A living document, updated as new parentage evidence surfaces. We’re building the chili family tree from the top down — starting with the newest record-breaking superhots, whose parentage is actually written down, and working backward toward the old landraces and wild species, where the trail goes cold.
Last updated: 12 August 2026 | Changelog
Why this isn’t really a "tree"
It’s tempting to picture pepper ancestry as a neat tree where every variety has one parent above it. Below the species level, that picture breaks. Most chili history is a network, not a tree: varieties are crossed, back-crossed, and re-crossed, and traditional types cross-pollinate freely in the field. So a single "tree" can’t honestly represent it.
Our approach is to record relationships, not just positions on a chart, and to tag every relationship with how solid the evidence is. That distinction matters: a modern bred superhot may have a documented, intentional cross on record, while a centuries-old landrace has no recorded parentage at all — only a region and a genus.
Confidence tags we use
- Documented cross — an intentional, recorded breeding cross (named parents, often a breeder and a code name).
- Breeder claim — a stated parentage from the breeder that isn’t independently verified, sometimes disputed.
- Selection — a strain chosen over generations from an existing variety rather than produced by a wide cross.
- Natural introgression — gene flow between species confirmed or suggested by DNA markers, not a deliberate cross.
- Landrace / unresolved — a traditional regional type with no documented parents.
The world-record succession
A clean spine for the whole network — who held the "world’s hottest" title and when:
- Red Savina Habanero — 1994 to 2006
- Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) — 2007 to 2011
- Infinity Chili, then Naga Viper — early 2011 (each briefly)
- Trinidad Scorpion Butch T — 2011
- Trinidad Moruga Scorpion — 2012
- Carolina Reaper — 2013 to 2023
- Pepper X — 2023 to present
Read top to bottom, that list is the modern superhot era in order. Read bottom to top, it’s a roadmap of which lineages to trace first.
Current record-holders (parentage on record)
Pepper X
The current Guinness World Record holder for the world’s hottest pepper, certified in 2023. Like the Carolina Reaper, it was developed by Ed Currie of the PuckerButt Pepper Company. Its exact parentage has been kept largely proprietary, so for our purposes it sits as Documented cross — parents undisclosed.
Carolina Reaper (HP22B)
Held the world-record title from 2013 until Pepper X surpassed it in 2023. Developed by Ed Currie over roughly a decade of selection. The code name HP22B comes straight from his breeding notes ("Higher Power, pot 22, plant B") — a useful reminder that this lineage exists precisely because someone documented it.
- Parentage (Documented cross): a particularly fierce habanero from the La Soufrière volcano region of Saint Vincent, crossed with a Naga-type / ghost pepper from Assam.
- Species: Capsicum chinense
This single entry already reaches back toward two of our deeper nodes: the habanero branch of C. chinense, and the Naga / ghost branch of South Asian superhots.
Former record-holders & contemporaries
Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia / Naga Jolokia)
The 2007 world-record holder and a parent (directly or through Naga relatives) of much of the modern superhot wave.
- Parentage (Natural introgression): morphologically and genetically a Capsicum chinense cultivar, but DNA marker analysis (RAPD) indicates some genetic material introgressed from Capsicum frutescens. It is, in effect, a natural interspecific blend rather than a deliberate cross — and it’s closely related to the Naga Morich of the same region.
- Species: C. chinense (with C. frutescens introgression)
This is one of the most important nodes on the chart: it’s where a superhot lineage crosses a species boundary, which a strict tree can’t show.
Trinidad Scorpion Butch T
Held the record in 2011. Named for breeder Butch Taylor; the famous Australian heat tests were run by The Chilli Factory.
- Parentage (Selection from landrace): a selected strain derived from the Trinidad (Moruga) Scorpion. The "Butch T" name marks the selected strain, much like other named Scorpion strains.
- Species: C. chinense
Infinity Chili
Created by Nick Woods (Fire Foods) in Lincolnshire, England. Held the record for roughly two weeks in February 2011 before being overtaken by the Butch T.
- Parentage (Breeder claim): reported to involve Naga Morich and Bhut Jolokia lines; not independently verified.
- Species: C. chinense
Naga Viper
Our cautionary node. A UK pepper bred by Gerald Fowler, whose widely repeated three-way parentage is a breeder claim and whose seed is reportedly unstable across generations.
- Parentage (Breeder claim): Naga Morich × Bhut Jolokia × Trinidad Scorpion (unverified, unstable).
- Species: C. chinense
7 Pot Primo
Developed by horticulturist Troy Primeaux (Primo) of Louisiana, who began the cross around 2005. Notable for its long "stinger" tail and for an ongoing community debate about how closely it relates to the Carolina Reaper.
