Carolina Reaper vs Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

One of these is a landrace and the other is a product. The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion comes from the Moruga district on Trinidad's south coast, one of several superhot landraces from that island alongside the Trinidad Scorpion, the 7 Pot Jonah and the Douglah. The Carolina Reaper came out of Ed Currie's breeding program at PuckerButt in South Carolina. Guinness World Records, announcing the Reaper's record on November 19, 2013, described it as a cross between a sweet habanero and a Naga Viper that took ten years to stabilize. Before it had a name it was a plot number, HP22B.

The heat testing behind each pepper was done differently, and that matters. Paul Bosland, Danise Coon and Gregory Reeves at New Mexico State University grew the Moruga in a replicated field trial at Las Cruces in 2011 with Bhut Jolokia as the control and measured it by HPLC (HortTechnology, 2012). The mean came to 1,207,764 SHU. Two individual plants exceeded two million, at 2,009,231 and 2,006,598, and the lowest plant in the trial still read 1,084,762. The Reaper's numbers come from samples the breeder submitted for certification. Guinness listed an average of 1,569,300 SHU in 2013 and 1,641,183 SHU in 2017, and the Reaper held the title until October 2023, when Currie's own Pepper X replaced it at 2,693,000. Nobody has grown the two side by side in a published trial with a control, so the ranking rests on two separate datasets.

The NMSU marker work also tells you how the two relate. RAPD analysis grouped the Moruga with the other Trinidad landraces at a genetic similarity of 0.91, well apart from Bhut Jolokia, which carries Capsicum frutescens genes from a natural cross. The Reaper, by its breeder's account, has a Naga on one side and a Caribbean habanero on the other, so it splits the difference between those two lineages.

In the mouth they diverge more than the numbers suggest. The Moruga opens with a fruity, almost floral sweetness and the burn arrives late and keeps building. The Reaper hits faster. PuckerButt describes sweet, fruity undertones with hints of cinnamon and chocolate before the pain. Both are red, wrinkled, golf-ball pods, which is why seed packets get mixed up. The Reaper carries a long sickle tail. The Moruga is rounder with a small nub of a tip. Both end up in extract-style sauces, dried powders and eating contests, and neither belongs in a weeknight salsa. Do not confuse the Moruga with the Sweet Moruga, which is nearly heatless.

Sources

• Bosland, Coon and Reeves, HortTechnology 22(4), 2012: 'Trinidad Moruga Scorpion' Pepper is the World's Hottest Measured Chile Pepper at More Than Two Million Scoville Heat Units
• Guinness World Records, 19 November 2013: Confirmed, Smokin Ed's Carolina Reaper sets new record for hottest chilli
• Guinness World Records, October 2023: Pepper X dethrones Carolina Reaper as world's hottest chilli pepper
• PuckerButt Pepper Company: Our Roots