Michael Stravato for
The New York Times
Posted on 11/21/2004 2:43:59 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
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."
Michael Stravato for
The New York Times
Kevin M. Crosby, plant geneticist
at Texas A&M's Agricultural
Experiment Station, inspects
his new mild habanero pepper crop.
Stimulating the tear duct, maybe? That would make sense.
I've been growing them for years and have a very healthy respect for what not to touch after handling them - even when I'm just picking them.
Did you know that if you grow jalepeno peppers near bell peppers, they will cross pollinate. Makes for some nice spicy bell peppers!!
3 words:
Dave's Insanity Sauce
About 10 years ago I brought some habaneros from my garden to the owner of a local restaurant (back then you couldn't get them locally). He wasn't in and so I gave them to the bar tender and explained what they were and that they needed to be put somewhere so no one mistook them for something else.
One of the cooks always bragged about being able to eat anything, nothing was too hot for him. Well, the bartender decided to play a joke on the cook. In all concience I could not sit there and allow it to happen and so in no uncertain terms told the guy not to eat it....he didn't pay attention to me. He didn't take a bite.....he put the wholel thing in his mouth and started chewing.
It is the closest I have ever come to seeing a black man turn white......prior to him turning green.
Maybe in Ohio or something....
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."Steam blowing outta my ears and sweat pouring from my head just thinking of the REAL thang!!
The first time I planted a large garden I planted hot cherry peppers next to the habaneros, not thinking about the cross pollination of the hots to the hots.......the sweet bells were far, far away.
This was a very large garden, a joint effort by a half dozen couples. I was working in the kitchen making pickles one day when some of the guys came in with buckets of the various hot peppers. I grabbed one of the cherrypeppers, as I have always been able to eat them..........not those.
YIKES.
When I plant hot peppers, I put them in the area of the garden least impacted by the wind, and start by putting the habaneros in the most protected part, and then go down according to the heat of each, with jalapenos furthest away.
Nice try!!!!!!!
What kind of a wimp are you?
I've got the real thing drying in my kitchen - how much doyou want me to send you?
Pepperses is my preciousss.....
I suppose if you had any kind of heart ailment, you might actually die eating one of these....
ROFL!!!!!!!
How many do you want me to send you?
Speaking of hot, have you ever grown mustard greens? I used to grow them organicly, and they were much, much hotter than the wimpy stuff at the store. The spice goes right up your sinuses like carbonation! This is the stuff the Chinese make that hot mustard with. ( i.e. real mustard)
You are probably right. never thought about it that way.
We love hot peppers - 14 different varieties in the garden this year. a total of 44 plants. there are going to be some very suprised hunters this year when they bite into that first venison steak.........the dang deer decimated the garden, including the hot peppers.
LOL.
BTW, there is no "ñ" in "habanero." Don't know who started that one (common as it is), but an "ñ" doesn't belong in the word "habanero" any more than John Kerry belongs in the White House.
God Save Us! Leave the Habanero Alone!
MMMMMM! Spicy venison!! Now I'm hungry!!!
Supposedly wild turkeys love hot peppers, and turkey that have eaten peppers are especially tasty.
Sorry if my comment came out confusing - I was talking about cherry peppers, not cherry tomatoes. As to cross-species things, I do know that you can't grow tomatoes or eggplants near tobacco - can't remember all the whys about that off the top of my head but it has to do with the nicotine in the members of the nightshade family (tomato and eggplant among them)
Not only have I never grown mustard greens, I've never even tasted them to my knowlege.
By organic, I take it you mean without chemical fertilizers, and weed or pest killers? If so, that's my garden.
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