PEPPADEW® is a trademarked brand name for Capsicum baccatam, a commercially produced sweet piquanté pepper. Sweet piquanté peppers are members of the chilli family and are indigenous to South America. The brand PEPPADEW® is used to market a variety of processed and bottled food products produced by a privately held company based in South Africa.
Product Overview of Sweet Piquanté Peppers
Sweet piquanté peppers belong to the Solanaceae family of nightshade plants and share the genus Capsicum with other chilli peppers. The bright red fruit has a mildly spicy but sweet flavour and registers low on the Scoville scale.
The Scoville scale is a measurement of burning spiciness applied mostly to chilli peppers based on the presence and concentration of capsaicin, the hot, spicy active compound found in chilis.
Sweet Piquanté Peppers Production
Sweet piquanté peppers require irrigation and at peak harvesting time the plants need around 5 mm per day, applied by drip irrigation. Sweet piquanté peppers require crop rotation with crops such as maize. Vegetables or tomato-type plants are not ideal for rotation as they attract the same pests that sweet piquanté peppers are susceptible to.
The peppers are particularly sensitive to cold, and frost can destroy an entire crop. Low temperatures also result in unacceptable wrinkled fruit. Most of the Sweet piquanté peppers production units are in South Africa’s Limpopo Province, where the warm climate is ideal for the production of this fruit.
Peppadew products are made from processing the PEPPADEW® sweet piquanté peppers. The company also supplies its contracted producers with the seedlings of the plant.
The harvest is subject to stringent quality control, as the fruit for bottling needs to have a uniform size. Before the fruit is pickled or bottled, the seeds are removed to reduce the spiciness of the peppers to more palatable levels.
Origins of the PEPPADEW Brand
The story of the origin of the PEPPADEW® brand is quite a remarkable story. Although Capsicum Baccatum is a pepper indigenous to Central America, it was “discovered” in South Africa in 1993, in the garden of a Plettenberg Bay holiday home, that had previously belonged to a botanist.
It was entrepreneur and farmer Johan Steenkamp who spotted the bush covered with small, bright red fruit. Steenkamp realised the plant’s potential the minute he tasted a piece of the fruit, (sweet and spicy) and he decided to cultivate it with dried seeds from the original South American plant.
Steenkamp identified the commercial opportunity it presented and created the Peppadew brand. He registered the plant breeder’s rights for this variety of sweet piquanté pepper and registered the word “peppadew” as a trademark. Steenkamp subsequently sold the business and today it is owned by Peppadew International.
Although Peppadew was started with pickling and bottling PEPPADEW® piquanté peppers and this remains their flagship range, today the range of products produced by this company extends to a wider range of processed fruit and vegetable products including, chutney, atchar, relishes and pasta sauces amongst others.
For bulk or Sweet Piquanté Peppers export enquiries please use the enquiry link below.