Yolo Wonder

Mild, sweet bell flavor with thick, crisp, juicy walls. Green fruit tastes grassy and fresh; fully ripe red fruit is sweeter and richer.

Yolo Wonder is an open-pollinated Capsicum annuum sweet bell introduced in 1952 by the Campbell Soup Company and named for Yolo County, California. Selected as an improved California Wonder type, it is grown for tobacco mosaic virus resistance, heat and drought tolerance, and a dense canopy that shades fruit from sunscald. Sturdy plants 60–90 cm tall set heavy yields of 3- to 4-lobed blocky peppers about 10–15 cm across, with thick, crisp walls. Fruit may be picked green or left to ripen to bright red, when flavor is sweetest. It has no heat (0 SHU) and is a standard stuffing, grilling, and fresh-eating pepper.

Introduced in 1952 by the Campbell Soup Company in Yolo County, California, Yolo Wonder was bred as an improved selection of California Wonder. Seed catalogs commonly describe the cross as California Wonder × the Italian frying type Elephant Trunk. Breeders wanted a blocky, thick-walled commercial bell with tobacco mosaic virus resistance and extra foliage to protect fruit in hot, dry Central Valley summers. Lettered strains A, B, and L followed; Yolo Wonder L became the USDA reference type for the bell fruit group. In the 1980s–90s USDA-ARS used Yolo Wonder B as the recurrent parent of Carolina Wonder, a southern root-knot nematode–resistant bell released in 1997.