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?
