NMSU research team aims to improve green chile immunity to root rot

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (KVIA) -- New Mexico State University Associate Professor Stephanie Walker earned a $759,000 grant for research to develop a new strain of green chile that's resistant to a damaging disease.

The goal of the project is to create a strain of green chile that is resistant to Phytophthora capsici, a disease Walker says can lead to root rot.

One of Walker's collaborators at NMSU, Denise Coon, told ABC-7 the disease is soil born and moves with water to any part of the chile. It can kill the entire crop, which has been an issue in the Southwest for more than a century.

Walker and her team at NMSU found what issues to focus on by directly to industry growers and the team knows what traits they want in this new green chile.

Specifically maintaining the shape and heat level after crossing with the bell peppers but also not sacrificing the flavor for innovation either.

"New Mexico green chile is renowned for its amazing unique flavor, so we don't want to lose that during this process," Walker said.

Mechanization deals with labor issues, Walker said that aspect is to address labor issues like getting enough people to pick enough of the crop before the window for peak ripeness closes which Walker says is something that has been an issue since the 90's.

"Many years ago when the chili taskforce was first formed in 1998 labor issues became a key concern of the industry in New Mexico when they saw the writing on the wall," Walker said. "It was harder to get people out of the field to pick what needs to be picked in a relatively short window to get that green chili before it starts turning red."

The team is partnering with Cornell University vegetable breeder Michael Mazourek. His team has done similar work with a strain of bell peppers which presented the idea to Walker to cross breed the two plants.

Even though as Walker said, the tighter linkage of genes in chili peppers can make developing that same resistance harder.

"So we thought, hey, why don't we combine forces," Walker said. "Let's get your protocol for developing Phytophthora resistant chilies with our mechanical harvest breeding and come up with something that we have both that we cannot provide to the industry."

The project plan involves cross-breeding the bell peppers with the green chiles. The Cornell team will handle most of the lab testing while the NMSU team handles most of the field testing.

Walker told ABC-7 the first cross breeding will not lead to much diversity, which is something she says doesn't start showing up until the second or third generation of cross breeding before moving onto the field testing where all the samples will be protected from outside pollinators like bees where the team will pick the plants that have what they're looking for.

Mechanization is something Walker believes is something the world of agriculture in first world countries like the U.S. will have to embrace due to the changing world.

"I absolutely think here in the United States and other developed nations we have to mechanize," Walker said. "There's absolutely no way that we're going to be able to continue to get the labor force that we need to harvest delicate fruits and vegetables in this country going forward."

This aspect will also be subject to field testing, the NMSU team looking to use their equipment to simulate the mechanical harvest looking to be able to do two harvests without dropping, damaging, or running over any of the product with Walker saying it is not one size fits all when it comes to machines in the field.

"I know many people think that if you get the right machine you can pick anything, it absolutely isn't so," Walker said. "You really need to match the picking mechanism with the plant architecture. So we specifically worked on green chili varieties that have the architecture that feeds into the machine very efficiently."

Walker's grant came from the national Institute of Food and Agriculture, with the partnership between the schools also meaning graduate students will cross train at the two universities.

Those at NMSU will go to Cornell to study the lab progress and those at Cornell will come to NMSU to study the progress being made in the field trials.