Hot, Hot, Hot: TigerPaw-NR habaneros
It's not every day that I read something that makes my eyes instinctively start watering — and no, I'm not talking about Bette Davis movie synopses.
In this case, my teary-eyed reaction came in response to news from the scientists of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Charleston, S.C., that they've developed a new habanero pepper called TigerPaw-NR.
Maybe that doesn't sound like hot news to you, but this might: TigerPaw scores a scorching 348,634 on the Scoville Heat Scale, the system used to show peppers' relative heat in terms of their content of capsaicin, which is the compound that produces a burning sensation on the tongue. To put this in perspective, jalapeños have a Scoville score of 3,500 to 5,000. As my mother would say, it sounds like TigerPaw could take the paint off a house!
This next bit of information might sound somewhat anticlimactic, but the ARS scientists aren't as excited about that over-the-top Scoville score as they are about another attribute of TigerPaw — the special trait that gives its name that extra "NR."
Those letters stand for "nematode resistant," which means that TigerPaw is resistant to tiny soil-dwelling worms that wreak havoc in a whole host of crops, but especially in habanero peppers. In fact, all habanero-type plants that are currently available to commercial growers as well as backyard gardeners are susceptible to nematodes.
But not TigerPaw! The scientists say it can fend off the southern root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne incognita; the peanut root-knot nematode, M. arenaria; and the tropical root-knot nematode, M. javanica. In greenhouse tests, TigerPaw peppers had 97 percent fewer nematode eggs per gram of fresh fruit than did TigerPaw's susceptible parent plant.
Nematodes do their damage by feeding on a plant's roots, eventually reducing the host plant's ability to take in water and nutrients, and making the plant more susceptible to damage from heat and nutritional deficiencies. Even worse, once the soil has become infested with nematodes, it stays infested.
So how does one go about breeding a pepper that's the culinary equivalent of a flame thrower? No genetic modification-magic was involved; the scientists used conventional breeding of a type known as "recurrent backcross." That transferred the gene responsible for root-knot nematode resistance in PA-426, a Scotch Bonnet type of pepper, into PA-350, a classic habanero type. The scientists report that in tests, TigerPaw's nematode resistance was equal to that of the Scotch Bonnet type PA-426.
By now you must be wondering, "Where did that name come from?" The picture may give you a good clue, but actually, a fellow scientist saw the pepper and remarked to the ARS breeders that it looked like a tiger's paws — and that was that!
TigerPaw isn't the ARS scientists' first contender in the realm of eye-watering delicacies. In the early 1990s, they came out with the Charleston Hot, a cayenne pepper that zipped from laboratory to marketplace in a scant two years. The scientists noted at the time that while it often takes years for a new pepper to catch on, Charleston Hot was an overnight sensation.
You've tasted the fruits of the ARS scientists' labors if you ever dipped your tongue into a hot sauce named Holy City Heat, produced by Atlantis Coastal Foods of Charleston, S.C.; the Charleston Hot was the main ingredient. It also turned up in "Charleston Hell Hot Sauce," marketed by the Three Amigos restaurant chain.
The Charleston Hot and its sister, Carolina Cayenne, were hits with breeders as well, but for slightly different reasons. Like the more recent TigerPaw, the two earlier peppers were snatched up worldwide as sources of resistance (in cayenne peppers) against the dreaded root-knot nematodes.
In case tongue-blistering food isn't your thing, you might be interested to know about some other good work by the Charleston scientists to also make bell peppers resistant to the southern root-knot nematode. In 1997, they released two varieties, Charleston Belle and Carolina Wonder, that were the first-ever commercial nematode-resistant bell peppers.
Since my stomach lining's not as tough as it once was, I'll probably just be admiring TigerPaw from afar — but these orange beauties should certainly give pungent pepper aficionados something to talk about!
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.
It's not every day that I read something that makes my eyes instinctively start watering — and no, I'm not talking about Bette Davis movie synopses.
In this case, my teary-eyed reaction came in response to news from the scientists of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Charleston, S.C., that they've developed a new habanero pepper called TigerPaw-NR.
Maybe that doesn't sound like hot news to you, but this might: TigerPaw scores a scorching 348,634 on the Scoville Heat Scale, the system used to show peppers' relative heat in terms of their content of capsaicin, which is the compound that produces a burning sensation on the tongue. To put this in perspective, jalapeños have a Scoville score of 3,500 to 5,000. As my mother would say, it sounds like TigerPaw could take the paint off a house!
TigerPaw-NR, a new habanero pepper developed and released recently by ARS scientists is highly resistant to many important species of root-knot nematodes and is among the spiciest peppers ever developed. (Photo by Stephen Ausmus)
Those letters stand for "nematode resistant," which means that TigerPaw is resistant to tiny soil-dwelling worms that wreak havoc in a whole host of crops, but especially in habanero peppers. In fact, all habanero-type plants that are currently available to commercial growers as well as backyard gardeners are susceptible to nematodes.
But not TigerPaw! The scientists say it can fend off the southern root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne incognita; the peanut root-knot nematode, M. arenaria; and the tropical root-knot nematode, M. javanica. In greenhouse tests, TigerPaw peppers had 97 percent fewer nematode eggs per gram of fresh fruit than did TigerPaw's susceptible parent plant.
Nematodes do their damage by feeding on a plant's roots, eventually reducing the host plant's ability to take in water and nutrients, and making the plant more susceptible to damage from heat and nutritional deficiencies. Even worse, once the soil has become infested with nematodes, it stays infested.
So how does one go about breeding a pepper that's the culinary equivalent of a flame thrower? No genetic modification-magic was involved; the scientists used conventional breeding of a type known as "recurrent backcross." That transferred the gene responsible for root-knot nematode resistance in PA-426, a Scotch Bonnet type of pepper, into PA-350, a classic habanero type. The scientists report that in tests, TigerPaw's nematode resistance was equal to that of the Scotch Bonnet type PA-426.
By now you must be wondering, "Where did that name come from?" The picture may give you a good clue, but actually, a fellow scientist saw the pepper and remarked to the ARS breeders that it looked like a tiger's paws — and that was that!
TigerPaw isn't the ARS scientists' first contender in the realm of eye-watering delicacies. In the early 1990s, they came out with the Charleston Hot, a cayenne pepper that zipped from laboratory to marketplace in a scant two years. The scientists noted at the time that while it often takes years for a new pepper to catch on, Charleston Hot was an overnight sensation.
You've tasted the fruits of the ARS scientists' labors if you ever dipped your tongue into a hot sauce named Holy City Heat, produced by Atlantis Coastal Foods of Charleston, S.C.; the Charleston Hot was the main ingredient. It also turned up in "Charleston Hell Hot Sauce," marketed by the Three Amigos restaurant chain.
The Charleston Hot and its sister, Carolina Cayenne, were hits with breeders as well, but for slightly different reasons. Like the more recent TigerPaw, the two earlier peppers were snatched up worldwide as sources of resistance (in cayenne peppers) against the dreaded root-knot nematodes.
In case tongue-blistering food isn't your thing, you might be interested to know about some other good work by the Charleston scientists to also make bell peppers resistant to the southern root-knot nematode. In 1997, they released two varieties, Charleston Belle and Carolina Wonder, that were the first-ever commercial nematode-resistant bell peppers.
Since my stomach lining's not as tough as it once was, I'll probably just be admiring TigerPaw from afar — but these orange beauties should certainly give pungent pepper aficionados something to talk about!
The Agricultural Research Service is the chief in-house scientific
research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You can read
more about ARS discoveries at http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/.
About the author
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.