Once a potential Super-Hot pepper is found, then naming and trade marking that name would be essential to secure future business opportunities. Business opportunities could start with selling those seeds to home gardeners, plus growing and manufacturing a wide range of products -- dried peppers, pickled peppers, powders, sauces, and the like.
An ever bigger
opportunity would licensing
the Super-Hot variety and its name to other companies, to utilize
for their own products, like"Blue Diamond Xtremes Carolina
Reaper Flavored Snack Nuts", "Pepper Joe"s Carolina
Reaper Summer Sausage", "Carolina Reaper Beef Jerky",
and even"Carolina Reaper socks" which are black socks
with little red Carolina Reaper pods printed on them, to keep
your feet warm.
Having a Scoville Unit Testing lab confirm that you found the newest world hottest pepper, and then naming and registering a trademark for that name, could make a home gardener or seed company a huge fortune.
The naming rule for seeds and plants in the United States, is that your pepper variety name must be DIFFERENT from the US Registered Trademark name. You are not allowed to use a plant or seed variety name as a US Registered Trademark.
When the Redwood City Seed Company"s pepper was lab tested at 1.662 million Scoville Units, the US registered trademarked name was registered as the"Chocolate Champion" and the seed and plant variety name registered with the USDA is"1.662 Million Scovilles"
"Guinness World Records®" is a US Registered Trademark, and "Guinness" refers to the trademarked Guinness World Records® (GWR) since 1955 been the global authority on record-breaking achievements, and NOT the Guinness beer company.
Since the 1980s, Guinness World Records® was the only contest where a Super-Hot pepper claim could be submitted to, and winners were originally placed under the category of "Spices, Hottest" but there was no independent Scoville Heat Unit testing requirements.
In the 1980s, the Redwood City Seed Company submitted the Tepin pepper to Guinness as the world"s hottest pepper at that time, and this was the first submission where any relative heat level as associated with the claim. Published in the 1989 edition."The chili pepper or Capsicum known as Tepin from southwest US comes in pods 3/8 in. in diameter. A single dried gram will produce detectable"heat" in 68.3 lbs. of bland sauce." [about 372,000 Scoville Heat Units].
When Frank Garcia submitted his claim for the Red Savina, Guinness published Garcia"s Scoville lab testing 570,000 Scoville Heat Units. After that, submitting a Scoville Heat Unit lab test became standard when sumitting claims to Guinness, for the"Hottest Chilli" category. The Red Savina held the Guinness World Hottest title from 1994 to 2006, when the Ghost pepper at 1,001,000 Scovilles replaced it.
At some time
after the Carolina Reaper® was confirmed by Guinness in 2017 at 1,641,000 Scovilles
for the average of 10 individually tested dried peppers, Guinness
changed the rules for future submissions, making a total of 35
rules -- many of which are nearly impossible to follow.
Guinness
pepper claim checklist
On the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottest_chili_pepper -- there is a list of six pepper confirmed to be the world"s hottest by Guinness, plus a list of seven"contenders".
On that list of contenders, there are three that could very easily beat the last claimant, the Carolina Reaper at only 1.641 scovillesó
-- Pepper X
at 3.178 million.
-- Dragon"s Breath at 3 million.
-- Chocolate Seven Pot at 1.8 million
-- Why aren't any of these in the list of Guinness winners?
What might be stopping the"Contenders" from becoming Super Hot Record-Holders, could be the 35 very difficult rules that Guinness now requires?
For example,
One of the Guinness rules states, that, "The pungency units must be determined
using an accredited laboratory to ISO 3513:1995," when the
Carolina Reaper was done by an unaccredited student lab, and done
with a completely different method--the Association of Official
Analytical Chemists International (AOAC) Official Method, 995.03,"Capsaicinoids
in Capsicums and Their Extractives, Liquid Chromatographic Method"
(from the FOIA request to Winthrop University for all Scoville
testing done for Ed Curry).
The Winthrop University lab disqualified itself, that they were not in compliance with Guinness guidelines when they wrote on September 5, 2020: "University labs are not usually certified by an agency or organization. That's typically a commercial lab thing that"s doing routine and specific tests, like some biomedical labs, water quality labs, environmental labs, for example depends on the need or regulation. And, I don"t know of a commercial lab that is"certified" by an agency for a Scoville Heat Units test."
Guinness requires a lab to be "ceritifed" but the Scoville testing lab instead use methods that are standard, like the Pungency- ASTA Methods 21.3 that most USA lab use for testing.
