Hot Pepper

Hot Pepper is cultivated on 850,000 ha in India and the red dry peppers are huge export earners for the country. It is consumed as fresh green and red fresh & dry and is a very important ingredient of Indian cuisine. At Tierra we breed for meeting the needs of the farmers in fresh green, dual purpose, and red dry segments. Our breeding target is resistance to powdery mildew, CMV & leaf curl virus (LCV) in all segments and anthracnose resistance especially in red dry segment. In the red dry types, we are breeding for high pigment (capsanthin) for improved color. We are also working on new plant type that will ease harvesting the red dry chilies. We intend to use molecular markers to assist our breeders to speed up product delivery. Breeding for water use efficiency is another key goal.