Pepper

Pepper was selected as a fruit vegetable of significant interest to establish an EVA network. The EVA Pepper network builds on partners’ experience from recent or ongoing Horizon2020 projects LIVESEEDS, BRESOV and G2PSOL as well as the active ECPGR Solanaceae Working Group.

Activities in the pepper network include field evaluations for agronomic traits in various geographic locations across Europe as well as tests for important diseases and abiotic stress tolerance in controlled conditions. Pepper accessions were also genotyped to provide data accessible to association studies.

An ECPGR Grant Scheme Activity 'EuroPepLand' was funded during the first call in Phase XI and will implement a trans-European pepper landrace collection for resilient agriculture, involving 16 members of the Solanaceae Working Group and three self-funded partners under the coordination of Working Group Chair Pasquale Tripodi. 

This activity provides an opportunity to extend the membership of the EVA Pepper network to additional genebanks who will work together on establishing a European Pepper landraces core collection, which will be genotyped and made available for multilocation evaluation by the EVA Pepper partners. The project was kicked off with a joint meeting of EVA Pepper and EuroPepLand on 30-31 October 2024 in Almeria, Spain (see here for more info).