If you look at any pepper entry in the NGA Database, there is very little information that a pepper enthusiast would like to know. The entries are just the generic info used for flowers or other vegetables. Besides the name and heredity there is not much else pepper info one can enter besides plant height and spread.
      It would be nice if we could enter pepper-specific information much like the additional information provided for tomatoes. I like to collect the following information about peppers, but certainly other lists of traits could be suggested (* means already in the database).

Plant Name *
Plant Height and Spread *
Heredity (OP/F1) *
Pepper Shape (i.e. Tapered, Cylindrical, Squat, Wrinkled, etc.)
Fruit Length and width at the shoulders.
Fruit Ripening Color Sequence ( See # below)
Days to First Harvest and Maturity (DTFH and DTM...see # below)
Wall Thickness (Thin, Medium Thick)
General Type (Bell, Banana, Cayenne, Cubanelle, Jalepeno, Paprika, etc.)
Heat (I use Sweet<100SHU, Mild 100-2500 SHU, Medium Hot 2.5-50K, Hot 50-500K, UltraHot >500K SHU)
Scoville Heat Units (approximate SHU)
Disease Resistance (only a Powdery Mildew entry is current available *)
History, * including AAS selections.

     # Although there is now a slot for Days to Harvest in the generic pepper data, most peppers go through a sequence of color phases (i.e. green>yellow>red) and may be picked and used at any color stage so one DTH is inadequate. A very few vendors provide two approximate values, the time from transplant until the fruit is first usable (Days to First harvest or DTFH) and a second time until the pepper has reached its final color and is fully ripe (Days to Maturity or DTM). Although most vendors provide only one DTH time (and a brief survey showed that they were not consistent in using one of the two mentioned, and some didn't know which they used!) actual growers can usually estimate both DTFH and DTM fairly well.

     Since I taught computer engineering before retiring, I realize that it would take quite a bit of coding to add this pepper-specific data and make it available to the Database search engine, but there is already a model for such family-specific data in the tomato database. What do you think?

Thank you, @DonShirer! Nice, detailed proposal.

Mike

I'll get these added soon.

These are added (thanks to @jon who got this all put in place)

Thanks!, @jon.

       Thank you @dave and @jon for moving so quickly on this. Such a quick response is almost unheard of on other sites. I am honored that you used my suggestions for heat, shape, etc., but I wouldn't mind a bit if after using this, someone comes up with better ones.

You are welcome! If anyone has any other suggestions for those feel free to post them here or tree-mail me.

One possible addition to the "General Type" is "Habanero".
Realized this while entering data for "Habanada Pepper" which is "Habanero Type" but heatless.

I added "Habanero" to General Type.

@jon
Some friends have suggested additional "General Types" like
Serrano, Shishito, Italian Frying
and additional shapes like
Round, Heart.

A quick scan through catalogs shows that all of those seem reasonable.

One way to forestall having to add more in the future might be to emulate the color and shape entries you put in the tomato-specific data and have an "Other" button for both the pepper "General type" and "Shape" categories, which when checked would open up a text field in which the user could enter what "other" meant. Is that possible?

I have added all of your suggestions to the "General Types" and "Pepper Shape" categories. Adding an "Other" is very easy and has been done for both those as well.

@jon
     The "other" options you added to the "General Type" , "Shape" and "Color" traits did not drop down a text box when clicked as their counterparts for on the tomato database. It would be very helpful if this could be done?

     I noticed that you had inserted multiple choices for "Color Phase" instead of the single text box we had before. This was a good way to simplify things for the user, but there are many different possible ripening sequences, and some of the ones you included (from my test entries) are not the most common. To avoid adding more in the future, I can think of two ways to handle this.

1.      Include only the most common sequences (Green to Red, Green to Yellow, Green to Orange, Green to Yellow to Red, Green to Brown, and Yellow to Orange to Red) plus an 'Other' category, that when selected drops down a text box that the user could fill in for the less common colors. (I can go back and adjust the entries of the test samples.)
2.      Instead of "Color ripening sequence" call it "Colors while ripening", have options for Green, Yellow, Red, Purple, Brown and Other (with a drop down text box if they click other), and allow any number of these options to remain checked simultaneously (i.e. logical OR not AND) as they are in the tomato color trait. This is simpler for users, but not as informative.

      The good news is that thanks to your efforts we are getting very close to a workable set of options.

Thanks for the report, was a bug that made it not actually drop down a text box. It is all fixed now, and for the color ripening sequence I already had an other option, and it is also fixed now, so everything should be good.

@jon
Your fix to the "Other" options now works fine. I tested the "Search by Characteristics" for the few varieties I've entered so far and that seems to work as well. Good job! We're almost done.

The "Colors" category still has room for improvement. Your suggestion to include specifc color options was a good one. To find which to use, I sorted the ~550 peppers in my own pepper datasheet and found these color ripening sequences to occur most often.
50% Green to Red
9% Green to Orange
8% Green to Yellow
3% Green to Orange to Red
3% Green to Yellow to Orange to Red
2% Green to Brown (Chocolate)
2% Yellow to Orange to Red
1.5% White to Orange to Red
1% Yellow to Red
     1%     Green to Purple
These are probably the color options you should include (minus the percentages of course). All the many others occur less than 1% of the time and could be accommodated by the "Other" option.

Some friends suggested modifying the Hot range of the "Heat" category slightly to bring it more into line with the recommendations of experts on very hot Chile peppers. This would only require renaming three options under the "Heat" category. No change in their programming.
Medium Hot 2.5-30K SHU
Hot 30K-300K SHU
Ultra Hot >300K SHU

If these changes can be implemented, I think I would be satisfied the pepper-specific database options, and would suggest no further alterations. Your cooperation and input to the process is greatly appreciated.
Don S.

All done!

@jon
     I have received quite a few suggestions about additions to the "General Type" category. It was thought that two names were specific varieties and there was a more descriptive general type. I agree, and suggest:
1. Change "Cubanelle" to "Cuban"
2. Change "Shishito" to "Asian"
Only 3 varieties have been tagged with one of these types as yet and if they are kept in the existing order the more general name will still apply to them.

     Eleven other "General Types" were suggested. I examined a sample of about 300 varieties discussed in standard books about peppers and eliminated six of these for occurring less than 3% of the time or not having much in common. The others seemed useful, and I list them below in order of their occurrence in the sample. If you are ok to adding any new General Types I would recommend that you add at least the first two. I presume that adding them onto the end of the list would not affect any varieties that had been assigned the other options. The others (5. 6. 7.) seem to be in common use, but we have to stop somewhere, and their lower percentages could be accommodated by the "Other" category.

General types to add? (Percentages listed here for your info only)
3. New Mexican     (7.5%)
4. Ornamental        (7.5%)
5. Ancho                 (5%) ?
6. Pimiento            (4%) ?
7. Wax                     (3.5%) ?

Hopefully there will be no more changes to this category.

@jon
     I just realized that we have mis-spelled Jalapeno in the General Type options. Could you please correct that?
     Did you have any comment on my previous post about changing the name of two General types to Cuban and Asian, and possibly adding two more?

I'm sorry, when I saw your first post I didn't act on it immediately and when I had time I had forgotten until you said something else. I edited those two, and went ahead and added all 5 of the other additions that you suggested. Sorry for the wait.