Part 2 of the lineage project. Part 1 covered today’s record-holders; this page works back through the peppers that used to hold the crown and into the habanero branch they ultimately lean on. Every parentage entry carries the same confidence tags introduced in Part 1: Documented cross, Breeder claim, Natural introgression, Selection, and Landrace / unresolved.
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.
Former record-holders & contemporaries
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: Capsicum 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
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
Covered in Part 1 as our cautionary node — a UK pepper (bred by Gerald Fowler) whose widely repeated three-way parentage (Naga Morich × Bhut Jolokia × Trinidad Scorpion) is a breeder claim, and the variety is reportedly unstable across generations.
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
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion & Trinidad 7 Pot
The Caribbean superhot core. The Trinidad 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. These two repeatedly turn up 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.
How this feeds the chart
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. That convergence is the root the next phase of the project hangs from.
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 Guinness World Records succession reporting, breeder statements, and published horticultural references.