plants.
 
Now for the business end: is what you have sufficiently different?  is it marketable?  and how are you going to enforce your PBR?
 
OK so you have this thing and it is very different.  Now you have to prove it - lots of measurements and cultural info have to be supplied - it is a scientific process.  Quite often these data are published in horticultural journals as an added weight to the application.  This is not a cheap process.  You can't grow 1 plant in a nursery, in 1 location under certain conditions.  It has to remain what you said it is under a variety of conditions (excluding those that do not fall into int's range of tolerance e.g. extreme cold for a tropical or full roasting sun for a shade plant).  A whole bank has to be grown so that it can be proven that they perform the same and stay the same.  Basically the plant is being tested to see if it is what you claim it is.  This is obviously not cheap.  And a PBR is only for 3 years.  Then it's a free for all.
 
Now for the next crunch: is it marketable?  Just because you made it doesn't mean it will sell enough to cover all these exorbitant costs.  How big is the market?  What are there gardening/growing habits?  As an example: bedding plants are the biggest market share.  Why?  Because they are cheap disposable novelties.  That is why the most PBR's are in that sector.  Think petunia and you're on the right track.
 
Is the chili market that big?  What are the habits of the growers?  By all accounts you would say that the chili market is big - judging by the number of growers.  But truthfully it is not big enough to warrant the expense of a PBR.  Not almost every gardener is going out there and acquiring the latest superhot for their garden.  Think Petunia etc. and you see the difference in market size.  As regards habits - well.......we see all manner of things that are apparently protected (Fatalii Jigsaw etc) being traded/swapped or given away by private growers.  Why?  Because they are not enforcable.  For a few reasons.
 
Plant breeders fall into one of two categories: professional freelance or employed professional.  Either you breed plants at your own nursery or you do it for someone else at theirs.  In both cases the end-product will be distributed and licenced by a big company - think Ball, Proven Winners etc.  They have the clout to enforce the PBR as well as the financial muscle to make a product a success.  Billy Bob who just arrived at a "new" superhot Capsicum chinense does not.  Unless he licences the product to a big corporate and gets a royalty for every sale (usually under 10%) and has no say in what happens to the germplasm as regards breeding of new products - he does however get a royalty which is then on a (downwards!) sliding scale.  So what happens?  BillyBob trademarks the name of his thing.  Now you can't call it that but you can still propagate it and trade it under a different name.
 
Ultimately chili is a food product.  And who needs a 2.2 mil SHU chili anyway?  There is just too much effort involved in stabilising the thing so that every bush is uniform, yields are known, all ripewn within a given period etc for the size of the market.  The other problem is that the germplasm is freely available.  Breeders generally have material at their dis[posable that is not available to anyone else.  This is how you create new things in the face of competition.  Even the Chili Institute at Numex doesn't even bother with PBR on their ornamentals.  They know it is a limited market and every backyard grower will be swapping seeds with his mates soon enough. 
 
Also bear in mind that chili is considered stable after 8 generations. Either you are looking at 8 years minimum or you have to have a relatively sophisticated set up where you can grow 2 generations a year.  Apparently this is how the Reaper was grown.  But given the variation I have seen.........hmmmmmm not so sure about that one.
 
So in short: it is a long expensive process that is difficult to enforce unless you are willing to accept an atomic share of the actual profits.
 
Wandering back to my original thought, what is a new pepper?

Example: I have some Chocolate Reapers growing.  I did not intentionally cross reapers to create them.  The seed came from Pepper Joe, who said at the time it came from Puckerbutt.  So thinking the seed was straight.  Only one plant out of several grew chocolate.  All pods on that plant were chocolate.  The seeds I saved had horrible viability but grew all chocolate.
 
I do not think it is a new pepper.  Peppers are self pollinating usually, but an insect or even the wind can bring pollen from one pepper plant to the next.  I -suspect- the one seed that grew the original plant was the result of Reaper pollen with a recessive gene for chocolate being carried to another reaper plant with the same recessive gene.  With the horrible viabuility rate, it kind of makes sense with the whole survival of the fittest sort of thing.  If the genes for viable seeds are horrible among chocolate variants, I don't imagine it would be all that common.

