The art, science of chile - Crops find wide use, from lipstick to enchiladas

When it comes to market domination, Wal-Mart could learn a few things from Ed Curry.

Curry supplies the seed for more than 80 percent of the chile grown commercially in the U.S. from his seed farm and processing plant 75 miles southeast of Tucson.

In addition to supplying the seed for virtually all of the domestically grown green chile that makes its way into chile paste, powder and other food products, Curry also develops and refines jalapenos, cayenne peppers used for spices and other applications, paprika used to color everything from food products to lipstick, and capsaicin - the chemical that makes chiles hot, which is used for medicines and other applications.

"He has a great love and a great knowledge of chile, and he's really taken the lead in the industry," said Rich Phillips, senior project manager with the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at New Mexico State University and former coordinator of the New Mexico Chile Task Force.

While Curry derives the revenue for his Curry Seed & Chile Co. from about 10 different lines of chile seed, he's probably grown more than 3,000 varieties of chile on his acreage, he said.

Curry leans over a paprika plant in his 1,500-acre farm, carefully plucks a pepper and waxes eloquent about his passion and fascination for breeding chile.

"The whole genetics thing, it's awesome," he said, tearing open a paprika to reveal the deep red meat that could wind up in a variety of lipstick. "Part of why we're so successful is that we literally have more research going on here than many universities."

Genetics has become a loaded term that conjures sci-fi images of test tubes, syringes and grotesque mutants escaping from laboratories. But Curry's use of the term refers to what is essentially selective breeding, a practice as old and earthy as dirt - raising an acre of crops or a litter of puppies, culling the individuals with the qualities you most want to develop, breeding them, then starting the whole process over again.

Genetics: Wait till next year

"The great part about genetics is you can't wait until the next year to see what you've done," Curry said. "The whole beauty of genetics is you're never satisfied. You're always trying to improve."

Ed Curry wasn't formally educated in genetics, but through long-term relationships with world-class California breeder Phil Villa and others, and through years of experience in the field, he is widely hailed in the industry for his prowess and innovation in chile genetics, Phillips said.

"I've never been formally educated in this, I'm really what you would call a layman breeder, a hobby breeder," Curry said.

Paprika, jalapeno and cayenne aside, it's Curry's green chile - specifically his "Arizona 20" seeds - that cemented his status in seed farming, he said.

"What really put me on the map in this industry was we were the first ones to stabilize heat (spiciness) in pepper," Curry said. "Before we started releasing seed, there was no good heat tolerance. Some fields were hot and others weren't, and even in fields, one plant was hot and another wasn't, and when you open that can of Ortega or Hatch chile, they want that heat level to be in a certain range."

Curry first introduced Arizona 20 in 1993, and like every other chile seed he produces, he continues to improve it every year, tweaking qualities as varied as the amount of pulp or fruit yield to the ease at which the stem can be pulled from the pepper, an important quality for processing, he said.

"Ed's chile peels very well, de-stems very well, has a good thick wall, has good meat, and it's just a tremendous yielder," said Stephanie Walker, an extension vegetable specialist with New Mexico State University. "AZ-20 has just been embraced by the processors, and it really raised Ed's status as a pepper-seed supplier and breeder."

Modest to a fault, Curry insist on giving credit to Walker, Phillips, and Villa for his success. Villa worked with Curry's father, Elfrida chile farm-er Noel Curry, who started Curry Seed with Villa's help in 1956, and continues to work with Ed Curry.

Tumacacori partnership

Another long-term relationship of Curry's has resulted in a unique business partnership with Tumacacori-based Santa Cruz Chili & Spice Co.

"Ed's dad used to grow chiles for my dad, so we go way back," said Santa Cruz owner Jeanie Neubauer.

Curry's company is based on extracting the seed from the very finest quality of chile, and had little use for the meat of the chile itself, though Curry constantly seeks ways of using it.

About 10 years ago, Neubauer realized that if she moved a processing plant to Ed's farm in Pearce, she could make her chile paste with the pulp Curry was discarding, she said.

"Before, we'd truck the chiles two hours to get to us, and it just didn't make sense, so Ed built the facility and I brought the equipment. We still do the powder on the other side of the valley, but all of the chile in our paste comes from Ed."

It's a partnership that has allowed both companies to flourish, Neubauer said.

"Ed's just been a perfect partner, number one because he's so passionate about chiles and so committed to quality, but also because he shares our family values about taking care of your employees," she said.

Curry has 10 full-time employees, but has about 100 seasonal workers during the busy season. Green chiles are harvested from about August through September. Those same green chiles left in the field turn red and are harvested from about October through December.

The actual seed harvest begins about the time Curry's fields turn from green to red, when the seed has matured enough for the embryo to develop.

"We've got a narrow window to get it out, because once it starts freezing, the freezes tend to put the seed into dormancy, which lowers the germination rate."

Other crops help the chile

Curry also grows corn, pinto beans and other crops on his farm, but it's all about the chile seed. The other crops simply help maintain the organic material in the soil for fields that are working through various stages of the chile cycle. Curry likes to grow chile on a given plot one year, then give it from three to five years rest with other crops before resuming a chile crop on the same acreage.

The other crops also provide buffers to separate both production and research varieties of chile. You don't want a pepper being bred for heat crossing with a pepper being grown to color lipstick, he said.

"When they extract the oleoresin for the color, if we give them hot chile, the women would have hot lips," Curry said.

Resting on prior success in the seed-farming business is a recipe for disaster, so continuously improving seed stock is a necessity, even with a seed as superior as AZ-20, he said. Resting on anything is not part of Ed Curry's makeup, Neubauer said.

"Ed's a workaholic, just an extremely hard worker, so very innovative, constantly looking for new things," she said. "What he's accomplished is pretty amazing, and it's all about how much he just loves doing this."