Whether you like them hot and spicy or sweet and mild, ARS puts the pep in peppers.

Over the years, ARS scientists have developed superior pepper cultivars like:

• Tangerine Dream: a sweet, edible ornamental pepper that produces small, orange fruit on a flat, low-growing plant; and
• Black Pearl: an All-America Selection award winner that sports intense black leaves and small, shiny black fruit that ripen to a bright scarlet.

Both peppers were developed by ARS researchers John Stommel and Robert Griesbach at the USDA-ARS Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, in Beltsville, MD.

More recently, the scientists created a new series of ornamental peppers called Holiday Peppers, named for their decorative color and shape, which are reminiscent of the old-fashioned lights used to decorate trees during the holiday season.