Big Bertha/Red Knight cross-pollination

[Frisky]

I have a few questions for you experts. For the past couple of years, I've kept a small container garden, consisting of a few Red Knight and Big Bertha plants. Last year, a strange pepper appeared on a Big Bertha plant next to a Red Knight. I'm in Minnesota and don't have the best sun, so I don't get huge peppers, but this pepper was shaped like the Red Knights but was about twice their size! It was a Bell type pepper, growing on a Big Bertha plant, right along with Big Bertha peppers. I kept the seeds and planted them this winter. I now have neat little plants coming up! Question1- Will these plants likely produce peppers? Question 2- If so, what type of peppers will they likely produce?

[imafan26]

They will likely produce peppers, you will have a hybrid cross. They should still be bell peppers, but what they look like will depend on the genetics that were inherited.

[Frisky]

Thank you! I appreciate your response. I just didn't want to put much into them if they would be non-producers.

Joe

[applestar]

Since both Big Bertha and Red Knight are hybrids, your new type will hopefully be an accidental cross of these two varieties (off chance the stray pollen was brought in from elsewhere).

Last year’s odd fruit would likely be the first cross / hybrid — an F1, so if you are growing seeds saved from that fruit, this year’s plants/fruits will be F2 (tentatively).

F2 is when interesting genetic traits start to show up in the segregates so it’s a good idea to start extra plants to compare their growth habits and fruits. Then you can select for best characteristics.

— you might look for early maturity like the Red Knight, or for size like Big Bertha… or for flavor, Red Knight’s disease resistance, etc.

If you want these traits to become consistent, you will need to save seeds from each particular fruits and grow subsequent generations each year to pursue the segregate line. The desired traits may appear in other segregates as well and allow you to narrow down which line to pursue.

The usual consensus is that the segregate line most likely will have become mostly stable by F9 generation and can be considered “completely” stable by F11 or F12.

…so how many of these F2’s are you growing?

[applestar]

You might find this simple explainer helpful in visualizing — this was about tomatoes but the basic principles are the same (…oh darn it! this is not a secure https site so I can’t create a link. It’s a really good representation though…)

Tomato Gene Basics
(in an eggshell)
www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes.html

FYI — I have been posting about my tomato cross-breeding adventures here

Learning • Practicing to Cross Breed Tomato Varieties - HelpfulGardener.com

[applestar]

Ha! I thought of something else …. One more possibility I should mention —

Your pepper *could* also have been a double/ conjoined twin — a resulting fruit from a mega bloom / fasciated blossoms and not a result of genetic cross breeding. — It would have been an environmentally produced one off.

Big Bertha being elongated pepper with loosely 3 lobes, if developed on a megabloom, could potentially end up with 4 distinct lobes like a bell pepper.

Crazy tomato blossom? - HelpfulGardener.com

Was this the ONLY fruit of this size on the plant?

— Again, could have been a one-off. BUT sometimes by growing resulting seeds and subsequent generations of megabloom fruits, you can genetically encourage/strengthen the tendency to form them. — In this case, you would be de-hybridizing Big Bertha into an OP variety after achieving stability.

[Frisky]

Applestar- Your replies are interesting to me! The new specimen has 4 lobes, and one lobe is slightly longer than the others. It might not be a cross-pollination situation. It did seem to mature early, like my Red Knights. It tasted great! That's why I decided to see what would come of plants from it. I have 10 seedlings growing in the cold window. It's below freezing here in the mornings. I'm going to try to post a photo. It's not a huge pepper, but it's huge compared to what I usually get. Here it is next to the Big Bertha that grew with it.

[Frisky]

Here's one more photo of it. I told the Facebook crowd, all novices like me, that it's the mother of all red peppers, lol! I have poor sunlight or it would really have been a monster!

[Frisky]

Looks like the second pic won't show.

[webmaster]

Looks like the second pic won't show.

That's not the correct URL for displaying the image outside of Facebook.

Here's how to do it:

1. Navigate to the above Facebook URL your listed in your post.
2. Right click the image and choose something like "Open Image in New Tab"
3. The resulting URL is the one you need to copy and use for displaying here.

The image below is from Facebook, I got it to display by using the above method.

[Frisky]

Thanks! I'll try that.

[Frisky]

I just wanted to say I'm getting a pepper from plants I grew from the hybrid's seeds! It has 4 lobes like a bell.

[Frisky]

I predict it will be a huge red bell!

[applestar]

This is exciting!

Please keep us in the loop and post progress.

…Make note of leaf size, plant height, etc. as additional sub-characteristics to compare with the Red Knight and Big Bertha. Are you growing those this year as well (I realize you said you only have limited space)

[Frisky]

Applestar- Since squirrels destroyed one of only three hybrid plants I had, it was looking bleak. So, I decided to grow one Red Knight and one Big Bertha, along with my two remaining hybrids but well away from them. The two hybrid plants suddenly took off and bloomed well before the Red Knight and Big Bertha, so I knew any peppers that appeared would not be from pollination from the the Red Knight or Big Bertha. Anyway, my hybrids seem to be early bloomers, like last year's Red Knights! So far, they're looking as nice or nicer than the Big Bertha or Red Knight plant! I'll gather more data and keep you up on progress. I also have a dozen small hybrid plants now growing that might have time to produce fruit this season.