Deformed leaves on Bhut Jolokia

Both last and this year's crops of bhut jolokia had a strange deformation on the growing tips. The leaves, stems and flowers had a stunted, curled and deformed appearance...but didn't seem to be the result of something like aphid infestation.

I went to the chili pepper institute website "Chili Pepper Diseases" page to try to ID the damage with visual comparison, but came up empty.

So, I decided to shoot off an email to them, yesterday to see if they had an idea of what may be the culprit.

This was the email exchange:

__________________________________________

Hi,

Please find attached some .jpgs of my dad’s bhut jolokias.

The plants are growing in raised boxes with well rotted compost + native soil, adequate moisture and sufficient drainage to alleviate the unusually wet/cool/cloudy June/July we've had in the New England area (specifically, the plants are growing at his home in Acushnet, MA).

This strange deformation occurred in some of the bhut jolokia plants, usually only at the growing tips. . Seems to effect both the leaves and flowers. There are no aphids or other insects. This didn’t occur in other pepper cultivars/species, and I couldn’t ID the issue from the link on the NMSU website:

http://chilepepperinstitute.org/chile-pepper-diseases.html

Any help you could provide, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
JC

___________________________________________

Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:37:46 -0600
To: JC Tetreault
From: hotchile@nmsu.edu
Subject: Re: Help to ID leaf deformation on bhut jolokia plants

Hi JC, this can be one of two things, thrip damage or herbicide damage. Please check with your local Cooperative Extension Service Office for proper id, you can actually take a leaf sample and they should be able to identify it for you.

Thanks for writing

___________________________________________

So, given these two options, I would expect it to be herbicide damage due to leaching from the herbicides used to treat the lawn. Perhaps the bhut jolokia species is specifically sensitive to these commercial herbicides, but not to the point where it would actually kill the plants. Though these plants are in raised boxes, it is very possible that the chemicals are leaching within the root zone that penetrates down in to the subsoil on which the boxes rest.