r/pepperbreeding • • Aug 19 '26

Discussion 👋Welcome to r/pepperbreeding - Introduce Yourself and Read First!

11 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I’m u/RespectTheTree, a founding moderator of r/pepperbreeding.

This is our new home for pepper breeding, genetics, selection, and curiosity-driven experimentation, from backyard crosses to long-arc pre-breeding projects. Whether you’re here to make hotter peppers, better peppers, weirder peppers, or just understand why peppers do what they do, you’re in the right place.

This community exists to talk openly about the process: what works, what fails, what surprises you, and what you learn along the way.

What to Post Post anything you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring, including:

  • breeding projects (successful or not)
  • crosses you’re working on or thinking about
  • phenotype photos, weird segregants, or stability questions
  • genetics, inheritance, or trait discussions
  • seed saving, selection methods, or grow-out notes
  • questions from beginners and deep dives from veterans alike

If it’s about peppers and you’re thinking critically about them, it belongs here.

Community Vibe We’re aiming for curious, constructive, and generous. This is not a hype subreddit and not a marketplace first. It’s a place to learn in public, share knowledge, and respect that everyone is somewhere different on the path.

Ask good questions. Answer thoughtfully. Be kind. Don’t hoard insight.

How to Get Started

  1. Introduce yourself in the comments below. Tell us what you grow or what you want to learn.
  2. Post something today. A simple question can spark a great discussion.
  3. If you know someone who would love this kind of community, invite them.
  4. Interested in helping out? We’ll be looking for additional moderators as things grow, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let’s make r/pepperbreeding a place where good questions get better answers, and peppers get weirder in the best possible way.

🌶️


r/pepperbreeding • • Feb 14 '26

Community Project Join the Open Pepper Breeding Daystar & Druid F2 Selection Project

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67 Upvotes

This project is part of Open Pepper Breeding (OPB) — a community-driven effort to develop new pepper varieties through distributed growouts and collaborative selection. The OPB community lives at r/pepperbreeding, where growers share results, nominate selections, and help advance promising lines.

This season focuses on two related breeding populations built from the same wild-to-bell genetic foundation:

Daystar (Bailey Pequin × Milena F1)
Designed to recombine wild resilience with elite modern bell performance, especially for intensive or protected growing systems.

Druid (Bailey Pequin × Emerald Giant)
Built on an open-pollinated bell foundation, emphasizing structural bell traits alongside environmental robustness and field adaptability.

Both populations are currently in the F2 generation, where recombination creates the greatest diversity and the highest chance of discovering exceptional plants. Participants are encouraged to grow a population, identify standout individuals, and share observations with the community.

If you want to understand the breeding goals, parent lines, and selection strategy in detail, you can read the full project description here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14IDBZgKmI6hC6Xg1iz-2KP_s2cmWHzoZHW2vdPCf6NI/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks to everyone growing these populations — distributed selection is what makes this project possible.

Get seeds and participate:
https://pepperbreeding.com/product-category/breeding-population/f2/


r/pepperbreeding • • 19h ago

Discussion F1- Scarlett x Pepapeach stripes

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11 Upvotes

I appreciate the post! I've seen the first flower from my annuum x bacatum [scarlett x PPS] pepper cross. The first photos show the F1 cross; the other two are the mother and father of the plant. Of course, the first pollination was done, and I'll do it again tomorrow. I'll be happy to share photos when I see fruit ;) P.S. The photo of the Scarlett flower is not mine, I found it online and it best represents the Scarlett flower. Sorry about that :(


r/pepperbreeding • • 2d ago

Community Project Tropical Cream F1 🖤🧡❤️

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29 Upvotes

Do you remember my crossing project?

Say hello to my Tropical Cream F1, a Baccatum x Chinense interspecific cross with the goal to get striped peppers, dark foliage and as much Chinense alike heat as possible without loosing the Baccatum flavor!

I'll share some of the seeds with community friends and can't wait to see what happens in F2 ->

I also started some side projects with it like crossing it with other dark foliaged peppers, a wild capsicum and tried miserably to get it crossed with the Pubescens complex 😅


r/pepperbreeding • • 2d ago

Discussion Shipping problem for the seeds

4 Upvotes

Discovering about this community today I was extremely hyped about getting some F3 seeds…

But I can get them shipped to the UK 😔

If there’s any workarounds, please let me know, thank you all 🙃


r/pepperbreeding • • 3d ago

Chinense X Annuum

3 Upvotes

Has anybody had any luck breeding Chinense with Annuum? I’m thinking of breeding a Jalapeño with a Citron


r/pepperbreeding • • 3d ago

Do different peppers take different times to sprout?

