Abstract: Deletion of 689 bp in 5′- terminal of the C gene locus caused an absence of pungency in sweet
pepper after sequencing and alignment. A C gene fragment from non-pungent oxhorn pepper 0538 was amp li
fied, which does not have the deletion, but a mutation from G to A at 40 bp in the coding region. Thismuta
tion led to the change of an amino acid from hydrophobic aspartic acid to hydrophilic asparaginate in signal
pep tide, which might cause the loss of the function of the C gene and finally the pungency. Using the same
primer pair, Catf2 gene from all used accessions was amp lified, which shares high similarity about 88.9%
with the C gene.

Key words: Pepper, Capsicum annuum L., Capsaicinoid synthetase, Sequence analysis, Signal peptide