New Mexico No. 9

Roasted green pods taste earthy and lightly sweet with a gentle, lingering warmth rather than a sharp bite—the classic New Mexican green-chile profile García selected so the fruit would flavor a dish without overwhelming it. Fully ripe red fruit keeps that earthiness and adds a deeper, slightly sweeter dried-chile character used for red sauce and powder.

New Mexico No. 9 is a Capsicum annuum heirloom of the New Mexican pod type—the first chile cultivar released by New Mexico State University and the plant that defined the long, tapering, shoulderless green-to-red chile now associated with Hatch and New Mexican cooking. Dr. Fabián García bred it around Las Cruces from local pasilla, colorado, and negro landraces for uniformity of size and heat, a fleshier wall than the old mixed garden strains, and a smooth pod that would can. NMSU estimates heat at 1,000–1,500 Scoville Heat Units, milder than most unimproved landraces of its day but still clearly a chile. It was the commercial standard until mid-century replacements such as New Mexico 6, 6-4, and Sandia; today it survives mainly in heritage plots, including a 2025 Fort Selden planting from Chile Pepper Institute seed. Green fruit is roasted and peeled; ripe red fruit is dried for sauce, powder, and ristras.

Fabián García, first horticulturist at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now NMSU), began improving local Las Cruces chiles in the 1890s so farmers could finally predict pod size and heat. From fourteen pasilla, colorado, and negro accessions he selected a larger, smoother, fleshier, tapering, shoulderless pod meant to peel and can cleanly, and he deliberately moderated heat to widen the market beyond Hispanic growers. After nine years of trials he judged line No. 9 the best, released seed in 1913, and described it in Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 124 (1921). Choosing the red colorado strain over dark-brown types later underpinned New Mexico’s red-chile and paprika color trade. No. 9 was the state’s commercial standard until about 1950 and is the genetic base of later New Mexican cultivars—including Sandia (No. 9 × Anaheim) and the California Anaheim strain grown from No. 9 seed.