Do Chili Peppers Cross Pollinate – Truth vs. Myth

Can Peppers Cross Pollinate?

You’ve planted Jalapeno seeds, but the fruit doesn’t have the characteristic elongated shape as it should according to the photos in the online search engine? In fact, it’s rounder, slightly wrinkled, and tastes more like Habanero than Jalapeno? Wondering where you went wrong and do peppers cross pollinate? Nowhere, it’s the genetics to blame. So let’s dive in! Chili peppers, like “regular” bell peppers, are self-pollinating plants. This means they carry both the stamen and pistil on the same flower. Pollination of chili peppers can occur with just a little wind or a raindrop hitting the flower stem “strongly” enough to release pollen. Although not necessary, peppers can also be pollinated by insects, most commonly bees.

Plant Genetics – Cross Pollination of Peppers

Genetics also exist in the plant world. There are even institutes and research centers dedicated to plant breeding, creating new varieties, lines, or genetically modified plants (GMOs). The main goal of plant breeding is to create a plant with the best characteristics that yield good harvests and/or, even better, are resistant to diseases and pests.

Cross Pollination Peppers – Hybrids

Hybrids are plants obtained through classical genetic cross pollination with the aim of combining the useful traits of both parents while eliminating their undesirable traits. This process is lengthy, and plant breeders are essentially artists whose efforts are typically seen only after about 10 years of research.

F₁, F₂, F₃, F₄….. Will My Peppers Cross Pollinate?

Associated with the term “hybrid” are several other concepts that we will explain here. So, the term “F₁” refers to the first generation of hybrids. Figuratively speaking, this is the generation of plants that possess all the desirable traits we aimed to obtain by crossing a specific father and mother. This generation is uniform in color, approximately in size, weight, and fruit shape, and if it’s a chili pepper, also in spiciness.

By growing such a plant and saving its seeds, the next year you will get offspring of the F₂ generation, which will no longer all be of the same shape, color, or spiciness. Let’s put it this way: they will slightly lose all the best traits of the first parents and reveal the worse ones. If you continue to grow such plants and save seeds, in F₃, F₄, or further generations, you will hardly see any characteristic that dominated in the first generation.

In general, this could happen with the Jalapeno from the beginning of the story, which lost all its Jalapeno characteristics because it was accidentally pollinated by a bee that had previously been on a Habanero and carried its pollen grains to the Jalapeno. The fruit that first year was normal, green, elongated, mildly spicy.

You saved the seeds and planted them the next year. Perhaps you already suspected from the different appearance of the leaves that it might not be Jalapeno. But when the fruits arrived, some of them, by their external appearance, gave even more suspicion, and when you bravely bit into the “Jalapeno,” you were hit by the sharp, brazen spiciness of the Habanero, and only then did you realize that the bee, genetics, and devil had played a trick on you.

Do you want to maintain the appearance of F₁ peppers in the following years?

You save your seeds, but you want to have peppers that are approximately similar every year to those in the “F₁” generation, and you don’t know how? Most commercially available varieties online are F₁ hybrids. These plants contain only dominant genes that give identical fruit appearance. If you were to save seeds from an F₁ hybrid and plant, let’s say, 50 of them the next year, after self-pollination, you would expect all the plants to be the same, but that won’t be the case.

All 50 plants of the F₂ generation could have different fruits. This is a sign that recessive genes are appearing that were not seen in the F₁ generation. To reduce diversity in the following generations, first select a fruit with the characteristics that suit you the most and only choose those for seed saving and the next planting. Keep doing this year after year, and only when you reach the F₈ generation will you likely have a uniform (stable) variety.

How to Cross Pollinate Peppers – Truths and Myths

If you are beginners in growing chili peppers, you have probably come across all sorts of “wise” advice, including the one that you should never plant a hot pepper near a sweet, “regular” pepper because it will also become hot!

Yes, it’s true, the fruits of the sweet pepper will become spicy, but only if there is accidental cross-pollination (for example, by stronger winds or insects), and you will only get such fruits if you save seeds from the accidentally crossed pepper and plant them the next year.

So, all changes in the fruit after accidental or intentional cross-pollination of two peppers (hot + hot, sweet + sweet, or hot + sweet) are not visible in the same season but only if you plant that seed the following year.

How to Prevent Cross-Pollination Between Varieties?

If you keep your peppers on the balcony next to each other or in a small garden where you can’t easily isolate one variety from another, you can apply the following measures:

• Isolation with bags:

  Flowers that you want to protect from visits by pollinating insects need to be placed in a transparent bag before they open, one that is permeable to light and air. You can also use mosquito netting. Tie the chosen material around the stem. If you’re not sure if the plant has self-pollinated, feel free to shake it a bit, just in case 🙂

• Isolation with cages:

  This method of isolation is a bit more difficult; you need to get cages covered with material such as mosquito netting, also permeable to air and light. The cage must be the size of the entire plant, which can be somewhat limiting for chili peppers because certain varieties reach over 1 m in height. Also, before the flowers open, put the plant in the cage, and take it out at the end when you see the fruits have already formed.