its baaaaack.....

After a long hiatus away from the blog – a period of time that included a great trip to Argentina, the untimely passing of our best and most loyal friend - our dog Koji, Heather’s completion of her Master’s degree in International Agricultural Development, and tons of great food and times in Davis…we’re chasing chiles for one last time.

Let’s get up to speed:

I received a Fulbright grant this year to continue (and hopefully finish) my dissertation research. I will be starting a new project in Mexico this winter – conducting farmer surveys in Northern Mexico in order to understand seed selection in dry chile pepper production. If that last sentence left you scratching your head, further clarification and explanation will soon follow. However, in the meanwhile, I am taking advantage of my travel time to continue to expand my collection of wild chile peppers, Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum. Last year was a tremendous start, with a wide collection that ranged from Arizona on south to Jalisco and over to Veracruz. This year I will be attempting to follow a complementary route – south from Texas and into the northeastern states of Mexico – Nuevo Leon, Tamulipas and San Luis Potosi.

Here is an image to jog your memory and provide some color to the return of chasing chiles.







More to come soon - a return to Sonora and a treatise on New Mexican chiles.