Cross Pollination of Chilli Plants

Some chilli plants are voracious cross breeders. Keep this in mind when they flower. The enthusiast chilli grower is likely to have man...

Some chilli plants are voracious cross breeders.
Keep this in mind when they flower.

The enthusiast chilli grower is likely to have many varieties of chilli plant in their garden.  If this is your situation it is interesting to note that when growing chillies within a reasonably close proximity of each other cross-pollination is likely to happen.

Also known as hybridisation this will usually occur when visiting insects touch down and transfer the pollen of different species from plant to plant.

This isn't a big problem within itself for the chilli enthusiast or hobby grower, and you may come up with some interesting genetic mixes of next generation chilli plants.  It really only becomes an issue if you are a certified seed grower and require 100% purity in your seed stock genetics.

Commercial growers will sometimes isolate plants up to 800m for hotter species of chilli plants and a little less for sweeter varieties.  On smaller acreage greenhouses or plastic barriers are used to isolate species and preserve genetic purity.

For the home garden grower where genetic purity is less important, the length of the garden or as far as practical will suffice.

This site is intended for the beginner to enthusiast level of grower so we will not go too in-depth into this subject, but if you are interested to do more reading have a look at this comprehensive article on chilli seed isolation distances here.

Like growing chillies?  Then why not try cooking with chillies!