Scorpion Butch T Chile Pepper Plants |
Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper is a chili pepper that was formerly the most most piquant pepper.
It has been since replaced as the world's hottest pepper by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion from
Trinidad and Tobago.
It is named after Butch Taylor, the owner of Zydeco farms in Woodville/Crosby Mississippi & hot sauce company who is responsible for propagating the pepper's seeds. "Scorpion" peppers are referred to as such because the pointed end of the pepper is said to resemble a scorpion's stinger. The pepper is a Capsicum chinense cultivar, derived from the Trinidad Scorpion, which is indigenous to Trinidad and Tobago. The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T variety pepper was ranked as the most pungent ("hot") pepper in the world, according to Guinness World Records in 2011. A laboratory test conducted in March 2011 measured a specimen of Trinidad Scorpion Butch T at 1,463,700 Scoville heat units, officially ranking it the hottest pepper in the world at that time. The pungency of a species of chili pepper can vary by up to a factor of 10 depending on the conditions under which the specimen grew. According to the New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute (the only international, non-profit scientific organization devoted to education and research related to Capsicum or chile peppers), the distinction of world's most piquant pepper currently belongs to the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. The secret to the heat, according to the creators, is fertilizing the soil with liquid runoff of a worm farm. Chili peppers have chilli as the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India,Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without "pepper". Chili peppers originated in the Americas. After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread across the world, used in both food and medicine. Among which the city of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh produces 30% of all the chilies produced in India, and the state of Andhra Pradesh contributes to 75% of all the chilli exports from India, which is the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of chili peppers. |