The naga jolokia (bhut jolokia, bih jolokia, oo-morok, raja mirchi, ghost chili, ghost pepper, naga morich), is native to northeastern India (Assam, Nagaland, Manipur) and Bangladesh. It has been designated by Guinness World Records to be the hottest chili on Earth, displacing the previous titleholder, red savina.

Mature jolokia (Capsicum chinense, with Capsicum frutescens genes) plants grow to a bushy 17 to 47 inches high. The ripe, thin-skinned peppers measure 2 inches to a little more than 3 inches in length and about an inch in shoulder width, with an undulating surface. Fruits ripen from green to orange to bright fiery red, with a unique green tip. The round stem is green, containing anthocyanin (dark color pigments), at the nodes, with initial branching about six inches above the ground. The ovalish-shaped leaf has a distinctive crinkled surface, with length from 3 to 5 inches, and 2 to 2 3/4 inches in width. The pendant flowers have creamy white corollas, often tinged with light green. The filaments are purple and the anthers blue. Each node usually has multiple flowers.

The pepper universe measures hotness by the Scoville heat unit rating. The Scoville method determines how much the pepper's extract can be diluted without losing its heat by a taste testing of several testers, thus imbued with potentially subjective opinion.

Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. Basic jalapeno peppers are 2,500 to 8,000 units. The previous Guinness record was 580,000 units for the habanero, aka red savina. In 2000, scientists at India's Defence Research Laboratory reported a jolokia Scoville rating of 855,000 units, and an Indian export business, Frontal Agritech, derived a blistering 1,041,427 unit rating. Powdered jolokia would have to be diluted over a million times in proportion, before no heat would be taste-detected.

Dr. Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University, and his colleagues were contacted to substantiate these claims. He propagated jolokia from seed, under insect-proof net cages. Using a climate-controlled greenhouse and heat pads, jolokia was grown under local cultural protocols. After the pepper fruits were harvested, sample pods were dried and ground for testing under the more sophisticated Scoville heat unit rating via high performance liquid chromatography.

Testing was conducted with the realization that the specific genes of the pepper cultivar and environmental factors might increase or decrease actual heat levels. This was balanced by testing samples from uniform control cultivars during field trials.

In 2005, Bosland credited jolokia grown from seed in southern New Mexico with a scorching Scoville rating of 1,001,304 by HPLC. In Paris Hilton lingo, "that's hot!"

In February 2007, Guiness World Records certified the bhut jolokia as the world's hottest chili pepper.

Jolokia is used as spice in food or eaten alone. One jolokia seed can create intense pain in the mouth for up to 30 minutes before subsiding. One writer has described eating an entire chili as "an all-out assault on the senses, akin to swigging a cocktail of battery acid and glass shards." Curiously, jolokia has been used for treatment in stomach ailments, and to induce perspiration.

The most extraordinary use of jolokia is to defend homes, crops and people in villages of northeastern India from marauding elephants. Conservationists have erected jute rope fences smeared with automobile grease and bhut jolokia. They also use smoke bombs. Nandita Hazarika, of the Assam Haathi (Elephant) Project, told the Associated Press: "we fill straw nests with pungent dry chili and attach them to sticks before burning it. The fireball emits a strong, pungent smell that succeeds in driving away elephants."

Horticulturists say the local soil, gentle sloping hills, heat and humidity of the northeast of India create an ideal greenhouse environment for growing jolokia. At the present, transport issues and government regulation restrict bhut jolokia exports to dried peppers or in chili paste. Jolokia has tremendous potential for the packaged food industry because the heat is so concentrated, which means less would be needed. Jolokia also could be pickled while still green, or dehydrated and used as seasoning.

Though it's not grown commercially here, I think Hawaiian-grown jolokia would be a wela (hot) product for our agricultural and food industry market.