Craig Carlton
Dremann of Redwood City Seed Company in 2022 started the alternative
to Guinness, to
more easily find those Super-Hots growing in someone s home garden,
and discover those hidden and unknown economic gold mines--called
Dremann's Pepper Heat Search.
Instead of the 35 Guinness rules, the Dremann rules are much easier.
1.) Remove the stems from 16 whole fresh ripe peppers, and dry at a low heat until crispy dry. Do not cut or slice the fruit to dry. Make sure to remove the stem before drying. Recommended to dry between 125 and 135 degrees F., and it can take from 4 to 12 hours, and would be very good to put a oven thermometer in with them so you do not exceed 140 deg. F. If drying on a metal tray, best to put down a layer of parchment paper.
As an interesting footnote, the method used to prepare the Carolina Reaper for testing, the peppers were first frozen for 24 hours before drying. The Carolina Reaper peppers, "were frozen at -80oC for at least 24 hours using one of our -80 freezers, followed by 96 hours freeze dry time in a vacuum desiccator attached to the freeze-dry system, operating at -49oC and 0.050 mBar temperature and pressure, respectively. No more than 10 peppers were processed at a time. Peppers were weighed each 24 hour period until constant mass was achieved, using liquid nitrogen to flash re-freeze the peppers before reattaching to the freeze dry system." (REF)
2.) Put your name, address, phone number and email address on a sheet of paper, plus the name of your pepper variety, and an optional item to add, is to tell the story of how it was developed.
3.) Color photo prints of three individual fresh fruit, with an inch-ruler in the picture for scale. To show the range in variations. Do individual pictures, please do not group them in a single picture
4.) Enclose $100 in check or money order, to cover the lab testing and handling costs.
5.) Your sixteen
peppers will be inspected, and forwarded to the Southwest Bio-Lab
in New
Mexico, where they will be powdered and combined into a single
test, and tested using the"PUNGENCY- ASTA Methods 21.3"
6.) You can send in as many batches of sixteen peppers each,
as long as $100 is paid for the testing and handling for each
batch.
7.) When the Scoville testing is completed, you will receive an email with the results from the lab, and your results will also be posted at https://www.ecoseeds.com/pepper-search.html
8.) Pepper tests done independently, cannot be listed
8.) Before submitting your dried peppers to us, it is suggested to test a few additional dried pods yourself, using Dremann Hotness Test, which can give you very close Scoville numbers in 15 minutes in your kitchen--using a blender, gram scale and graduated eye dropper. Multiply the Dremann Hotness Scale number by 12 to arrive at the Scoville Heat number. The test protocol is located at https://www.ecoseeds.com/hotmethod.html
9.) Once you receive the results of the Southwest Bio Lab test, you should be able to post those results on Wikipedia on the"Hottest Chili Pepper" page under the"Contenders" list, with the lab test to back up your claim and add a photo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottest_chili_pepper
You need to contact Guinness directly for the name of a commercial Scoville heat testing lab or labs that can follow all of their dozens of rules.
There are also some very difficult to seemingly impossible Guinness requirements that as the claimant, you need to fulfill at www.ecoseeds.com/guinness-test-checklist.pdf
a.)"The chilli pepper classification/species must be verified by an independent qualified professional such as a horticulturalist."
[ Note: Unfortunately, even with expensive DNA tests, a genetic expert would be unable to determine the species, because it is impossible at this time, for science to clearly tell the species apart. The article in Ann Bot. 2016 Jul; 118(1): 35ñ51. "Phylogenetic relationships, diversification and expansion of chili peppers (Capsicum, Solanaceae)" --writes, "So far, only partial taxonomic and phylogenetic analyses have been done for the genus." That means science is unable to clearly tell the Capsicum species apart, so it would be impossible to comply with that Guinness rule.]
b.)"At least two independent witnesses, including at least one chemist and one horticulturalist, must submit statements regarding both the growth process and testing process." [This requirement is a complete mystery why it is required, and no indication what a "chmist" and "horticulturalist" are--could it be students from the local high school?].
c.)"Any articles about the pepper published in scientific journals should also be submitted."
--The Dremann's Heat Search is so much easier that the Guinness rules, and be able to lab-confirm you have discovered the world"s hottest pepper, so anyone wanting to prove their variety is the lab-confirmed world"s hottest, could go with the very easy Dremann"s Heat Search.
Updated December 10, 2022 - Redwood City Seed Company pepper seed website