NYT -- Plant geneticists have developed a mild habanero chili pepper, and some enthusiasts are outraged.
November 21, 2004
Some Like It Hot, but a New Pepper Is Bred for the Rest
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
WESLACO, Tex., Nov. 18 - It's a burning issue for some
hot-pepper lovers: Whatever possessed Kevin M. Crosby to
create the mild habanero?
For Dr. Crosby, a plant geneticist at the Texas A&M
Agricultural Experiment Station here near the Mexican
border, the answer is simple: "I'm not going to take away
the regular habanero. You can still grow and eat that, if
you want to kill yourself."
But for those who prize the fieriest domesticated Capsicum
for its taste and health-boosting qualities, Dr. Crosby and
the research station in the Rio Grande Valley have
developed and patented the TAM Mild Habanero, with less
than half the bite of the familiar jalapeño (which A&M
scientists also previously produced in a milder version).
With worldwide pepper consumption on the rise, according to
industry experts, the new variety - a heart-shaped nugget
bred in benign golden yellow to distinguish it from the
alarming orange original, the common Yucatan habanero - is
beginning to reach store shelves, to the delight of
processors and the research station, which stands to earn
unspecified royalties if the new pepper catches on.
"I love it," said Josh Ruiz, a local farmer whose pickers
this week filled some 200 boxes of the peppers to be sold
to grocers for about $35 a box. "It yields good and I'm
able to eat it." As for the Yucatan habanero, he said, "My
stomach just can't take it."
By comparison, if a regular jalapeño scores between 5,000
and 10,000 units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness
based on the amount of the chemical capsaicin
(cap-SAY-sin), and a regular habanero averages around
300,000 to 400,000 units, A&M's mild version registers a
tepid 2,300, or barely one-hundredth of its coolest
formidable namesake. A bell pepper, by the way, scores
zero.
Not everyone hails the breakthrough. Dr. Crosby, 33, a
native Texan and a distant relative of the crooner Bing,
said "chili pepper fanatics" have called with rude
questions about what he was thinking and why he was wasting
his time. A Mexican voiced complete bewilderment. Why, he
asked Dr. Crosby, would you want a habanero that's not hot?
Dr. Crosby said he sympathized. He had, after all, seen
Mayans in the Yucatan eating their way through plates of
habaneros dipped in salt. "I've heard it said it's
addictive," he said.
But he said most people should not try this at home, not
even with the most potent antidote at the ready, ice cream.
(Milk is second best.)
The center's director, Jose M. Amador, said people in
Mexico had called wondering if A&M was out to "ruin" the
habanero, and asking, "What are you, crazy?" There was even
a move afoot in Mexico, he said, to trademark the Yucatan
habanero in the same way, say, that the French protect
Champagne and Cognac, but he shrugged off its prospects.
Actually, Dr. Amador said, he came from Havana, for which
the pepper is named, but had never eaten it there, Cuban
cuisine not being known for its spiciness. With the same
confusion, Dr. Crosby said, the habanero's scientific name
became Capsium Chinense, although the pepper undoubtedly
reached China via the tropical Americas.
Last week, Dr. Crosby was among 225 scientists, growers and
processors who gathered at the 17th International Pepper
Conference in Naples, Fla. Business was booming, a
conference announcement said: "In recent years, interest
and demand for peppers has increased dramatically
worldwide, and peppers are no longer considered a minor
crop in the global market."
Specialty peppers, including hot peppers, were a
particularly fast-growing part of the market, perhaps
increasing by 5 percent a year, said Gene McAvoy, the
conference organizer and a regional extension agent at the
University of Florida in Labelle.
Dr. Crosby, who delivered a paper on breeding peppers for
enhanced health through plant chemicals like carotenoids,
flavonoids and ascorbic acid, said capsaicin was being
studied as a stroke preventive. Other chemicals in peppers
were potent antioxidants and protected against macular
degeneration.
The process to produce a more palatable habanero, he said,
began with cross-breeding a regular hot variety with germ
plasm from a wild heatless pepper from Bolivia. "We took
pollen from the hot to pollinate the heatless to create a
hybrid," he said. The hybrid was then self-pollinated,
fertilized with its own pollen, to inbreed desired
qualities and then, Dr. Crosby said, "backcrossed to the
hot to recover more of its genes for flavor." That was
repeated for eight generations, or four years at two
growing seasons a year, to produce the TAM Mild Habanero.
He was breeding it in yellow but could also produce it in
white and red, he said.
"It's a pretty fruit," said Dr. Crosby, taking a bite and
chewing without flinching. "It's got the flavor but it
doesn't kill you."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company. |
