Saga Jolokia – Searching for the new “World’s Hottest Chile”
By Harald Zoschke, with input from Dr. Paul Bosland and Dave DeWitt
Posted November 17, 2006 – Updated throughout 2007
It’s been more than five years that an Indian “Mystery Chile” was making headlines, and claims for such a “new” variety were published in print, and all over the Internet. With almost one million Scoville Units, it was supposed to be several times hotter than the Red Savina™, the current holder of that title in the Guinness World Records. Time and again the hot pod popped up in the news, yet no one in the Western world had seen it. That has changed recently, as new claims for such a potent pepper came from the UK, and also from the renowned Chile Pepper Institute of the New Mexico State University.
First Sightings
In September 2000, we got hold of a newspaper clipping from the International Herald Tribune. Headlined “Assam Chile named Hottest in the World”, AP had a brief story about a chile pepper variety grown in the northeastern hills of Assam, India. With 855,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), it would outperform the Red Savina’s much-quoted (and never duplicated) heat level of 577,000 SHU. The source given for that newsbyte was S.C. Dass, deputy director of the Defense Research Laboratory in the Assamese town of Tezpur.hot pepper