When he realized there was more to it than an assay in the lab, Mazourek shifted his approach and back-crossed his heatless lines to full-heat habaneros. Few truly tasted like a bright, floral habanero. But in the field, he soon discovered that it wasn’t so simple some peppers were delicious, some tasted strange, and still others tasted just plain bad. Mazourek wondered, “what if there was a pepper I could share with my friends who didn’t like hot peppers so they could taste what I love without the heat?” This was Mazourek’s first foray into plant breeding and he was optimistic: a gene for heat, in a laboratory, is simple to identify. Michael Mazourek and his Habanada: the first truly heatless Habanero is full of rich, tropical flavor. Photo of Habanada by Matthew Goldfarb photo of Mazourek from Cornell’s EZRA magazine. (Habaneros often register 40 times hotter than Jalapenos on the Scoville scale of pepper pungency.) Mazourek, a plant breeder interested in peppers, was sent some of these seeds to study. It all started when the University of New Mexico discovered an off-type plants in their Habanero lines that didn’t even register on the Scoville scale. He is constantly playing with his food, using classical breeding (non-GMO) methods to dream more delicious, more productive & more disease resistant varieties into existence.Īs a species, we’ve been saving seed for 10,000+ years it is because of people like Mazourek that we have cultivated such extraordinary diversity in such little time. You may be familiar with some of Mazourek’s varieties that have already changed the way we eat, like Honeynut Winter Squash (a super small, super sweet butternut) and Silver Slicer Cucumber (a sweet, crunchy white slicer with notable disease resistance). Michael is also unique for being one of the few plant breeders who is publicly developing varieties with culinary quality in addition to disease-resistance and productivity. Michael Mazourek is one of our heros, let me count the ways: father, Cornell professor and effortlessly hilarious, Michael is also one of the top organic plant breeders in the world. From cast-away seed to a signature show-stopper variety, Michael Mazourek has brought this pepper a long way in just thirteen generations. Their crisp, thin skin has an exotic, floral flavor like no pepper I have ever tasted. Many attempts have been made over the years but none have achieved the fullness of flavor with absolutely zero heat. Habanada is a brand new pepper, the first truly heatless habanero (hence the haba-nada) bursting with all the bright, tropical flavor of the fruit unmasked. Prefer to view disease-resistant variety information in spreadsheets? Download disease-resistant variety spreadsheets from this Box folder.The bright, floral flavor of Habanada inspired chef Nora Antene to create this Habanada Sherbet.
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