Description
Carolina Reaper
(Capsicum chinense)
Considered the world’s second hottest chilli a single fruit of Carolina Reaper has been measured at 2.2 million SHU, making it the Guiness World Record holder until beaten by Pepper X. In our tests, we recorded a crop average heat level of 1.65 million SHU, which is an incredible heat level when considering how variable individual fruit tend to be.
Different strains of Carolina Reaper vary in performance enormously. However, this strain is very productive, with plants producing over a kilo of fruit each. The fruit start green and ripen to a red. They have a gnarled, very irregular appearance, but tend to bulge at the stalk end, then rapidly narrow down, with many fruit having the classical “scorpion’s tail”. The skin surface is very wrinkled.
The robust, bushy plants do best either in the ground or large containers at least 7.5 litres in volume. They can grow very tall – sometimes topping a metre and half – and need strong support so that they don’t fall over.
More information about Carolina Reaper can be seen on Wikipedia
Heat level: superhot (1.65 million SHU).
For more information on Scoville Heat Units and what they mean click here.