Photo Above: From left, Doug Renfro, with Renfro’s Foods Inc, Chile Pepper Institute Director Paul Bosland and John and Sue Hard of CaJohns Fiery Foods, hold a $5,470 check, the final contribution to the Chile Pepper Institute Endowed Chair position. The check will secure funding for chile pepper research. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
After 10 years of arduous work, New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute has finally funded its $1 million endowment chair. The endowed chair ensures that funds will always be available for chile pepper research at NMSU. This will help in the search for a new Chile Pepper Breeding and Genetics faculty position in the near future. The chair is officially named The Paul W. Bosland Chile Pepper Breeding and Genetics Endowed Chair. It not only honors the 33-year career of Bosland, who is the director of the CPI, and all of his contributions to the chile pepper industry, but also provides the university with this chair to recognize the 131 years of continuous chile pepper breeding at New Mexico State University. “I am very, very honored to have the chair named after me. I didn’t expect it,” Bosland said. “I always tell people when I first came to NMSU that the media would ask me if chile peppers were a fad or a trend and now no one asks me that question anymore. We’ve really established chile peppers as part of our institution at NMSU and hopefully it will continue.”
Paul is a longtime good friend of mine and we have coauthored three books together, including the best-selling The Complete Chile Pepper Book, published by Timber Press.
