Plant histories
The history behind a number of crop plants.
Looking at where they originated, their domestication, the introduction of these crops to Europe, how European attitudes to them changed over the centuries and ultimately how our changing demands have influenced the plants themselves.
How capsicums have changed
Plant breeders are always looking for ways to improve crops, and new varieties of capsicums are being bred all the time. There are bigger ones, sweeter ones, ones with different shaped fruit, also more nutritious fruit or plants with greater resistance to drought and pests.
We often think of plant breeding as a fairly modern practise but by the time Europeans arrived in Mexico, Aztec plant breeders had already developed dozens of different types of capsicum fruit.
Capsicums are an important crop and improvements are still being made to chilli and pepper plants even though there are already many different types available. Recent improvements include increased quality and yield (number of fruit per plant), more variety of colours and enhanced nutritional value. One new variety of green New Mexican chilli provides the entire minimum daily requirement of vitamin C; it has three times as much vitamin C as a Valencia orange.
Bags of freshly cropped peppers.
Photographer: hgcrpd. Copyright: CC
An ongoing challenge in chilli growing communities is to create a chilli plant with the hottest, most fiery chillies, to bump the current one off the top of the Scoville scale (see the Firepower section in Uses of capsicums).
