Growing bell peppers will soon be less frustrating for Georgia
farmers, thanks to a
disease-resistant variety developed by University of Georgia
scientists.

The new variety, Dempsey, has been released exclusively to
Rogers Seed Company of
Boise, Idaho, by the Georgia Seed Development Commission.
Growers should be able
to buy the seed by 1998.

Dempsey is resistant to tobacco etch virus and many strains of
bacterial leaf spot.
Controlling these diseases forces farmers

to spend more to grow bell peppers. Georgia has about 6,000
acres of peppers each
year.

“Tobacco etch virus stunts the plant and causes poor fruit set
and small fruit size,” said
Ron Lane, the UGA scientist who developed Dempsey.

“Bacterial spot is even more devastating because it defoliates
the plant,” Lane said.
“When occurring together, these diseases result in very
detrimental effects on the plant
and practically no yield.”

Lane said the Southeast’s high humidity and warm weather help
these diseases thrive.

To create Dempsey, Lane used two bell peppers from the USDA’s
Plant Introduction
System. He chose the two varieties based on their disease
resistance.

Lane then crossed the USDA plants with Jupiter, an open-
pollinated cultivar that grows
large, four-lobed fruit.

In field tests, under a severe natural breakout of bacterial
spot, Dempsey yielded nearly
three times more peppers than Jupiter. It yielded five times
more than Yolo Wonder, a
widely grown hybrid.

Other field tests have shown Dempsey to stay free of all tobacco
etch virus strains.
Greenhouse and field tests have also shown it immune to pepper
mottle virus and
strains of potato virus Y.

Mature plants grow to about 25 inches high. The peppers mature
about 60 days after
transplanting.

Dempsey is named for the late A. Hugh Dempsey, a UGA pepper
breeder who found
the resistance sources used in the breeding program. Others who
worked on the
Dempsey breeding program were UGA bacteriologist States McCarter
and UGA
virologists Cedric Kuhn and Carl Deom.