Recently I received some chilis back from my friend. These are distinctly longer than the fruit of the parent variety I gave to him and the taste is much more fruity and less hot. I therefore conclude that the seeds I gave to my friend were F1-crosses. Since I consider these fruit to be an improvement on the parent variety Dunkellila Königin, I will in 2024 sow most of my saved 2022 seeds from the Dunkellila Königin to find out if there are more interesting crosses.
I would be careful to jump in to conclusions when differences are that small. For example stress might affect form, taste and hotness significantly. I have observed these changes within the same plant with cold and drought stress. For example one jalapeno that was making typical jalapeno fruits after being moved from indoors to a hot balcony started making fruits that were the shape of a cayenne, very long and skinnier. I have observed similar changes with other varieties too, getting oblong fruits when they had colder conditions during early flowering and normal fruit from flowers that came after conditions warmed. Might go the other way too. Some times parent varieties might be so distinct that F1 is very obvious, but most of the time I want grow F2 to be certain. Because peppers aren’t the most profilic outcrossers, growing lots of something that is actually stable year after year is a bit of a waste of time and space if the purpose is to get a genetically diverse population. Hopefully it is a cross, but be prepared to be disappointed.
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Thank you Jesse for your feedback. My conclusion that it is an F1-cross stands not only on the fruit attributes, but also the fact that my friend told me that the plants from the seeds I gave him were quite different from each other and none of the fruit had the parents shape. However, thank you for the warning. I anyway plan to do some controlled crosses next season or at the very least plant some plants very close together, so my chance for crosses should rise
Size of the plant might be also quite different a within stable variety. If it was genetic it would make them F2s meaning that you had grown F1s. Maybe it was a F1 variety that you didn’t know of. Sometimes seed sellers omit information about F1. Some also have pretty poor practices to keep variety pure or simply don’t know that it happens. Many fans of heirlooms seem to be under the impression that heirlooms always produce pure and grow them happily mixed.
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That may of course be also true, that my first plant was already an F1, these aren’t seeds from a company, but some seeds I got from another gardener.
EDIT: And I just want to say that I really liked the different taste of these chilis compared with mine. If it is only a reaction to different environmental factors, so be it, at least this would have shown that these chilis are able to form more interesting and complex aromas than I have seen up to date. To be honest, I like them more and therefore hope that they are something new and different, but If not, oh well, hope I can recreate this taste.
On the 18. February I sowed my chili seeds for this year. I sowed 5 different varieties/ distinct strains or however one wants to call them:
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Fake yellow Habanero
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Fake red Habanero
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Dunkellila Königin
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Dunkellila Kaiserin. These are the seeds from a friend, from markedly different plants, than my mother plant, the Dunkellila Königin, which I gave him seeds from. Whatever they are, cross or simply an enviromental influence, since they are bigger and tastier than the Dunkellila Königin, I nicknamed them Kaiserin to designate that they are of a higher rank in my internal ranking
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Last but not least seeds from the Alte scharfe Elfriede, which makes small, very hot fruit and is very prolific but much to seedy and not fleshy enough for my taste.
I took about 20 seeds from each of them, mixed them all together and sowed them in a 6x4 fields seed starter tray, so I end up with 24 plants and can rogue out all the stragglers. i keep them in my living room with no bottom heat and no additional light. The temperature is between 19 -21°C, so a little low for chilis, which may explain why it took them eleven days to germinate. Today in 5.3.2024 in 22 0f the 24 individual squares at least one seed has germinated. Interestingly, several of the seedlings show some Anthocyan which means they are either Königin or Kaiserin. I find this interesting since my Königin seed were always slooooooooooooow to germinated and grow, so I am very exited that this year some of them are faster!
My chilis are continuing to grow very slowly. I am satisfied with that because at the earliest I can plant them out mid May. They are still very small, but are nice compact plants even without supplemental light. This is very important to me because I don’t want an elaborate setup for my seedlings. The contrast with the leggy tomatoes is staggering. In the warm weather we had in the last weeks I put the chilis out to harden off and they could stay out a whole afternoon (up to 5 hours) in direct sunlight without wilting or sunburn.
Some plants had thrips (crossover from my overwintered plant) but it seems that the thrips have lost interest. I have thinned them down to (mostly) one plant per cell. I had to transplant some seedlings because the germination was not even across all the cells. Maybe I watered them irregularly or some other factor was not the same.
Interestingly, the Anthocyan has mostly vanished. Either because I rogued them out as stragglers or it expresses only as a juvenile trait. If I had to guess, I would say both. I still see about 2 seedlings with some violet tint (the two on the right beneath the stick) and they are much smaller than almost all other ones. It seems that I have to commit to some conscious effort to keep this trait in the population. Not sure if it is worth the effort…
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I also have no sign of anthocyanin this year in my pepper and tomato population. Yet I have not eliminated them…this must come from the high temperatures of this spring… 2024 the year without purple? 
I can offer you for your project the excellent genetics from Wild Mountain seeds:
- Alpine poblano (Capsicum annuum)
a huge hot pepper type large fleshy pepper
'Alpine Poblano' Pepper – Experimental Farm Network Seed Store - Aji de colorado alpino (Capsicum baccatum)
a small fruity pepper
'Aji de Colorado Alpino' Hot Pepper – Experimental Farm Network Seed Store
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Anthocyan needs sufficient light to express. Especially in annuums and tomatoes it’s fairly weak compared to chinense. Also not all purple is anthocyan. Plants also get purple tinge from too much water or cold, and from my experience it’s those with even weak anthocyan trait that show purple in case of trouble and the actual anthocyan affect is minimal. Some are only clearly purple when they suffer. Yellow varieties on the other hand more easily express trouble by getting yellow leaves.
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Thank you Stephane and Jesse for your input concerning Anthocyan and purple. Very interesting Stephane that you have less Anthocyan this year too. I guess I am just surprised how much less violet the seedlings are considering some of the mother plants were very violet even as a tiny seedling. I don’t believe they have not enough light for the synthesis of Anthocyan since the mother plants last year and in 2022 were very violet and I kept them under the same regime. Whatever it is, I am looking forward to find out how the mature plants look and if there are some with purple fruit or flowers.
Concerning other reasons for purple: in some plants a phosphorus deficitite also results in purple leaves…
PS: Stephane I will send you a PM concerning the possibility for a trade…
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