Manganji

Earthy-rich aroma with a rustic, gentle sweetness and little of the grassy bitterness of a green bell pepper. Flesh is thick, tender, and juicy, with very few seeds.

Manganji is a Capsicum annuum sweet pepper that originated in the Manganji district of Maizuru, northern Kyoto Prefecture, around the 1920s. Fruits run 10–23 cm long, slender with a pinched neck and a slight curve, thick-walled yet soft, and nearly seedless. They are sold and eaten glossy dark green; fully ripe fruit turns red. Heat is typically 0–100 SHU, so the pepper is treated as a sweet cooking vegetable rather than a chili. It is a Kyoto Brand Product (1989) and a Japan Geographical Indication as Manganji Amatou (2017), grown in Maizuru, Ayabe, and Fukuchiyama.

The pepper takes its name from the Manganji district of Maizuru, where it appeared in the late Taishō to early Shōwa years as a local landrace. Growers have long described it as a natural cross of Kyoto’s slender Fushimi tōgarashi and the American California Wonder bell, but a 2017 SSR study found that parentage unproven and placed Manganji closest to Fushimi and an older Asian line. After decades as a farmhouse vegetable, wholesale shipments began in 1983; it became the first Kyoto Brand Product in 1989 and was registered as the GI Manganji Amatou on 23 June 2017. Kyoto Prefecture later released Kyoto Manganji No. 1 (2007, doubled haploid) and Kyoto Manganji No. 2 (2011–12), the latter marker-selected to suppress the occasional hot fruit of the landrace.