A couple of months ago, our UCHU Spice team was all abuzz when we added a new member to our pepper family: the Bhut Jolokia, commonly known as Ghost Pepper. We shared a couple of pictures with you when the pepper hit our processing line, remember? Before that, however, we had already put in a lot of work. Did you know that it takes us a minimum of 2 to 3 years to bring a new pepper to market from scratch? Here’s a sneak peek into the work we do and the importance of our agricultural programs!

The beginning: the arrival of the chili pepper seed

As things often do, it all begins with seed. You might think seeds might come in a packet or a large bag, but that is very rarely true. When seed is received by our Agricultural R&D Department, it usually is a small handful of seeds, or even just a couple seeds. Luckily, UCHU Spice has a great agronomist, Judith Luna, leading the seed bank and Seed Proliferation program.

Seed’s first photoshoot

The first step Judith takes is shooting close-up photos of the seed with a microscope. She registers these photographs, along with other info, into the UCHU Spice registry. This registry has fields like origin, taxonomy, and purpose of the seed. Some seeds are never meant for commercial functions – they are just preserved, studied, and saved in our Seed Bank.

From the mother plant to the first harvest

These hot pepper seedlings are planted and brought into our isolated mother plant rooms. There they will stay and grow for 4 months, until the first chili fruits appear. At this point, the registry receives more information about the plant – the size, shape, color, and other physiological qualities of the fruit are all registered. Our hot pepper mother plants will be harvested over the next 3 months. This period allows our team to verify how productive the variety is. It actually decides the hot pepper’s destiny! We evaluate if it will be a pepper we grow for commercial purposes or if it will be destined as a preservation seed.

Into the great outdoors

Another month and a half pass by. The large number of farmed seedlings are ready to be planted into the great outdoors. This first field of the new variety is carefully observed – we closely monitor how it reacts to outside factors and uncontrolled conditions.

29 months later and we are finally at the end of the process. To get from a seed to a fully rescued or production variety hot pepper, a lot of time and effort is needed – and it is an arduous but rewarding process. Many of these species are disappearing due to monocultural practices and rescuing these pepper varieties is something UCHU Spice takes very seriously. We love hot peppers and want to honor heirloom varieties as well – even if it’s not to plant them commercially.

At UCHU Spice, we strongly believe we are doing tremendously important work to preserve biodiversity and keep the Capsicum genus alive, well, and varied. Find how UCHU Spice cares for peppers, people, and the planet.