Scientific and Technological Support Promotes the High-quality Development of the Pepper Industry

-A Report on Liang Fangfang, an Expert in Open Field Culture of the Technical System of Bulk Vegetable Industry in Henan Province

“Chinese pepper sweeps the world, and Henan pepper springs up everywhere.” On November 29, speaking of the rapid rise of the pepper industry in our province in recent years, Liang Fangfang, an expert in open field culture of the technical system of the bulk vegetable industry in Henan Province and a young backbone teacher of Henan Vocation College of Agriculture, was very familiar with the subject.

At present, the planting area of pepper in China is 2.2 million hectares, with an annual output value of 250 billion yuan. The planting area, output value and benefit all rank first among vegetable crops. As a rising star of the pepper industry, the planting area of pepper in our province has reached 149,000 hectares, ranking first in the country, with annual production and sales of about 650,000 tons and a comprehensive output value of over 16 billion yuan; 2.2 million people in 13 counties in the province engage in the pepper industry. Henan has become an important pepper trading and distribution base and processing and export base in China.

Seeds are the chips of agriculture. Behind the corner overtaking of the pepper industry in Henan Province, a group of young and middle-aged scientific and technological workers, represented by Liang Fangfang, devoted themselves to the research of pepper seeds over ten years and broke through the technical problem that hindered the development of the industry. Relying on the innovative technology system of the pepper industry combining industry, university and research, the expert team carries out excellent germplasm innovation and new variety breeding of peppers under the guidance of major scientific and technological projects and key scientific and technological projects in Henan Province, constructs fascicled pepper super swarms, presides over the formulation of national agricultural industry standards, and establishes molecular marker technology system of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin content, makes important technological innovations and breakthroughs, which provides scientific and technological support for the development of pepper industry.

The cultivation of pepper in Henan Province has a history of nearly 50 years, forming the main conventional varieties such as Bullet, Sanyingjiao No.8 and the New Generation. These varieties have been seriously degraded due to their long popularization time, disease resistance, pungency degree and yield. It is difficult to produce seeds through conventional hybridization due to the large quantity and small size of pepper flowers, and the cost of seed production is high, the risk is high, and the purity cannot be guaranteed, so it needs to use sterile lines for seed production. The research on male sterility of pepper in Korea is in a leading position in the world. The series of pepper hybrids bred once monopolized part of the seed market in China, but their fruits are not easy to dry naturally, so there is an urgent need for a batch of hybrid varieties suitable for a natural drying and good dehydration in China.

In the past 10 years, Liang Fangfang, together with Yuan Junshui, a pepper breeder of Henan Red and Green Pepper Seed Industry Co., Ltd., Shen Aimin, a researcher at Zhengzhou Vegetable Research Institute and other experts, led a team to fully tap the resources of pepper at home and abroad, and constructed six domestic and foreign variety resources with excellent comprehensive characters. After multiple rounds of hybridization and large population selfing, a gene pool with 15,000 strains of super swarm with high pungency degree, good disease resistance and good dehydration was obtained; 50 candidate strains with disease resistance and high pungency degree super swarm were screened out; 14 new germplasm with high pungency degree, good disease resistance and lodging resistance, such as CW41 (selfing line) were created; 10 new germplasm with good dehydration and natural drying were selected. A series of new hybrid varieties with high pungency degree, disease resistance, and suitability for natural drying, such as Kaqila, Haonong 515 and Tianhong 16 were bred to enrich the high-quality germplasm resources of pepper with good disease resistance and natural drying.

Liang Fangfang and other expert teams focus on the innovation of high-pungency germplasm and prove that the enhancing genes and leaky genes controlling capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin are dispersed in parents by analyzing the contents of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin in two-parent materials and hybrid populations of pepper strains, which provides a good genetic basis for molecular marker screening of QTLs (quantitative trait loci) for capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin traits. Two capsaicin QTL loci and three dihydrocapsaicin QTL loci were detected by using 62 SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat Length Polymorphism) markers that have been screened out.

Combined with the production practice of five pepper seed production bases in South China, East China, North China, Northwest China and Northeast China, Liang Fangfang and relevant expert teams integrated the technical requirements of each link of pepper hybrid production and formulated the national agricultural industry standard, which solved the problem of the imperfect technical system of pepper seed production units or individuals and achieved remarkable social benefits. This standard has been widely used in scientific research units and production enterprises of five pepper seed production bases and has good scientificity and practicability.

The popularization of new varieties with high pungency degrees and high quality keeps expanding and developing the functions of pepper, and the deep processing of pepper will become a new economic growth point for the development of the pepper industry in China. The contribution of new varieties to the benefits of well-known pepper processing enterprises will increase by more than 15%. As a regional characteristic industry, Zhecheng County has held four national pepper industry conferences in succession, and Linying County won the title of "Digital Pepper Capital of China" at the Linying Pepper Brand Strategy Conference of the 5th Henan (Zhengzhou) Modern Agriculture Expo. The technological innovation of the pepper industry has driven the all-around development of the county economy and the improvement of the whole chain and has embarked on a characteristic agricultural road of developing pepper with quality, science and technology and brand.