chinense Yellow Carolina Reaper

Dude...love your reviews.  I don't know how I've missed them so far but I watched 3 of them today.  I love that you give very objective, factual statements as you endure these things.  So many other videos are guys just trying to keep their shi7 together while you are trying to give the facts and details---and oh by the way, keeping your shi7 together.  
 
On top of them being helpful and informational, it is just as entertaining to watch the pain set in and you so casually explain it.  
 
Do you ever do ornamentals and other varieties or just the superhots?
 
I got some reported yellow reaper seeds out of Italy this past season.  They had more course flesh than pictured here, but who knows what they crossed to come up with yellow.  At the time people were saying the European yellow reapers were yellow primos.  Now people are saying reapers are primos.  I dont know what to think at this point.  It all seems like such a twisted joke.
 
Nigel said:
One yellow I highly recommend trying is the Yellow Bubblegum 7-pot.
Can you recommend a seed merchant for this ? ...i unabashedly admit to a brief thread hijack... and can you recommend a seed source for Cumari do Para ? I already have seed for the "Cumari" from Semillas Seeds' stock.
 
harjo02 said:
Dude...love your reviews.  I don't know how I've missed them so far but I watched 3 of them today.  I love that you give very objective, factual statements as you endure these things.  So many other videos are guys just trying to keep their shi7 together while you are trying to give the facts and details---and oh by the way, keeping your shi7 together.  
 
On top of them being helpful and informational, it is just as entertaining to watch the pain set in and you so casually explain it.  
 
Do you ever do ornamentals and other varieties or just the superhots?
 
Thanks, appreciate it.
 
I have reviews up of wilds and semi-wilds, ornamentals, low heat varieties, med hot and all the way up to idiotic. Not sure how many in total, maybe 200? I`ve probably eaten 3 times that number, but not filmed them so far. 
mikeg said:
Can you recommend a seed merchant for this ? ...i unabashedly admit to a brief thread hijack... and can you recommend a seed source for Cumari do Para ? I already have seed for the "Cumari" from Semillas Seeds' stock.
Yellow Reapers are not available commercially, to my knowledge. Yellow Bbg7 I got were from Stephen Canaday at Peppergeek Farms and John Ford at Fords Fiery Foods. Cumara do Para are available from Judy at Pepperlover, along with a ton of other wilds and semi-wilds. I say semi-wild as a lot of these types aren`t really wild in the true sense, but are very small plants with small pods, so look wild. 
 
One word of caution for all of you growing Bbg7 varieties - there are a lot and they vary a great deal. For instance there are at least 3 or 4 separate versions of the Chocolate Bbg7, derived independently. If you get seeds, ask where they came from and hopefully label, so they can be kept separate if at all possible. 
 
ajdrew said:
I got some reported yellow reaper seeds out of Italy this past season.  They had more course flesh than pictured here, but who knows what they crossed to come up with yellow.  At the time people were saying the European yellow reapers were yellow primos.  Now people are saying reapers are primos.  I dont know what to think at this point.  It all seems like such a twisted joke.
 
Hard to know how many of these colour forms originate. Some are specific crosses, some unintentional (the vast majority IMO) and extremely rarely, natural mutants. I`m currently researching the literature on colours in Capsicums and it is extremely complicated. If you think about all the colour combinations that could result in orange, for instance, I assure you they exist and more in Capsicums.
 
As for Primo vs Reaper, it`s an argument that`s been around ever since Ed Currie introduced the Reaper. The only evidence at this point is that they share similar capsaicin metabolite profiles, as determined by HPLC. That isn`t evidence of anything other than they share capsaicin metabolite profiles. Serendipity could easily provide that result. With a bit of luck the entire genomes will be sequenced in 2016. It will cost roughly $20,000 to do so, but is in the planning stages.
 
Not promoting or making claims for any of these, just pointing to their offerings:  So please dont flame me for pointing to their offerings.

Chocolate Reaper Seeds: Pepper Joe is offering them this season. 

Yellow Reaper Seeds: Bakers Peppers.  I have some that came from Italian seed stock, but I am not convinced they are any different than yellow Primo.