Read that a couple other folk have run into it.  Is it a new pepper?  I dont think so.

Now please consider things like the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T.  As I understand it, it is not a cross at all.  Might be wrong, but I think it is a refinement of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper.

I am thinking that when we say something is a new pepper, what we are most often noticing is a newly observed strain of an existing pepper.  Maybe things which are just not different enough to qualify for protection under the plant variety protection act.

Thoughts?  Gotta admit there are a lot of "new peppers" that seem very, very, very familiar.
 
I agree it appears in the majority of situations from creation stories it is 'just' a random hotter more defined version of an existing strain that's been inbred to refine cettain traits.. . To be honest when people discover these "new" varieties growing in the back yard of a guatamalin medicine mans house that they have been growing for 2 generation of his family.

For all we know two generations of plant back it crossed to something else and has just picked up a whole new bunch of receives to weed out..

Then there are the masters who use time, patience and effort to create and refine new hybrids to an almost perfect stability.. In many years to come these same varieties will probably throw back an early recesive and they in themselves be called a new variety lol..

What frustrates me most is when 2x peppers are thrown together for what seems like the only purpose to change its colour and the result is a pepper that really doesn't represent the original wanted shape, but they still call it that anyway to sell it...

"What coloured Moruga isn't out yet, I'll mix a Douglah and red Moruga and go to F3 with that crappy red / brown / green mix one and call it a mustard.. Probably breed out lots of red and brown seeds but atleast at one time it looked different" .. So it sells.. The pods all look different , some Moruga , some Douglah, some not even close to either...

To me a true new pepper would be an F10 hybrid, there's a few YouTube clips on Tempe Carolina reaper from large volume growers of them and they grow like 2000+ plants and only about 1-2% of the plants had a throw back to a still cool but not official reaper shape.. Now that is in my book a bew pepper.. But the watered down open pollinated , passing one seed off for another sellers kill that reputation .. And people cry false stable to the real product..

Now I'm ranting.. New pepper = undiscovered new genetic strain; or a clearly definable new version of an existing strain through natural evolution with true stability; or a new stablised cross F10 + In my book, even if the looks don't vary so much from the parent , as long as there is a definable difference , taste, heat, texture etc..

Things like the bubblegum 7 pod had that something that makes it different easily qualify .... But I agree its hard with some of the other "versions" to classify them as truely unique as they are so similar.
 
KrakenPeppers, on bubble gum: The color bleeding into the stem is unique, but I do not know what level of uniqueness they are looking for with the plant variety protection act.  I -suspect- one of the reasons some of the new peppers do not have PVP is because they are not unique enough.

Am thinking there are some great new peppers by folk like CARDI and the Chile Pepper Institute.  Things developed for disease resistance, pest resistance, production value, flavor, and other attributes that are not a visible trait.  Then there are the folk who go, oh look something odd looking; Izzz got new pepper.

A while ago, i got my hands on seeds someone -claimed- were Fatalii Gourmet Puzzle peppers.  They hatched great, grew great, produced what looked right.  No clue what they should taste like fresh, but dried they tasted like the powder from Fatalii.  Saved the seeds.  Second time around, had horrible mite problem.  Was in hospital and wife had no clue what to do.  Came home, got rid of mites, got rid of dead and messed up leaves.  I was left with what almost looked like green sticks with a leaf or two.  They bounced back as if bred to loose all its leaves and come back.
 
Not the healthiest plant in the world, but a month or so ago it was absolutely screwed.  If it really is a Fatalii Gourmet Jigsaw, then I am thinking it is a new pepper because no way a moruga scorpion would have bounced back from that and I believe that is what they were initially bred from, or at least one of the peppers.  They also germinate in lower temperatures, germinate faster, grow faster.  Not downing on the moruga, prefer the flavor in fact.  But from a growing viewpoint, what ever this sucker is it is a very forgiving joy.

150x150xjigsaw_pepper_plant-150x150.jpg.pagespeed.ic.5Zwwgn7goJ.jpg


Even if the pods did not look unique or taste unique, the other attributes like growth rate, resilience, germination attributes and so on are wildly improved over at least one of its parents.  These are attributes organizations like CARDI and Chile Pepper Institute look for.

