Abstract:
The market request for organic vegetables has grown recently for their positive impact
on healthy diets. Consumers have progressively shown preferences for various combinations of
color, size, and shape of pepper fruits. Facilitating communication, collaboration, and participation
in the selection of cultivars with superior performance, flavor, texture, and culinary attributes can
represent a key tool in breeding for nutritional and culinary traits. The current research started
from the premise that organic production involves achieving adequate nutritional and culinary
quality of pepper fruits. The study was conducted to investigate traits related culinary quality of
pepper genotypes, especially in the ripening phase of fruits, to select the best resources with a high
antioxidant content for breeding programs. The biological material represented by nine genotypes of
sweet pepper was cultivated in the open fields during 2019 and 2020 at the experimental stations
of the Vegetable Research Development Station of Bacau and of Iasi University of Life Sciences.
Agricultural practices and intensive breeding focused on yield and stress tolerance have indirectly led
to a reduction in the nutrition and flavor of the produce. Complex approaches, including screening
of consumer preferences, phenotyping, and use of modern genomics and analytical chemistry tools
in breeding, together with participatory farmer-breeder-chef-consumer collaborations, can represent
a strategy to facilitate the development of the next generation of crops aimed to meet the growing
demands of safe and nutritionally vegetables featured by culinary standards as good flavor, color,
and texture.
