Peppers of Key West has found that Chile experts identify Trinidad Moruga Scorpion as world’s hottest!

Experts at New Mexico’s State University’s Chile Pepper Institute have identified the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion as the hottest pepper on the planet.

There are super-hot chili varieties. And then there’s the sweat-inducing, tear-generating, mouth-on-fire Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.

With a name like that, it’s not surprising that months of research by the experts at New Mexico’s State University’s Chile Pepper Institute have identified the variety as the new hottest pepper on the planet.

The golf ball-sized pepper scored the highest among a handful of chili breeds reputed to be among the hottest in the world. Its mean heat topped more than 1.2 million units on the Scoville heat scale, while fruits from some individual plants reached 2 million heat units.

“You take a bite. It doesn’t seem so bad, and then it builds and it builds and it builds. So it is quite nasty,” Paul Bosland, a renowned pepper expert and director of the chili institute, said of the pepper’s heat.

Researchers were pushed by hot sauce makers, seed producers and others in the spicy foods industry to establish the average heat levels for super-hot varieties in an effort to quash unscientific claims of which peppers are actually the hottest.

Peppers of Key West