Seems like most chili heads these days only look for weird scary pods and over the top heat.  Kind of messed up.
 
ajdrew said:
Seems like most chili heads these days only look for weird scary pods and over the top heat.  Kind of messed up.
Click to expand...
I agree that that is in a lot of situations the truth, humans are by fault stimulated by the 5 senses over other more scientific forms of information a lot of the time and therefor more inclined to accept these types of information as more valued.. But it's also true in a very real sense that these can be the most valuable as they are easily the most measurable. There are so many peppers out there that look like clones of each other but go by different names.. I grew a lovely yellow Bhut the other day and while browsing yellow devil tongues would of swore on my life it was one of those , however the flavour was Bhut not Fatali and therefor I was able to recognise that difference ..

But if 3 of my seeds grew slow as hell and where weak and slow to fruit and 3 others seemed to be bulletproof speed demons, but they both grew the same fruit ( within reason) I woud just think one had better parental genetics or maybe I had an inconsistent soil or ......... Whatever reason. I wouldn't think it was due to selective breeding and $$$ in research and when on selling those seeds they would probably be mixed together and sold as the same ..

I guess in a lot of ways peppers are more like cars than other fruits, it's easy to have the same innards and same features but when ones a new colour with a body kit it gets sold as a different model .. Unlike peas or beans or other less visual plants that are sold as the "insert company names" pea or bean as they then promote what is better about their variety of pea or bean and why its better than "insert company name here's" pea or bean seeds..

If the calyx of the bubblegum and its flavour were not diferrnt I wouldnt think it different but they are stable and different so to me that's enough, a new colour too would of been great but thems the breaks
 
We dealing with two very different applications here.  PBR is generally for ornamental/garden market.
 
Agricultural use is another.  Here it is even more rigorous.  What you are looking at is continuous line-breeding (pedigree breeding) to fix traits.  This demands decication.  It is a very intensive process.  Having in-depth knowledge of what governs what traits and how it interacts with others is key to this process.  I'll give a few examples:
 
A seed company I regularly supplied (and acquired germplasm from) discovered a swarm of natural hybrids.  Within the swarm were sports that were highly desirable for the cutflower industry.  There was great interest in this seed and so they entered into licence with a floriculture company.  Because the seed was of multiple parent origin no-one knew what to expect, but these guys were expert breeders and were going to fix the selected lines and create novel products.  It failed dismally.  The first mistake was that they selected for early flowering.  Generally plants will start to flower sporadically from a certain age onwards.  With these particular plants, flowering under ideal conditions could be expected from the third year.  So they selected everything that flowered in the third year and discarded the rest.  Generally when they flower for the first time they are still quite small.  Problem was that without knowing it they had selected dwarfism.  Yip the entire breeding lines were now dwarfs.  Gone was one of the superior criteria of the hybrid - long stems.  End result: programme abandoned.
 
Ever seen a yellow Pelargonium hybrid?  No you haven't.  And for good reason.  It is not that there aren't yellow-flowered Pelargonium - there are (I know because I have them).  The problem arises when you try and hybridise these with species that have the typical white, pink, red or purple flowers.  No yellow to be seen in any flowers.  Why?  Because they have another set of genes at another locus that inhibits yellow.  So they have genes at two loci that control flower colour.
 
Now using one of the examples, CARDI, let's look at the process of creating a new chili.  CARDI has a flagship the Moruga.  It is actually a Scotch Bonnet and not be confused with the Moruga Scorpion thingy (still would love to see some detailed genetic work on that).  It has taken them quite some time to line breed this to the point that they are satisfied with it as being fixed i.e. it will perform to expectations under normal cultural conditions.  So much so that they have now released the ideotype - the idealised version of what it should be.  That is how confident they are.  It also implies that anything that doesn't conform to that set of descriptors is not the same entity.  The reason for this is simple: a farmer wants a product that is predictable, a seller/broker wants a product that is reliable and conforms to specifications and an end user wants a product that is uniform (in heat, colour, sweetness etc).
 
