Chilli Peppers — DutchGreenhouses

Chilli covers a wide range of pungent peppers rather than one plant, sold into culinary markets that specify heat level as the primary quality. Plant habit ranges from compact to tall and indeterminate, and fruit form varies as widely, so there is no single chilli crop to design a greenhouse around.

What the crop needs

System and cycle are crop-specific, because the plants differ so much. A compact type and a tall indeterminate type place different demands on structure, spacing, support and picking labour. The controlling decision is which pepper is being grown for which market, and that decision precedes any design work.

What the greenhouse has to do

Chilli is not a sweet pepper in a different colour, and building for it as though it were is the common mistake. Plant size, cycle and fruit habit vary enormously across the peppers grown for heat — from compact annuals to plants that occupy a house for years — so the structure, spacing and support are drawn for the specific crop rather than from a block-pepper layout.

The heat specification is a design input. Capsaicin development responds to growing conditions, so a crop sold on a heat level is a crop whose climate is being asked to hit a target beyond yield and size. That has to be settled before the house is designed, together with whether the fruit is sold fresh, dried or processed — each of which changes the harvest and the pack area entirely.

DutchGreenhouses® designs the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the pepper actually being grown and the heat specification it is sold on, rather than around a sweet-pepper envelope. Get in touch to discuss a chilli project.

Red bell peppers

The Dutch block-pepper baseline, carried to ripe colour.

Snack peppers

A pack concept before it is a crop.

Climate

Heating, cooling, humidity control and carbon dioxide dosing.

Hydroponics

Substrate growing with drip supply and drain recirculation.

Fresh, dried and processed are three different foods

A fresh chilli and a dried one are not the same food. Drying takes the water out and concentrates capsaicin and sugar, so the heat intensifies while the vitamin C, which survives neither heat nor time, largely goes. A market buying fresh is buying the whole fruit; a market buying dried is buying heat and aroma and accepting the trade.

That choice sits upstream of the greenhouse. Fresh fruit needs a harvest rhythm, a cold chain and a pack area. Dried and processed need volume, a drying step and the room to hold stock. The same plant can serve either, but it is not the same house.

Where fresh is the market, distance is the constraint. Culinary buyers ask for particular types by name, and those types are told apart by aromatics that fade well before the heat does. A house near the kitchens that use the crop can supply named types fresh and in the quantities a cuisine actually consumes, which is what a container of a single variety cannot do.

Nutrition facts

Hot chilli pepper, red, raw

Per 100 g

Energy: 40 kcal
Fat: 0.44 g
Carbohydrate: 8.81 g
Sugars: 5.3 g
Fiber: 1.5 g
Protein: 1.87 g
Sodium: 9 mg
Potassium: 322 mg
Vitamin C: 143.7 mg

Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC 170106

Questions

Chilli pepper, asked and answered

Why not use the sweet pepper layout?

Plant size, cycle and fruit habit vary far more across chilli than within sweet pepper. Spacing and support are drawn for the specific crop, not inherited from a block pepper.

What decides the greenhouse design for chilli?

The pepper and the sale form. A compact annual and a plant that occupies the house for years need different structures, and fresh, dried and processed fruit need different harvest and pack areas.

Does climate affect heat level?

Yes. Capsaicin development responds to growing conditions, so a crop sold on a heat specification is one whose climate is being asked to hit a target beyond yield and size.

From the knowledge base