Guinness World Records crowns new hottest pepper

The Guinness World Records has crowned Pepper X as the hottest chilli pepper in the world, dethroning the Carolina Reaper chilli pepper after 10 years, reports the BBC.

For comparison, a habanero pepper typically hits 100,000 Scoville heat units, but Pepper X registers at 2.69 million units.

Breeder and grower Ed Currie created both record-breaking peppers.

As a proprietary pepper, Pepper X pods and seeds will not be sold.

Currie cultivated Pepper X for a decade on his South Carolina farm, but remained tight-lipped about his project to protect his intellectual property.

"This was a team effort," Currie said in a statement. "We knew we had something special, so I only let a few of my closest family and friends know what was really going on."

In lab tests at Winthrop University in South Carolina, Pepper X registered an average of 2,693,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), which is more than one million units hotter than Currie's previous innovation, the Carolina Reaper which averaged 1,641,183 SHU.

In 1912 pharmacist Wilbur Scoville invented the Scoville Scale, which measures how many times capsaicin needs to be diluted.

Capsaicin is the chemical that gives humans that burning sensation of peppers - which can release dopamine and endorphins into the body.