A link to our initial report is provided below. This is not an official claim by the propagator of the specimens. It is an article we wrote based on documentation that we were given exclusive access to.

We will provide more facts as they are confirmed by the University that produced the document. Stay tuned!

Thank you,
Brandon - bbqPDX.com

If true we have got to be approaching the limits of heat that a pepper can actually produce.

DOUBLE??? That is taking hot to a whole new level. But, it seems every year there are claims such as this that never pan out. A lot of times it is just a ruse to sell some U/I seeds. There were no specifics mentioned in the article. No variety named, the test site was only listed as an American university. Again, no specific name. No hard Scoville numbers.

Useless if so , since chances are you can't re grow it.

There is a UTUBE video going around where some guy claims his Hybrid is hotter than Butch T.
It is a hybrid and the guy has no idea if it'll grow true to it's seeds.

Butch T has been around since 2005 or 2006 when butch sent me and tons of others seeds for it,it is a stable strain.
It was then called Trinidad Scorpion Jonah.
The people in OZ grew it and had it tested and re named it Butch T after Butch Taylor.
If I remember right,he thinks it is possibly a Scorpion Cumari cross.

It seems to me they should have to prove a plants stability to get world record status,otherwise like several other peppers, it's just a flash in the pan.

smoke- what's the difference between the butch and what folks currently call the jonah?

The story I was told is that the Butch T is just the name they gave the T.S. Jonah after they grew it out and tested it.
I was told Butch sent them the seeds originally.

I don't know how long the guys in Australia grew them out or if they got crossed along the way.
I doubt they would have given Butch the credit if they had done any intentional crossing before they had it tested.
Butch does think it may or may not have crossed in his garden years ago with a cumari but he isn't sure.
All he knows is they are stable and hot.

At least thats what I read...

I've had some Douglahs that I think might be equally as hot from time to time.
Lately with all the non isolated seeds going around and with hardly anyone,in general ,isolating varieties and strains it's a crap shoot every time you put a seed in the sprouter.
With the high prices being paid for seeds (plants,pods and powders)these days a lot of people are crossing anything with anything and if the hybrid happens to be hot they hawk it as a new strain etc.

Most of the stuff won't grow true or be consistant in any way like the original cross was.
I think you have to grow a hybrid out 8 times to get a 98% chance that it's stable.
Some one posted a while back a chart of how many times you have to re grow a hybrid before it can be considered stable.
Re growing a hybrid can mean back crossing the offspring several times to get what the grower wants.
Lots of work involved in developing a new variety or stable strain.

Once it's stable they re name it and call it a new strain or variety.It's not considered a hybrid anymore.

For anyone interested, the chart was taken from the website referenced below. The author uses Tomato genes to illustrate crossing but it applies to peppers, etc. etc.

i grew 4 isolated varieties each of the last 2 years and am upping it to a dozen or so next year.

People I don't think realize what it takes to develope a new true variety of pepper or just grow seeds out to insure that they have pure seeds to begin with.
But these guys are all instant experts on how great their seeds are.
I see seed vendors,especially for super hots giving all kinds of excuses about why their seeds are not growing what was advertised.
It's never their fault....
They don't grow the varieties out and really have no clue as to their seed source being stable or pure for that matter.
Most grow a seed out 1 season and if it looks cool they sell it.Isolating a hybrid only 1 season might grow a similar plant but it's seeds probably won't.

But that 50 cents and up per seed keeps them selling the seeds anyway.
They offer replacement seeds-of what,more untested seeds? lol

It's nice to have a hybrid, but how about making it stable first?

Peppers are prolific inbreeders and you should only need to outbreed once for hybridization (unless you're doing something really tricky). A little reverse/crossbreeding may be necessary to clean the genetics up, but rarely with peppers/toms/etc.

Rushing something you can't replicate the following season with a stable seed supply is sloppy, imo.

It only takes 1-2 additional grow-outs/seasons/etc. to mostly stabilize your seed line...and you should go 5-7 to maintain stability.

...and you're going to proclaim you have a hybrid...at least make sure it's a legit/stable hybrid rather than a mix of genetics that you have to grow 10 plants in order to get the 5-ish plants you want.

But that 50 cents and up per seed keeps them selling the seeds anyway.
They offer replacement seeds-of what,more untested seeds? lol"

gee, i wonder who you could be talking about... you left out the part about getting really defensive when they make their excuses... :)

There are a couple around like that but I think we both are talking about the same person. LOL

If ya can't dazzle them with Brilliance,Baffle them with B.S.
On your way to the bank of coarse. :)

First time I had a sauce made with Bhut peppers I was in pain for almost half an hour.

I have since figured out how to make the sauce (as hot or hotter than the original) and eat it regularly with little to no pain. Once you get beyond the pain (and I understand some can't) you can start to enjoy some of the interesting flavors underneath.

The link above for crossing and segregation is Keith Mueller's website. The chart presumes you are making single seed selections and that all further crosspollination is prevented. You would grow one or more F1 plants and save seed. There is no selection at all from the F1 plants because you want the maximum amount of segregation in the offspring. Then you would grow the F2 plants and begin selecting based on plant and fruit traits and save seed ONLY from the plants that meet the desired traits. Then you would grow F3 plants and continue the selection process. The devil is in the details though, if you consider a single seed, then it will fit the chart above. But when you consider the entire population of plants grown out in a Filial generation, you could see every gene expressed that existed in the original cross.

By the F7, if you have done the selection work properly and if you prevented further crossing, then you can have a highly homozygous line that breeds true for most if not all traits. The background mutation rate then becomes significant enough that it begins to influence the level of homozygousity. Typically, each new plant grown from seed will have 2 or 3 new mutations that were not present in the parent. The vast majority of these mutations are harmless and undetectable but once in a while one will show up that changes a significant plant trait. So the gist of this means that once you get to the F7, you are going to have about as stable a line as it is possible to achieve. Beyond that point, you are not going to achieve much because of the way the genetics work. That doesn't mean you stop growing them or that the breeding and selection work is done, it just means that the line is stable for all practical purposes.

If you are a serious plant breeder, the F7 generation is where the really serious work begins. Grow out a large number of F7 plants. Then carefully go through each and every plant with a detailed list of traits that should be met. Rogue out all plants that do NOT meet the standard. Each generation thereafter has to do this same level of detailed selection to maintain the original line.

From the above, for generations F1 to F7, you are figuring out which selections to INCLUDE in the population. Once you reach F7, you are figuring out what to EXCLUDE and therefore must be removed from the breeding line.

DarJones