Yellow and White Bubblegum - I got some but they just kind of showed up this past year from some red bubble gum seed I sourced kind of randomly, probably Ebay.  I am sure they are the result of the seed dealer not growing in isolation.  Again, I am sure they are not stable.  Working on it.
 
On the topic of odd colors, I get the feeling that more common than mutation is recessive genes.  Thing is, my opinion is based on nothing more than 7th grade Earth Science class.  Two brown eyed parents can make a blue eyed baby if they both have recessive genes for blue eyes.  Peppers tend to self pollinate so I imagine such a thing would be rare, but if two peppers of the same variety cross and both have the recessive gene, I imagine a new color might pop up.

If you think on how rapidly new strains are offered, you gotta figure there is a ton of extra dna in each.  I think it makes for a happy surprise some times.  But from what I read, I am weird about that.

 
 
ajdrew said:
 
 
On the topic of odd colors, I get the feeling that more common than mutation is recessive genes.  Thing is, my opinion is based on nothing more than 7th grade Earth Science class.  Two brown eyed parents can make a blue eyed baby if they both have recessive genes for blue eyes.  Peppers tend to self pollinate so I imagine such a thing would be rare, but if two peppers of the same variety cross and both have the recessive gene, I imagine a new color might pop up.

If you think on how rapidly new strains are offered, you gotta figure there is a ton of extra dna in each.  I think it makes for a happy surprise some times.  But from what I read, I am weird about that.

 
 
 
Agreed about recessive alleles, but the majority of these off-colours have cropped up in the last 10 years, once people started growing out lots of varieties. The question to ask is how many colours have cropped up in India, where they grow thousands of acres of red Bhuts and have done so for many, many years and continue to do so? I`m not saying it doesn`t happen, just that it takes a very long time and doesn`t happen very often. Tepins growing wild in Mexico have been found in yellow, red and mid-brown (they call it cappuccino), so it clearly does occur. 
 
If you do the numbers on how often real and random single point mutations, deletions etc crop up in genomes you get a figure of about 1 in 100,000 (very rough estimate). Probably 99.9+% would have nothing to do with fruit colour, so the idea that these colours are produced via naturally occurring mutations is, at the very least, wishful thinking. One point to mention here is that there is a deletion mutation that's been selected for over time and that`s the one concerning the lack of capsaicin production, as seen in Bell peppers. It`s also seen in wild populations of species like C.chacoense and conveys survival advantages in certain ecological niches, so it`s been around a very long time. It`s caused by a genetic deletion in the PUN1 gene (Pungency 1). 
 
You`re point about brown eyed parents having blue eyed children is a good one and well taken, but the genetics of that has turned out to be very much more complicated than dominant brown vs recessive blue. I expect the same to hold true for Capsicums and pod colour, but probably 10-100 fold more complicated. That`s because there are over 100 pigments found in Capsicums. And yep, the Capsicum annum or chinense genome is a good size. Roughly 20-25% larger than the Human genome. 
 
Nigel, very good point on the established super hots of India where some variety have been established for hundreds of generations.  I too think random mutation is very rare.  My thing is that with peppers like the Carolina Reaper, we might consider them stable but they are so new they are bound to have genes we havent noticed yet.  Its not just peppers.

Heck, the Mortgage Lifter tomato is generally thought to be a stable variety.  Its been around for almost 100 years.  If you do a google image search... damn.  Part of the reason I love the thing is that it is so freaky.

I'd be more likely to think accidental cross if the varieties weren't so new.  But I really get the feeling what we generally consider stable to be far from it.  As you said, the gene pool is really frigging deep.
 
mikeg said:
I'm curious: in your video, you also show some small orange peppers... what are they ?
 
It`s known as Orange Brazil Wild, not to be confused with Wild Brazil. It`s an unknown species and has characteristics of both annuum and frutescens. Plants get to be gigantic - mine were 9 feet tall in 5 gallon pots by June. Pods are far more frutescens-like, IMO. 
 
Nigel said:
It`s known as Orange Brazil Wild, not to be confused with Wild Brazil. It`s an unknown species and has characteristics of both annuum and frutescens. Plants get to be gigantic - mine were 9 feet tall in 5 gallon pots by June. Pods are far more frutescens-like, IMO.
Are you planning to review this variety?

A picture of these plants, if you could post it, would be quite a sight too!
 
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