Posts Tagged: Aziz Baameur

Reporter ponders UC Cooperative Extension pepper research

A column in the Salinas Californian playfully reflected on UC Cooperative Extension research that aims to turn up the heat in the mighty jalapeño pepper.

Writer Dennis Taylor reported that Aziz Baameur, UCCE farm advisor in Santa Clara and San Benito counties, is trying to increase the Scoville units in hot peppers by adjusting on-farm practices.

"The trend lately is toward hotter items," said Jeff Sanders of George Chiala Farms in Morgan Hill, the site of the research project.

Taylor waxes on about super hot peppers that are being grown around the world - including the current record holder, according to Guinness, the Carolina Reaper, which is 900 times hotter than the jalapeño.

He wrote that he asked a newsroom colleague, UCCE Master Gardener Laramie Trevino, whether she would prefer more heat in jalapeños, and he mentioned a plan to call Baameur and Sanders to learn more about the motives behind their research work.

For more information about the hot pepper research, see: Some like it hotter: UC Cooperative Extension tries to grow a spicier jalapeño.

Some like it hotter: UC Cooperative Extension tries to grow a spicier jalapeño

Slicing open a ripe green jalapeño he had just snapped off a plant in the field, Aziz Baameur pointed the blade of his pocket knife at the yellow line. “This is where capsaicin is located. It's what gives the pepper its pungency and it's what we're trying to increase,” said the UC Cooperative Extension advisor.

“Some people think the seeds make it hot, but capsaicin is what makes chile peppers hot,” said Baameur, who works with vegetable growers in Santa Clara and San Benito counties.

Baameur is trying to grow a hotter jalapeño by studying the variables that raise the Scoville units, which measure a pepper's heat. For the past four years, he has been documenting the effects of different rates of water, potassium, sea salt and nitrogen applied to the jalapeño crop at George Chiala Farms in Morgan Hill.

“We're trying to find a way to raise the capsaicin level of the jalapeño and raise the Scoville units, which will then allow us to have spicier peppers,” said Jeff Sanders, raw product coordinator for George Chiala Farms.

Research studies in Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand and Spain have shown that water stress results in hotter peppers so Sanders and Baameur tried irrigating with less water. “For us, it did not show that,” Baameur said. “We sampled fruit and we analyzed it for capsaicin content, which makes a pepper hot. It was fairly low, actually it was almost half of what the normal treatment, or control, would be.”

The relatively cooler climate of the Santa Clara County area may be the reason the pepper plants produce different results. “I think it's more a relation to heat, ambient temperature, much more than just water,” Baameur said. “Cool years and hot years will result in different heat units for the same jalapeño variety.”

The amount of potassium hasn't made a difference, but adjusting nitrogen fertilizer seems promising.

“High nitrogen is promising because it produces a hotter pepper and also allows for high crop yields,” Baameur said. “Low nitrogen also resulted in higher pungency, it brings a lot of heat in the peppers,” he said. “However it is correlated with lower yields.”

Next season, Baameur will try to determine the optimal amount of nitrogen to apply to raise the capsaicin levels of the jalapeño without hurting crop yields.

“The trend lately is toward hotter items,” said Sanders, noting a growing popularity of foods containing habanero and even the Bhut jolokia, or ghost pepper. “Both of those are significantly hotter than jalapeños, but the jalapeno is still sort of the standard bearer for a hot pepper,” Sanders said. “Those are the items people consistently want. A jalapeño chip still has more name recognition than a habanero chip. And the hotter you get the pepper, the easier it is to adjust your end product.”

Although there are hotter peppers, such as habaneros, cayenne and ghost peppers, adding other peppers to the end product would alter the flavor. Bhut jolokias, for example, can be up to 1,000 times hotter than a jalapeño, but have a citrus flavor.

“When you're talking about a small amount of that pepper in your product, just a slight citrus flavor can overpower the heat very easily,” said Sanders. “So it's more important that we reach high heat levels with the flavors that our customers are requiring.”

Consistency of pungency in the peppers is also one of the pepper grower's goals.

“We're trying to get a consistent heat level so that our jalapeños going to the processing plant always reach the same Scoville unit score,” Sanders said. “This makes our end product more consistent, which makes our customers happy because then the product they receive to go into their items is more consistent.”

How do we measure a 'great' plant?

For the Great Veggie Adventure, farm advisors with the University of California Small Farm Program will be field-testing varieties of rainbow-colored carrots, watermelon (or red meat) radishes, party (colored) cauliflower and Romanesco.

But what do we mean by "field-testing"?

In agricultural science, there are actually several different methods to test how well crops grow in the field. For this project, farm advisors are planting varieties of vegetables, monitoring the plants' growth and recording information about the plants.

For each row of crops, the advisors will record the days when:

• the seeds are planted
• the plants' leaves first emerge from the ground (aka “emergence”)
• the plants begin to bloom (for plants with edible flowers or fruit)
• the plants are harvested

Farm advisors will also judge the plant's appearance, whether its health looks very good, good, fair or poor.

"What I'm looking for there is vigor, color, leaf size, stalk size and other characteristics. Do the plants look healthy and vigorous?" explained Aziz Baameur, farm advisor in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. "This is very subjective, but gives us a general judgment of plant health and allows for comparison between different varieties of the same vegetable."

To help judge how many of the seeds grew into plants, the farm advisors will estimate the "stand" in the field. To do that, they will count or estimate the number of plants per a given area, for example, per square foot.

When it comes time to harvest the crop, the farm advisors will also record how many vegetables they harvested and the total weight of the vegetables. Knowing this information can help estimate the size of the vegetables. For example:

• Harvest from Variety A plants: 200 carrots, weighing 30 pounds total
• Harvest from Variety B plants: 300 carrots, weighing 20 pounds total
• Harvest from Variety C plants: 100 carrots, weighing 18 pounds total

From this example, which variety of plants grows the biggest individual carrots?

Some vegetables are harvested all at once, while others are harvested repeatedly every few days or every week. So the farm advisors will also record when, how many and total weight for each time they harvest vegetables.

How can this information help a farmer? When farmers are deciding which crops to plant, it is important they know what to expect so they can make plans to sell their vegetables. How many days does it take for a particular variety of Romanesco to grow from seed to harvest? Does this other variety of plant grow smaller or larger radishes? If I plant 100 seeds, how many plants can I expect to grow?

The answers to these questions will vary based on the vegetable variety, where it is planted and when it is planted — which is one more reason why UC farm advisors are planting the same varieties throughout the state at numerous times.

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