Pepper, also known as lantern pepper, is a one-year or Limited perennial herb of Magnolia, Solanaceae and capsicum. Stems subglabrous or puberulent, branches slightly zigzag. Leaves alternate, branches do not elongate and become twins or clusters, oblong ovate, ovate or ovate lanceolate, entire, tip short acuminate or acute, base narrowly cuneate; flowers solitary, drooping; calyx cup-shaped, not significantly 5-toothed; corolla white, lobes ovate; anthers gray purple. The fruit stem is thick and drooping; the fruit is long fingerlike, the top is gradually sharp and often curved, green when immature, red, orange or purplish red when mature, spicy. Seeds oblate, pale yellow.

At the beginning of pepper growth, it is the germination period. After germination and sowing, it is usually unearthed about 5-8 days later, the first true leaf appears about 15 days later, and it is the seedling period when the flower bud is exposed. From the first spike to the gate pepper, it is the flowering period. The fruiting period is from fruit setting to seedling pulling. The optimum temperature of pepper is 15-34℃. How many days can pepper seeds germinate? The suitable temperature for seed germination is 25-30℃. It takes 5-7 days to germinate. When the temperature is lower than 15℃ or higher than 35℃, the seed will not germinate.

The seedling stage of pepper is relatively long, it needs at least 70 days from sowing to budding, and the temperature of seedling stage is relatively high, 25℃~30℃ in the daytime, 15℃~ 18℃ at night, the seedlings can’t bear low temperature, so it’s necessary to pay attention to cold prevention. If temperature higher than 35 degree, it will cause the pepper’s flowers and fruits fall. Pepper has strict requirements on water content. It is neither drought tolerant nor waterlogging tolerant. It likes relatively dry air conditions.

Phnix dryer-pepper drying process

As the difference of pepper quality and maturity, it’s necessary to pick up all unsuiable peppers before drying, During the loading, the pepper shall be evenly laid with a laying thickness of about 5cm. The fresh pepper shall enter from the upper layer of the heat pump dryer and be turned to the lower layer for discharging layer by layer. The fresh pepper have very high water content, generally up to 75-85%, so need dry the pepper to 50% water content and make them sweat when stepping on piles, then start the second drying step. The pepper drying adjustable temperature is 60-80℃; At present, it is a better way to dry pepper by using the method of subsection drying. The quality, drying time and drying quantity of pepper are greatly affected by the use of sectional drying.There are obvious softening and swelling phenomena in the drying process of pepper.Dried pepper have the same color, ruddy and smooth, and balanced moisture content.