Researching the origin of pepper spicy

But what function does it in wild chili body in the end, so far is a mystery. Researchers repeatedly visited Bolivia in the past four years. They are most interested in not spicy chili. This lack of capsaicin wild chili can be regarded as a heterogeneous rules, may be is a secret key.

Human use pepper for seasoning has a history of at least 8,000 years. In the beginning, they used wild pepper. Add a little pepper while producing potatoes, corn and cereals. Some researchers believe that the mankind from the very early had realized chili can prevent food spoilage, have the function of extending storage time. Some pharmaceutical raw materials suppliers believe that the pepper has medicinal value. The ancient Mayans used a mixture of pepper drugs to heal infected wounds, gastrointestinal diseases, and ear pain. The experiments show that the pepper extract can inhibit some microorganisms pathogenic body growing, capsaicin was also used for local anesthesia.

Regardless of what purpose for human planting chili at the earliest. This plant was spreading to the world at an alarming rate. In a sense, this is also thanks to Columbus. In 1492, the explorers encountered the Arava Indians planted peppers in the island of Hispaniola. He thought he come to India, naturally speculated that these plants were pepper --- a native to the Indian subcontinent, the Europeans’ favorite spices. Columbus brought back this spicy plant to Spain, but at the beginning, pepper unwelcome in Europe. Later, the Portuguese encountered pepper again and brought back with tobacco, cotton to Africa together. 50 years after Columbus discovered America, the chili has spread to India, Japan and China. In 1621, the British brought the chili to North American colonies.

In the United States, the chili once is the novelty exotic spices, but in the 1995-2005 period, the consumption rapidly increased 38%, which reflects eating spicy food immigrants influx, also shows that Americans' appetite become more bold. According to the statistics of U.S. Agriculture Department, Americans annually per capita consumption is 5.9 pounds, the consumption is larger than asparagus, broccoli and green beans.

Like other fruit plants, pepper also has a delicious fruit to attract birds and other animals, help spread the seeds. But at the same time attracted by delicious, there are also some destruct seeds predators, such as rodents will bite and damage the seeds of the fruit, causing it do not germinate. Some plants have evolved to toxic smell chemicals to drive away seed spoilers, these chemicals usually prevalent in the roots of plants, leaves and fruit. But from the capsaicin supplier, we know that capsaicin only exist in the fruit, secreted by a special gland near the stem, as the fruit matures, the more capsaicin will secret. The researchers suspect that capsaicin's role is to protect the seed from the destruction of rodents.

Researchers planted pepper’s seed into the ground, after harvest, take it to feed mice. Mice ate those not spicy varieties, do not touch the spicy one. This result make them ensured that the effect of capsaicin is in order to protect the seed, but later they found that the peculiar effect of capsaicin also slow down the rate of digestion of birds. Slow digestive process allows the seed skin softening, help germination, even so, scientists think, drive away mice and slow the rate of birds’ digestion do not enough to explain the origin of the spicy. They speculated that the emergence of spicy is in order to deal with the smaller enemies.

Source:http://www.cospcn.com