The hottest chilli pepper is Smokin Ed's 'Carolina Reaper', grown by Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Company (USA), which rates at an average of 1,641,183 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), according to tests conducted by Winthrop University in South Carolina, USA, throughout 2017.

The Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) scale is a method of quantifying a substance's 'spiciness', through determining the concentration of the chemical compounds responsible for the sensation, which are named capsaicinoids.