4 Upvotes

My bell peppers have already sprouted but my Guam booni pepper are still in seed will i be able to cross them if they sprout at different times


r/pepperbreeding • • 3d ago

Bringing back a Surinam staple to its former glory :)

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22 Upvotes

Capsicum chinense 'Madame Jeanette' select seedlings. From the bunch of different accessions/selections last year, only one really stood out in both taste and vigour. Sadly most selections out there have at one point or another crossed with different lines or lost some of their shape or flavour, or their vigour. From that one that met my standards, i harvested and grew the open pollinated seeds (could've been pollinated by any of the other 4-7 jeanettes as well), and planted 30. Now i'm down to around 10 with only 7 of those i hope to carry into next year for seed production. Planted the seedlings halfway through july and after a mere three months already got the first fruits ripening. Happy to report both shape and vigour have carried over well, now to see if it'll be the same for taste 🤞

Always fun to bring back a line in decline and breathe some new life into it 😊


r/pepperbreeding • • 4d ago

Research Part two

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6 Upvotes

I recently posted about breeding mega gold III and cherry chocolate candy cane all from gurneys, and I did two pollinations. One that is on an open flower, and one unopened flower that I did surgery on. I want to know if the pollination was successful. (The ones marked in red pipe cleaners) (the closed one is the one I did is the smaller one) (the parent is the cherry chocolate candy cane) (go onto my profile for the original post)


r/pepperbreeding • • 5d ago

Research Tovarii

5 Upvotes

Im wondering how hard is it to make a cross with tovarii and baccatum and i know some person has made that hybrid here but i cant find any updates or anything or any other people that had done it. Is it becous its hard or becous tovarii is hard to find


r/pepperbreeding • • 11d ago

Charapita hybrid. Would you grow it?

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32 Upvotes

This is an F5, it's got a real unique flavor that's bittersweet and funky aromatic with no heat. Not the most productive plant but if you knew the parents it'd blow your mind. I might release it next season, it grows well every year. Any name suggestions?


r/pepperbreeding • • 11d ago

Research Peach coloration genetics

3 Upvotes

I was wondering is peach coloration coused by the same genes in every capsicum that has it. Like C.Baccatum and C.chinense is it the same in them?


r/pepperbreeding • • 15d ago

Saving Seeds or Let Them Go

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13 Upvotes

Trinidad Scorpion and Orange Habaneros grown side by side in a container. Picked today, 10/5/26 an nearly all are very ripe with a couple almost past ripe…. Nearest other peppers grew 5 feet away and in the ground. Wondering about hab/ scorpion and scorpion/hab cross possibilities as well as potential for some kind of mongrel due to sweet pepper proximity (5 feet away)…. Wasn’t planning to save seeds but some of the posts among you all are inspiring. Interesting thoughts from youz?


r/pepperbreeding • • 17d ago

Research I'm trying to breed these peppers

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10 Upvotes

So, I have a cherry chocolate candy cane, and a mega gold III hybrid (all from gourneys) and I want to collect as much data/research I need about this. (I think cherry chocolate candy cane is the right way to say it)


r/pepperbreeding • • 18d ago

Research I have a question

2 Upvotes

After you have germinated your first F1 hybrid do you let them self pollinate or pollinate it with its brothers?


r/pepperbreeding • • 19d ago

This Seasons Favorite

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16 Upvotes

Saved seeds from a Chuck Norris Apocalypse Scorpion and was surprised the offspring had purple tinted leaves, something obviously cross pollinated it (unsure what since I grow a ton of dark leaf peppers). The peppers were very large, and even more surprising, had only a small amount of heat, like jalapeno level, I was expecting it to pack a nasty punch. And then the flavor! So robust and delicious, like a roasted red pepper with fruity chinense but none of the bitterness or floral notes.

I put two peppers into a pot of Jambalaya and it flavored the whole thing with barely a glimmer of heat. I didn't think this was going to be worth a grow out but now I'm definitely going to try to stabilize it. I can't handle much heat so this was perfect for me, hoping the next generation can replicate some of these traits.


r/pepperbreeding • • 19d ago

Community Project Help! Daystar F1 Selection

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17 Upvotes

We’ve got some lookers among the first generation Bailey Pequin x Milena Bell Pepper hybrid (Daystar F1)!

Although these are all the same hybrid pepper, they have very different levels of sweetness and pungency.

You can participate by giving your thoughts on what will be harvested for you all to grow during the more fun second generation next season.

We’ll be harvesting seed for the community project as soon as a clear winner is selected by you all- the rest are headed to the fermentor 🌶️🐶


r/pepperbreeding • • 20d ago

Bailey Pequin x Milena F2 - firm flesh trait on dehiscent fruit

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13 Upvotes

An unexpected result - firm(er) flesh on a dehiscent fruit. It also seems correlated with thick flesh. Definitely going to keep selecting this trait in these populations. A very rough count is like 2 plants out of ~30, so maybe 1-2 genes controlling. I'll have to do the inheritance model assessment after I get evals done.


r/pepperbreeding • • 21d ago

Research Can guam booni and bell peppers cross?

