‘Bhut Jolokia’—The World's Hottest Known Chile Pepper is a Putative Naturally Occurring Interspecific Hybrid

Abstract

In replicated trials at Las Cruces, N.M., the Scoville heat units (SHUs) of ‘Bhut Jolokia’, a chile pepper from Assam, India, reached one million SHUs. Morphologic characters revealed that ‘Bhut Jolokia’ is a Capsicum chinense Jacq. cultivar. Molecular analysis with randomly amplified polymorphic DNA markers confirmed the species identification and, interestingly, revealed that there may have been genetic introgression from Capsicum frutescens L. into ‘Bhut Jolokia’.