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heat The Hottest Pepper In The World

That's annoying right? ...
 
Just put it out there now ...
Science > Marketing ...
 
Don't tell me your interested is in the medical aspect of the capsaicin-race, and then hold back ...
 
If you are doing it for science/research/medicine ... you put it out there ASAP. Period.
It's remotely similar to the NSA hoarding 0-day's ...
 
I don't have any significant beef or anything, I'm half-kidding ...
 
I do however object to acting like it's about the medical benefit while at once framing it in a hottest-pepper-in-the-world marketing hype piece ...
 
What I wonder is what makes a 'variety' of pepper worthy of the title.  In the biggest what ever categories, they focus on the grower not the variety.  It is almost like the hottest pepper title was made for selling seeds.
 
I don't buy the 'Pakistani Naga' (haven't seen this pop up anywhere else by the way) X Habanero story at all. It just sounds too made up to me.

However, if the Reaper is not Ed's own creation (but really from the Primo) then how did he manage to make a reportedly far hotter pepper?

Either you have the skills and knowledge to make peppers hotter than others can manage, or you can't. No one else seems to be able to breed a pepper that is far hotter than the Reaper so if Ed did indeed use the Primo to make the Reaper then how the heck has he made a much hotter pepper??

Sorry to repeat myself but it doesn't make sense to me either way I put it..
 
From what I have seen, only Ed has had a reaper that tested higher than 2 mil. That would be from the lab in a small college that he donated money to. There are recent tests from multiple sources and labs showing reapers no hotter than in the 1.5s, and Primos always being within 100k of the reapers tested + and -. Even the hot pepper institute says the Moruga is the world's hottest pepper.
 
My experience is mostly with sauces, wherein the Reaper and the Moruga Scorpion are basically equal in strength with the Primo trailing behind a little bit. Dried, however, the Reaper seems hotter to me than any Scorp I've tasted. Not that I can garuntee any dried Scorpion I've had was Moruga strain.
 
Ultimately, while they are quite similar peppers, I have yet to see anything that directly connects the Reaper and the Primo. I will not be buying into all these conspiracies until I see some actual evidence.
 
I do, however, take issue with the way "Smokin' Ed" conducts himself in the press.
Bullcrap inconsistent and implausible origin stories for the Reaper. Everything being for medicine yet not treated thusly in his marketing tactics. A supposed "Gator" or "Death Strain" held back just incase. Claims that he could break the 5 million barrier in a few years.
None of that's believable.
 
grantmichaels said:
Science > Marketing ...
 
Click to expand...
In Ed's view maybe marketing > science. After all, here we all are talking about supposed strains and conspiracy theories! There's def hype for the next hottest whatever it is and whoever it comes from.
 
Jase4224 said:
However, if the Reaper is not Ed's own creation (but really from the Primo) then how did he manage to make a reportedly far hotter pepper?
Click to expand...
 
Some thoughts:
 
For one, which reports are we going by?
 
When you're trying to genetically modify an existing plant in whatever way (a hotter pepper, a larger cucumber, a more disease-resistant tomato), there are, so far as I'm aware, only three roads to Rome: hybridization, selection, and gene splicing. Unless you have a Monsanto budget, you probably aren't going to be doing the lattermost. The question being posed, then, is whether Ed employed hybridization and selection (the Naga x Habanero route), or simply selection (the "hey, that's just a Primo selection" theory). At the end of the day, I don't think it really matters much except in terms of who is the recipient of the fame and money, which I would guess is of more interest to Ed Currie and Troy Primo than it is to me. I would further suggest that a lot of the reason for the controversy here is that there's a single, tangible person attached to the 7 Pot Primo. After all, we haven't exactly heard anyone asserting claims on behalf of the original breeders of the Naga or the Habanero in question, right? If it's about fame and money, it's got nothing to do with me, and it's just not that interesting. That's not intended as a comment on anyone else's motives, just my own.
 
I would go a step further and add that, in all honesty, I take the Guinness Record about as seriously as a "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug. Is the Reaper the hottest pepper in the world? Which Reaper? Grown under what conditions? After all, cultural factors play an enormous role that often gets overlooked when we're talking about genes, as if the testing being done were accounting for them. If my environmental conditions produce a hotter Reaper than the ones Ed Currie's growing, does that justify a new Guinness Record for "Wicked Mike's Miami Reaper?" Clearly not. Same genes, right? But what if I cross a Bhut with a habanero? What if I stumble onto a a set of growing conditions that's so very superior to what anyone else is doing that the pods from my plant test at 2.5 million SHUs? Have I really bred a hotter pepper than the Reaper? Objectively speaking, no, but wouldn't it still be a hotter pepper I'd produced? I get the fact that my example is "not to scale" and that there's no way a change in growing conditions is going to produce that substantial a difference in heat level, but I'm intentionally exaggerating the difference here to make a point, and at the end of the day, the Reaper and Primo just aren't so far apart that environmental factors can be ignored.
 
Just my two cents.
 
Growing conditions are supposed to have been factored out. Hence why that one 3 million Naga Viper (assuming it ever really existed) hasn't got the record.
In practice though, nothing has been done to account for conditions at all. You could be watering your plants with Pure Evil and noone would bat an eye.
 
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