Posted on 11/21/2004 1:11:49 AM PST by neverdem
WESLACO, Tex., Nov. 18 - It's a burning issue for some hot-pepper lovers: Whatever possessed Kevin M. Crosby to create the mild habanero?
For Dr. Crosby, a plant geneticist at the Texas A&M Agricultural Experiment Station here near the Mexican border, the answer is simple: "I'm not going to take away the regular habanero. You can still grow and eat that, if you want to kill yourself."
But for those who prize the fieriest domesticated Capsicum for its taste and health-boosting qualities, Dr. Crosby and the research station in the Rio Grande Valley have developed and patented the TAM Mild Habanero, with less than half the bite of the familiar jalapeño (which A&M scientists also previously produced in a milder version).
With worldwide pepper consumption on the rise, according to industry experts, the new variety - a heart-shaped nugget bred in benign golden yellow to distinguish it from the alarming orange original, the common Yucatan habanero - is beginning to reach store shelves, to the delight of processors and the research station, which stands to earn unspecified royalties if the new pepper catches on.
"I love it," said Josh Ruiz, a local farmer whose pickers this week filled some 200 boxes of the peppers to be sold to grocers for about $35 a box. "It yields good and I'm able to eat it." As for the Yucatan habanero, he said, "My stomach just can't take it."
By comparison, if a regular jalapeño scores between 5,000 and 10,000 units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness based on the amount of the chemical capsaicin (cap-SAY-sin), and a regular habanero averages around 300,000 to 400,000 units, A&M's mild version registers a tepid 2,300, or barely one-hundredth of its coolest formidable namesake. A bell pepper, by the way, scores zero.
Not everyone hails the breakthrough. Dr. Crosby, 33, a native Texan and a distant relative of the crooner Bing, said "chili pepper fanatics" have called with rude questions about what he was thinking and why he was wasting his time. A Mexican voiced complete bewilderment. Why, he asked Dr. Crosby, would you want a habanero that's not hot?
Dr. Crosby said he sympathized. He had, after all, seen Mayans in the Yucatan eating their way through plates of habaneros dipped in salt. "I've heard it said it's addictive," he said.
But he said most people should not try this at home, not even with the most potent antidote at the ready, ice cream. (Milk is second best.)
The center's director, Jose M. Amador, said people in Mexico had called wondering if A&M was out to "ruin" the habanero, and asking, "What are you, crazy?" There was even a move afoot in Mexico, he said, to trademark the Yucatan habanero in the same way, say, that the French protect Champagne and Cognac, but he shrugged off its prospects.
Actually, Dr. Amador said, he came from Havana, for which the pepper is named, but had never eaten it there, Cuban cuisine not being known for its spiciness. With the same confusion, Dr. Crosby said, the habanero's scientific name became Capsium Chinense, although the pepper undoubtedly reached China via the tropical Americas.
Last week, Dr. Crosby was among 225 scientists, growers and processors who gathered at the 17th International Pepper Conference in Naples, Fla. Business was booming, a conference announcement said: "In recent years, interest and demand for peppers has increased dramatically worldwide, and peppers are no longer considered a minor crop in the global market."
Specialty peppers, including hot peppers, were a particularly fast-growing part of the market, perhaps increasing by 5 percent a year, said Gene McAvoy, the conference organizer and a regional extension agent at the University of Florida in Labelle.
Dr. Crosby, who delivered a paper on breeding peppers for enhanced health through plant chemicals like carotenoids, flavonoids and ascorbic acid, said capsaicin was being studied as a stroke preventive. Other chemicals in peppers were potent antioxidants and protected against macular degeneration.
The process to produce a more palatable habanero, he said, began with cross-breeding a regular hot variety with germ plasm from a wild heatless pepper from Bolivia. "We took pollen from the hot to pollinate the heatless to create a hybrid," he said. The hybrid was then self-pollinated, fertilized with its own pollen, to inbreed desired qualities and then, Dr. Crosby said, "backcrossed to the hot to recover more of its genes for flavor." That was repeated for eight generations, or four years at two growing seasons a year, to produce the TAM Mild Habanero. He was breeding it in yellow but could also produce it in white and red, he said.
"It's a pretty fruit," said Dr. Crosby, taking a bite and chewing without flinching. "It's got the flavor but it doesn't kill you."
I have yet to hear of anyone dying from eating habaneros, oh, they're hot alright, but they sure add a zing to food.
Fine by me. There's nothing worse than what might be a good bowl of chili that's impossible to eat because of the heat.
He's working on the health benefits of capsaicin by developing a pepper that has almost none?
There are plenty of mild peppers out there. Why spend money developing a mild version of the hottest pepper?
Sounds like more wasted research $$$$$$
Exactly.
I'm with ya.
I never liked eating something that would cause pain and torment for hours afterwards.
Uh huh.
Our tax dollars at work.
I'm with you! Mixing in thermonuclear plasma with your eats doesn't enhance the taste of food, it destroys it.
Agreed. --though I've never ate chili that was too hot.
Heh-heh - mild is still too hot for Minnesotans!
To be fair, it probably didn't cost all that much to develop, outside of seeds, dirt, fertilizer, and time.
Isn’t “mild habanero” an oxymoron?
You gotta be careful, though. One time I had some to my side along with some other, mild peppers. While reading something, I reached over and instead of getting the milder pepper, I got a habaneros and bit down.
I thought I was going into cardiac arrest.
P.S. The antidote is bread covered with much butter or margarine and a big glass of milk.
There's nothing worse than what might be a good bowl of chili that's impossible to eat because of the heat.
That’s why God invented cheese and crackers.
The substance in chilies that makes them spicy is called capsaicin. It is concentrated in the veins of the fruit (not the seeds) and stimulates the nerve endings in your mouth, fooling your brain into thinking you're in pain. The brain responds by releasing substances called endorphins, which are similar in structure to morphine. A mild euphoria results, and chilies can be mildly addictive because of this hot pepper "high".
You gotta be careful, though.
I made a mistake one time too. I had been used to using jalapeño in my chili. A friend had given me a few dozen good habanero peppers – and while fixing the chili (my recipe calls for liberal amounts of Jack Daniel’s and Budweiser) I chopped up the usual number of peppers – forgetting they were habaneros. It was hot. I had to dump grated cheese on it, and my dog kept running to the water dish after every bite.
It has happened.It can paralyze the muscles in the throat and close off the trachea. People have, indeed died from that. I always ate the hottest peppers like grapes- didn't much feel the signature burn at all. Then one time in a diner I couldnt' breathe and couldnt tell anyone about it. After a minute or so I got my breath back.It took three such incidents over a couple of years before I cranked back on my intake. I don't eat the really hot ones anymore and even go easy on the tabasco.
The hottest peppers I have experienced, other than premium hababeros are certain Thai peppers that a Thai lady grows near here on her 3 acre farm. She grows exclusively thai produce and makes a pretty good living with it. People come here from a hundred miles away just to buy her peppers at the local farmers' market. She sold them on line for a while but decided she preferred to do her business face to face.
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