The Moruga Scorpion was once hailed as the hottest chilli in the world. But the true story of its creation lay hidden in rural Trinidad, buried under misinformation and neglect. Now, thanks to a chance journey home, its real breeder has finally been found — a humble farmer named Nigel Rooplal, whose contribution to global food culture has gone unrecognised.

Owner of South Devon Chilli Farm and Trinidadian, Amrit Madhoo, spotted Wikipedia credits the grower of a later yellow variant, but not the original red pepper. After scouring what little research was available, he used a family trip back to Trinidad to investigate further. Through local connections, Amrit was able to track down the original Moruga Scorpion farmer through an elder who remembered its creation.

“We never would have found Nigel without someone vouching for us,” Amrit explained.

Nigel told how, from 2005, he and his brother began crossbreeding chillies to satisfy food vendors’ growing appetite for fiercer heat. “Everybody kept asking for hotter and hotter chillies,” Amrit adds. “So him and his brother — who has sadly passed away now — set about trying to create this hot pepper. It didn’t just happen randomly. They were breeding it for about five, six years.”

In 2011, Guinness World Records tested the pepper at New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute. It registered more than 1.2 million Scoville Heat Units — a mild jalapeño, by comparison, scores around 5,000. Officially, the Moruga Scorpion was the hottest chilli in the world. Yet Nigel received no cheque, no headline, and no protective hand from Trinidad’s agricultural authorities.

“They got no credit, no recognition at all,” Amrit says. “Bearing in mind, this was ranked by Guinness as the hottest in the world. It was world famous. And yet, why had nobody tracked him down?

“In Trinidad, we have a Minister of Agriculture and research centres in the universities. It should have been their responsibility to nurture what he was doing, given the prominence it got. But it was just left.”

Meanwhile, demand for super-hots exploded. Breeders of headline-grabbing peppers, like the Carolina Reaper, pocketed fortunes and built global brands. Nigel and his late brother never sought fame; they were simply answering their community’s call for hotter peppers. But that humility should not mean their contribution is forgotten.

Amrit suspects that when samples were tested in New Mexico, seeds landed in the hands of growers. He believes some of the world’s hottest chillies to follow, including the Carolina Reaper, may trace their genetics back to Nigel’s creation. In a short interview with Amrit, the farmer shrugs with quiet resignation at the notion of recognition. Too much time has passed and the chance to profit has long gone. But he concedes it would be nice, after all these years, for people simply to know the truth.

During the trip to Trinidan, Amrit found evidence “extremely hot” peppers were being recorded in Trinidad as early as the 1990s, long before the chilli world acknowledged their existence. If proven, it would reframe the entire narrative: not just two men robbed of worthy recognition, but an entire island overlooked in the story of the chilli explosion.