Now considering how variable any given population is, you could start to understand how intensive and time consuming this process is.  Take all the seed from one fruit.  We can consider this as a population.  Do all of them grow the same, produce the same etc.  No.  How do you go about making something more to your needs from them?  You start with selecting the fruits that have your preferred traits.  Fo the average grower this means various things, although generally relating to one thing: pods!.  Some like gnarly pods, some want a certain colour, some want flavour, some want heat.  Beacuse we grow limited amount of plants (under often not so ideal conditions) disease susceptibility and production don'r factor into our modus.  Plant got a disease?  nurse it or chuck it.  Commercial grower? disaster!  Nobody here grows proper commercial quantities.  We might grow for commercial purposes - seed, fresh pods or sauce production but the quantities are tiny compared to proper full-scale production.  Look at some of the Numex varieties.  They are in response to over-commercialisation (=selecting for specific traits).  When you start tinkering with increased production, disease resistance etc you more often that not lose other traits.  So the commercial chili varieties often don't have much flavour or even heat.  So they released the Heritage series.  They probably not as productive or disease resistant as other things out there but they sure do taste proper.
 
Now.  The Fatalii Jigsaw.  Jukka was in a good position.  He had grown bothe Moruga Scorpion thingy and the Naga Morich for quite some time and selected traits that he preferred (ever seen a pic of his Naga Morich in a large-span greenhouse?  Beyond impressive!).  They were in effect line bred for various traits.  Then when he outcrossed them he arrived at a grex from which he selected that which displayed thebtraits he desired.  From these siblings he then continuously line bred until was fixed into what he wanted.  (I will add one thing here: add Naga Morich into the mix and you end up with amazing things - Primo is a good example.)
 
The diffeerence with Fatalii is that it is Jukka's livelihood.  He has become very good at growing and breeding.  But note that he doesn't produce all manner of nonsense - "i'm gonna cross a Bhut with a tepin with a Lemon Drop" type crap.  They are well-considered and definitely line bred.  Customers want uniformity and reliability - almost to the point of it being guarnateed.
 
EDIT note:  KrakenPeppers posted whilst I was busy with this thesis.  It is meant in reply to the last post by ajdrew
 
KrakenPeppers - On cars n peppers, never thought of that.  You are right.  No clue why we do not seem to care about the undercoating or other features.  Wondering if maybe there are not fewer growers and more eaters than I thought.  The things I have bought from CPI are major improvements in the growing sense.  Same for CARDI, but never got them straight from them.  Those particular dealers might not be putting the body lift kit in, but they are using a lot of undercoating.
 
Robstar, yes, yes and yes.  Consistency is something I failed to mention.  CPI had an article on this and how radical some lines are with respect to SHU.  I read that and thought on the range of the Carolina Reaper.  Most list the mid at somewhere around 1.5 and the peak at over 2.0 but few mention the low which is around 1 million shu.  So you have a pepper that ranges 1 to 2.2 million on the SHU.  Not a very good thing for commercial products.  Buy a bottle of hot sauce one day it tastes one way.  The next bottle of the same stuff is more than twice as hot would not be good.

I do think I have my answer in the things you and KrakenPepper have said.  There is industry / commercial peppers where certain traits are demanded and then there are hobby growers who demand different and perhaps more superficial traits like the latest paint job.

I have to admit I do enjoy chasing unicorns a bit.  But I also very much appreciate knowing what to expect.
 
It's the unicorns that make me grow peppers, I have always been an elitist and love anything that can offer something that's almost unobtainable but within reach .

And there lies the pepper.. Available in almost any colour , finish, flavour, shape, heat level, size, plant colour, plant size, pod direction.. Etc etc etc.. And all at your fingertips to create and manipulate with the possibility of making something internationally renound, memorable, lasting.... And most of all .... Unique.. Wich in today's 7 billion minded world is a harder thing to come by than it used to be.

But peppers offer that to me, and thus I grow and cross and plan and observe and grow some more..

I know that I will produce a "Unicorn" soon, it's just a good thing that each step to my mythic creature is almost as exciting as the end game ..

Peppers to me is almost like BMW making there next M5 ... It takes thought, production, testing, evaluation, re-design, production, testing and so on until that pinnacle point is reached .. And as much as I think I could design a good vehicle, peppers are in my pay grade and doesn't take an engineering degree lol.
 
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