- Parentage (Documented cross — breeder-stated): Naga Morich × Trinidad 7 Pot.
- Species: C. chinense
Dragon’s Breath
A UK pepper developed collaboratively by grower Neal Price with Nottingham Trent University and NPK Technology, with claimed heat well above 2 million SHU.
- Parentage (Breeder claim): appears to be a variant within the 7 Pot / Infinity group; not formally documented.
- Species: C. chinense
Komodo Dragon
A commercial superhot from Salvatore Genovese, one of the UK’s largest pepper producers.
- Parentage (Breeder claim — undisclosed): commercial cross, parents not publicly stated.
- Species: C. chinense
The landrace anchors
Naga Morich
A traditional superhot of Bangladesh and Northeast India, closely tied to the ghost pepper complex and a frequent parent or sibling in Naga-type crosses.
- Parentage (Landrace / unresolved): regional landrace, no documented parents.
- Species: C. chinense
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion & the 7 Pot family
The Caribbean superhot core — Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, 7 Pot Douglah, 7 Pot Brain Strain, and relatives. The Moruga Scorpion briefly held the world record in 2012, but as a landrace it has no documented parents, only a region: the Moruga district of Trinidad. The 7 Pot group is the same story. Both turn up repeatedly as parents of the modern bred superhots above.
- Parentage (Landrace / unresolved): Trinidadian landraces.
- Species: C. chinense
The habanero branch
This is where the superhot story meets the older, milder backbone of C. chinense.
Red Savina Habanero
The pepper that started the modern superhot race, holding the world record from 1994 to 2006 — the longest reign of any pepper since. Developed by Frank Garcia of GNS Spices in Walnut, California. Crucially, it is not a wide cross; it’s a selection.
- Parentage (Selection): a selectively bred strain of red habanero, chosen over generations for greater heat, size, and weight. The exact selection method was never made public, and it was protected under U.S. Plant Variety Protection until 2011.
- Species: C. chinense
Habanero (cultivar group)
The orange/red/chocolate/white habaneros are a cultivar group within C. chinense, with roots tracing back to the Amazon basin before spreading through the Caribbean and Yucatán. Red Savina sits directly on this branch, and the Carolina Reaper’s mother (the La Soufrière habanero from St. Vincent) is a member of it too — which is how the record-holders ultimately connect back here.
- Parentage (Cultivar group of the species): C. chinense.
Scotch Bonnet (cultivar group)
Best understood as a sibling of the habanero group, not its parent or child — a separate Caribbean cultivar group that developed in parallel within C. chinense. This is exactly the kind of relationship a strict tree mishandles and a network handles correctly.
- Parentage (Sibling group): sibling to the habanero group within C. chinense; no documented parent-child link between them.
Where the trail goes cold
Trace every arrow back and the modern record-holders collapse onto three landrace clusters — Naga/ghost (South Asia), Scorpion/7 Pot (Trinidad), and habanero (Caribbean) — all sitting on the single species node C. chinense, with one cross-species thread reaching into C. frutescens via the ghost pepper.
Past that point, documented parentage largely disappears. Habanero and Scotch bonnet are best understood as sibling cultivar-groups that developed separately through long cultivation, not as a parent-and-child pair. From there the only reliable links are at the species and geographic-population level, which is where the published genomic science takes over. That convergence is the root the next phase of the project hangs from.
Still to add
- The remaining Scorpion and 7 Pot strains (7 Pot Douglah, 7 Pot Brain Strain, Chocolate Bhutlah)
- The milder end of the habanero branch, and the Scotch bonnet cultivars in detail
- The species-level backbone — the five domesticated Capsicum species — as the root the whole network hangs from
- The C. frutescens and C. annuum threads that touch the network from outside
Changelog
- 12 August 2026 — Consolidated into a single living page. The former two-part series has been merged; the world-record succession now runs as one spine, former record-holders and landrace anchors are grouped together, and the Selection confidence tag has been added to the tag list.
- 28 May 2026 — Added the former record-holders and the habanero branch: Butch T, 7 Pot Primo, Infinity Chili, Dragon’s Breath, Komodo Dragon, Red Savina, and the habanero and Scotch bonnet cultivar groups.
- 28 May 2026 — First published: confidence-tag framework, Pepper X, Carolina Reaper, ghost pepper, Naga Morich, and the Trinidad landraces.
Parentage confidence is flagged per entry. "Breeder claim" and "undisclosed" items are recorded for completeness and should not be treated as verified fact. Sources consulted include published horticultural research on Bhut Jolokia’s species identity (HortScience), Capsicum domestication and genomics literature, Guinness World Records succession reporting, and breeder statements for the modern cultivars.