Wes­ley Gib­bings

While Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sid­ers its le­gal op­tions re­gard­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty claims to the world's hottest pep­per, an Aus­tralian com­pa­ny mar­ket­ing the va­ri­ety known as the "Trinidad Scor­pi­on Butch T" is find­ing keen mar­kets in Aus­tralia, the Unit­ed King­dom and Unit­ed States."Lots of peo­ple here in Aus­tralia, but al­so in the UK and USA, are big on hot chill­ies," a spokesman for The Chilli Fac­to­ry based in New South Wales, Aus­tralia, replied to ques­tions via e-mail from the Trinidad Guardian.A re­cent Guardian ar­ti­cle point­ed to the fact that the "Scor­pi­on" had been ad­judged the world's hottest pep­per- reach­ing 1,463,700 units on the Scov­ille Heat Unit (SHU) scale. Be­fore that, the "Na­ga Viper," de­vel­oped in Eng­land, clock­ing 1,359,000 SHUs, had been con­sid­ered to be at the top of the heat scale.

Lead­ing the charge for at least "ge­o­graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tion" rights to the "Scor­pi­on" va­ri­ety is the Trinidad-based Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di) whose Her­man Adams-a con­sul­tant plant breed­er-claims the coun­try should move more ag­gres­sive­ly to lay claim to the pep­per.The In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs al­ready has a brief be­fore it on the is­sue. Grow­ers and proces­sors of the "Scor­pi­on" in Aus­tralia have open­ly ac­knowl­edged its ori­gins and it is be­ing mar­ket­ed as a "Trinidad" va­ri­ety.

A po­si­tion pa­per pre­pared by Adams and Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) un­der-grad­u­ate re­searcher, Na­dia Ram­ta­hal, con­tends that the orig­i­nal germplasm for all Cap­sicum pep­per species "orig­i­nat­ed in the trop­i­cal Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean of which Trinidad and To­ba­go is a part."Adams and a team of re­searchers had, in 2005, col­lect­ed the germplasm of the Scor­pi­on va­ri­ety from six lo­ca­tions around Trinidad and To­ba­go, iso­lat­ed it in To­ba­go and pro­duced "ful­ly self­ed seeds"-a process in­volv­ing the gen­er­a­tion of seeds de­rived from pollen and eggs from the same plant.

"The re­sult was the suc­cess­ful se­lec­tion of the elite plants of a pure­line with the berries of the high­est pun­gency and aro­ma," the Car­di pa­per says.Analy­ses on cap­saicin con­tent were car­ried out in a UWI lab­o­ra­to­ry, show­ing the "Scor­pi­on" to be in ex­cess of 1,000,000 SHUs.Sim­i­lar work has al­so been con­duct­ed on oth­er in­dige­nous va­ri­eties such as the West In­dies Red, Car­di Green, Moru­ga Red, Hood, Be­ju­cal and the Faria pep­pers.Adams be­lieves Trinidad and To­ba­go has sci­ence on its side when it comes to claims to the "Scor­pi­on.""All parental ma­te­r­i­al would have orig­i­nal­ly come from the Caribbean cen­tre of hot pep­per di­ver­si­ty in the Trop­i­cal Amer­i­c­as," the pa­per pro­duced by Adams and Ram­ta­hal con­tends."All Cap­sicum species were in­tro­duced in­to oth­er parts of the world where they were adapt­ed," the pa­per says."This was the case of the Scor­pi­on su­per­hot pep­per which is clear­ly germplasm from Trinidad and To­ba­go where it is in­dige­nous from time im­memo­r­i­al and where it is still grown and main­tained by small farm­ers all over the coun­try."