Red bell peppers are a great vegetable source for Vitamins A and C, and carotene antioxidants like lycopene, and provide a nutritious and colorful vegetable ingredient for a wide variety of food and beverage products. Encore Fruit Marketing can provide an excellent source of this product to help consumer products deliver one of the 5 A Day vegetable servings.

This product is carefully processed from fresh, wholesome red bell peppers to provide the essential nutrition and color, in a convenient, ready to use ingredient form. Red Bell Peppers are an excellent ingredient to add a dried vegetable serving to your retail label for food products, including dairy applications.

Contact Encore Fruit Marketing today for your samples and information on dried red bell pepper puree at sales@encorefruit.com.

Background

This fruit consists of a thick, fleshy wall that surrounds a mass of seeds. The wall is eaten fresh as a vegetable. Fresh peppers can also be dehydrated, pickled, and canned for eating. Pepper fruit is ground up to make the spice known as red pepper. Other seasonings that are made from peppers include curry powders and paprika. The spices black pepper and white pepper are made from another kind of plant (see PEPPER [the spice]).

Many varieties of peppers are grown commercially. The cup-shaped bell pepper has three or four lobes (rounded sections) and is usually eaten when immature and green. If allowed to mature on the plant, it turns red, yellow, or purple. Other widely cultivated peppers include the long banana pepper, the flattened pimento pepper, the slender chili pepper, and the round cherry pepper. Peppers have either a sweet taste or a sharp taste, depending on the amount of a compound called capsaicin in the fruit.

Growers raise peppers from seeds. They generally plant the seeds in a greenhouse or in cold frames (glass-covered boxes). The seedlings are transplanted outdoors after about 8 weeks. Growers use a mechanical transplanter to place the seedlings in the soil about 11/2 feet (46 centimeters) apart and in rows about 3 feet (91 centimeters) apart.

They grow best in warm, moist regions with growing seasons of over 125 days. Temperatures under 55°F (13°C) can inhibit growth and ripening. Growers occasionally spread plastic mulches or other protective coverings over the soil to warm the plants' environment. This extends the growing season.

Pepper plants flower about three to four weeks after transplanting. The plants commonly grow to a height of 31/4 feet (1 meter) or more. Growers sometimes support pepper plants with stakes and string to keep them from spreading along the ground.

Diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses can attack pepper plants. In addition, insects feed on the plant's stem, leaves, and fruit. Growers control these problems by planting disease-resistant varieties of peppers and by carefully using appropriate pesticides.