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Improving a strain

M

Mark808

I just started my long term project on improving a strain of Bhut Jolokia peppers. I have some ideas on what to do but would like input from others on what they would do. First thing I did was to decide what strain to concentrate on. Limited space, time and reducing the chance of cross pollination made picking one strain necessary. Next was planting seeds and culling any that didn't sprout within 14 days. If it sprouted after, it got pulled out. Reason being I hate waiting for seeds to sprout and want fast sprouting as a characteristic. Out of approx. 150 sprouts, I have about 100 left. The next step will be to weed out the runts and those that cannot adapt to the local environment. I hope to have 10 mature plants to test heat levels, selecting seeds from the 3 hottest plants for the next generation. Any comments or suggestions appreciated.

Mark
 
Don't know much about this stuff (although I am very keen to learn a lot more!), but to my understanding, it takes a looong time to selectively breed a strain and to "stabilize" the traits you are trying breed into it, and even simply just to "improve" it - like, we are talking years and years here. Maybe somebody else might be able to expand on this (or correct me if I am wrong)?

Either way, good luck with your project - it sounds very interesting!
 
It's actually rather simple, you grow the plants, find the ones with the characteristics that you desire, save seeds from those, replant, repeat, till you get the best! One other word I would give is to define your priorities, if you want hot, always get the hottest pods, if you want large, always go for the large pods. Stick to what your looking for and one day it may show up!
 
I love this kind of projects...

You have the theory now you just need the patience to get the job done.

Since you are not trying to stabilize traits from a hybrid plant I would say that this is a pretty straight forward process.
A couple of generations and you'll have what your looking for.

I'm thinking about trying something similar but with some funky cross. :)

Bleash
 
The key is to grow out as many plants as possible in attempt to find one that is particularly better or different in a desirable trait. This is usually done with dozens or hundreds of plants, but even by starting with 150 you'll be letting the weak die off which is at least one desirable characteristic improved upon
 
If you can grow year round in your climate, you should get results really quickly. If I were trying to improve on my bhuts, I think I would try for earlier production and larger pods. So far I haven't eaten one and thought hmmm, wish that were just a little bit hotter. :)
 
Do a google search on T. Atlas Burpee, and Luther Burbank. They took selective breeding to a new level. they both became successful because they bred thousands of plants looking for the traits they were selecting.
 
Thanks for the link and comments/advice. I think we all practice selective breeding to a certain extent. The difficult part is deciding what traits to breed for and sticking to it generation after generation. Difficult because this year I might want the biggest plants, the following year the hottest pods, etc. The more traits desired, the greater the challenge will be to find those special plants to carry on with. Sticking with only one strain of pepper is gonna be the hardest part of the whole project without a doubt. Anyone else tried it or is having a variety the fun part?

Mark
 
Tigahb8 said:
It's actually rather simple, you grow the plants, find the ones with the characteristics that you desire, save seeds from those, replant, repeat, till you get the best! One other word I would give is to define your priorities, if you want hot, always get the hottest pods, if you want large, always go for the large pods. Stick to what your looking for and one day it may show up!
Click to expand...

+1 Butch...

this is my humble opinion...if you are going to put time into improving a strain of peppers....chunk the bhuts out the window and work on the trinidad varieties...reason...shelf life is much longer on the trinidad varieties than the bhuts and they are a much healthier variety IMO...thicker flesh gives you more weight per pod...bhuts are too thin fleshed for my liking...I have grown them for about 5 years now and only have 20 this year down from 50-75 over the past years...
 
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