Thirsty chili plants make hotter peppers
Chili heat comes from capsaicin, a colourless, odourless waxy compound. How much a pepper makes depends partly on hardship: water-stressed plants usually yield fiercer fruit, and a drought-hit habanero concentrates capsaicin in parts of its pods. People in the Americas have been eating these berries since about 7,500 BC.
Chili peppers are the fruits of Capsicum, a genus in the nightshade family, and botanically they are berries. The plants began in what is now Peru and Bolivia and rank among the oldest crops in the Americas, domesticated independently in several places, including east-central Mexico around 6,000 years ago, the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands and the Amazon. Five species became widespread crops: annuum, baccatum, chinense, frutescens and pubescens. Peru grows the greatest variety of cultivated types, while Bolivians eat the widest range of wild ones, sorting them into round ulupicas and elongated arivivis.
The word chili comes from Classical Nahuatl and has nothing to do with the country Chile. Columbus's crew called the fruits pimientos because they bit like black pepper, an unrelated plant. Diego Álvarez Chanca, physician on the second voyage in 1493, brought chilies to Spain and in 1494 became the first European to write about their medicinal uses. Portuguese traders then carried them to Africa, Arabia and outposts such as Goa and Malacca, while Spanish galleons took them to the Philippines and across the Pacific.
Plants stand 20 to 60 cm tall and stay perennial if kept from frost, making them easy to grow in pots. They like warm, moist loam around 21 to 29 degrees Celsius, and seeds need about 21 degrees to sprout. Oddly, extreme heat of 30 to 38 degrees ruins pollen, so fewer flowers set fruit. Picking fruits green encourages more flowers; leaving them lets them ripen to red, orange or purple and often grow hotter. Aphids, spider mites, whitefly and grey mould are common troubles.
Growers dry chilies on the ground in hot countries or on threaded strings at home, turning them into flakes, powders, hot sauces and chili oil. In 2024 the world produced 45 million tonnes of green chillies and peppers, 39 percent in China, and 5.5 million tonnes of dried ones. The World Vegetable Center keeps one of the largest chili collections and is breeding varieties to cope with climate change.
Source: Chili pepper