1 Upvotes

I have some guam booni peppers I found growing in my grandma’s backyard and some bell peppers can i grow them and cross them? Are they compatible?

Edit: today I planted the seeds


r/pepperbreeding • • 23d ago

Germplasm Lovely day for some evals

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10 Upvotes

Tropical Tiger OPs


r/pepperbreeding • • 25d ago

Discussion Possible Dragon Cayenne mutation? One plant completely changed fruit shape

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14 Upvotes

FIRST 3 photos- new mutant pepper
LAST 3 photos- normal plants/what the plant looked like originally.

I have three Dragon Cayenne plants growing right next to each other in the same office window. All three originally produced normal long, thin cayenne fruit.
2 years later, Plant 2 started producing a few short, round, really lobed fruit. Now it has multiple lobed fruit growing on different branches, while Plants 1 and 3 are still producing normal cayennes.

The weird part is that Plant 2 seems a little different beyond just the fruit. Its flowers consistently look like they have a wider center/ovary than the flowers on the normal plants, and the newer leaves also feel a little thicker and look slightly different. Otherwise the plant looks healthy. The fruit is smooth and I’m not seeing obvious scarring.

My boyfriend ate one of the ripe red lobed ones and said it tasted at least as hot as the normal Dragon Cayennes, maybe even hotter.

I took cuttings from Plant 2 and have them rooting in water, and I’m saving seeds from the lobed fruit. My plan is to grow a bunch of the seeds next year next to normal Dragon Cayennes and see if the shape shows up again.

I’m curious what people here think is going on. Could this just be some kind of developmental/environmental response, broad mites or another pest, a somatic mutation, or something genetic that might actually be heritable?

If the seedlings end up producing the same lobed fruit, I’d love to try stabilizing it into its own variety. Tentative name is Dragon Bell :)

Edit: plant 2 used to produce normal dragon cayenne peppers before things started getting funky over time


r/pepperbreeding • • 25d ago

Research Show me your notes!

4 Upvotes

How do you take notes of your crosses? What info do you include? Just looking for ideas or things I may have missed. Is there a good template online I could follow? Any info is appreciated thank you!


r/pepperbreeding • • 26d ago

Community Project Growing this out to become a sub-variety

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8 Upvotes

I found this mutation on my Bhut Jolokia pepper plant, and I noticed that it was a bit smoother and shorter plus smaller than the normal ghost pepper pods that I see on the rest of the plant, I know that the plant is not a cross of anything else because I know it’s Bhut Jolokia. I’m thinking of trying to grow it out, and isolate its genetics using a grow bag. But if I do successfully do it, I’ll probably be naming it the Bhuterball; with the Bhuterball I’m gonna try and get some other colors of it like yellow and peach. But, if you guys know if I can, it’ll be greatly appreciated.


r/pepperbreeding • • 27d ago

Discussion Crossing and phenotype hunting Brazilian Starfish pepper.

1 Upvotes

I’m planning on growing Brazilian Starfish Yellow/Red next year for my new upcoming pepper garden (already grown peppers), but once I grow those I’ll cross them thus creating a peach variant (f2 selection), then I’ll phenotype for a dwarf mutation of that variant, and hunt for a variegated one that has white and green leafs. Thus, naming it the Dwarf Peach Brazilian Starfish Variegated (White and Green). But, also I want to try and speed things up and not have to deal with the incrushiating pain of growing it out for 10+ years.


r/pepperbreeding • • Sep 20 '26

Germplasm Offspring of spontaneous variegation in Capsicum Frutescens

18 Upvotes
Photo from the original plant
Fruit from the original plant

WE GOT VARIEGATION

To be perfectly clear these seeds were saved from a plant that never had the opportunity to be near a variegated, and possibly compatible, fish pepper plant. Never grown near it, my tools regular cleaned/sterilised, and I grow solely indoors.

Unless by chance a bee flew up into my apartment window after landing on someone's fish pepper plant in another apartment and then flew into mine but I think that's unlikely 😅

I grew other seedlings with the original plant and none had any variegation. All seeds from the same plant and same chilli.

Seedlings in the same seed raising mix, under the same humidity dome, never had any. Nor did other plants (including mostly chillies) when this one got moved into a hydroponics with them. Even when their were pests the variegation didn't show up ruling out disease.

Surprised it's shown up so clearly in the first leaves, albeit my photos don't do much justice, but I'm excited!