Dear Steemians,
great news, we already have around 35 people signed up! Yay! There is still some space though, as I said about 50-100 participants would be optimal. If you know someone interested feel free to tell them and to send me an email to participate. The clear majority of participants would like to follow my suggestion to breed peppers, and this we will do! :)
Purple flower - Some pepper cultivars have dark purple leaves and flowers
To proceed, we should decide on the trait we want to introduce from one variety to the other. We can select two traits at the most as selecting more would become too complex. Furthermore, some traits are quite hard to measure and quantify (e.g. taste, how spicy the pepper is) while others are more easily assessed. Easily assessible traits are things that can be seen by the naked eye or measured by simple methods, things like colour, shape, size and time between flowers and fruits. I think it would make sense to choose one out of each category. This way we would have something easily assessed and one more complex trait. But now, it is on you to decide! After we decide on traits, I can search my database (and others on the web) to come up with suitable candidates. So, what would you like? A sweet and colourful variant? A small and hot variety? Sweet and hot? Tall and early? Let me know! Just post your favorite combination into the comments and let the other participants vote! Alternatively, you can send again a mail to
plantbreedingathome@posteo.de
to tell me your personal choice. If you are experienced in growing peppers and already have a specific variety in mind, feel free to add it as a suggestion. I will contact a few more people and post to a variety of other media to gather some more people (and introduce them to steem, ideally), so the voting on this matter is open until the 10th of September. Having the communal choice, I will then proceed to find suitable varieties and order their seeds, to begin growing plants and crossing them. The resulting seeds will subsequently be sent out to you, the whole process will of course be documented! To get some impressions of what is possible, I included some pictures of different varieties!
Habaneros - Famous for their intense hotness
Ornamental Peppers - The mixture of green and purple leaves together with bright red peppers creates beautiful ornamental plants
Tiny Peppers Close-up - A close-up from probably the tiniest peppers I ever grew, the fruits measure only about 1 cm
Fruit of a unknown Capsiucum annuum - The genus "Capsicum" (pepper) is divided into many species, with C. annuum being the species of many popular cultivars like "Cayenne", "Jalapeno" or "Lombardo"
In the meantime while there is a lot of preparing on my side, I will start to tell you more about the background knowledge. Next week I will start with an introduction into what DNA is and how heredity works, as this is fundamental for breeding. But do not worry, I will explain it as detailed as necessery but as understandable as possible! I have given lectures to non-biologists already several times, and I am always here for questions. From there we will explore different breeding methods and look at peppers as a plant species with a bit of explanation why they are spicy and how this sensation works (spoiler: it has nothing to do with tastebuds!). This will be mixed with updates from the project, so things will be kept interesting!
Last but not least, as this was asked a few times: This project will not cost too much time or money. When the plants are growing you have nothing to do but to water them, and only a few occasions where data is collected or additional plant care is required, like putting them in a bigger pot. If we calculate with a timeperiod of 6 months, it is roughly 5 min per day on average. And concerning the costs: It will be roughly the cost of a letter/ small package. If this a concern just contact me privately by email, I am sure I can help if this is a problem. For those who would need to buy soil and pots, it should not be more than around 15$, alternatively you could recycle e.g. a joghurt cup or something like this to use it as pot, I will include manuals in my posts. I grew around 70 plants when I was 15 years old and still in school, I know all the tricks to keep costs down! ;)
To sum it up: post your favourite combination of traits in the comments and let the other people vote on it, or send it to the email provided. Enjoy!
Dysprosium
Pictures are taken from pixabay.com, the tiny pepper closeup is my own work.