Beyond The Bench

It has been called the “ghost chili,” the “poison chili,” and even the “king of chilis.” In 2000, the Indian government’s Defense Research Laboratory claimed it as the world’s hottest chili. Seven years later, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded it the title “world’s spiciest chili.” This year, New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute gave the final confirmation: bhut jolokia is, in fact, the world’s spiciest chili.

If Guinness Book accolades are not enough, here’s a quantifiable idea of how spicy the bhut jolokia really is: the last world record holder for “spiciest chili,” the Red Savina habanero, contained 580,000 Scoville units (the scientific measurement for a chili’s spiciness). One thumb-sized bhut jolokia, however, can contain up to 1,001,304 Scoville units.

The Indian military is now working with scientists to harvest the natural and nontoxic power of this chili. “Tear gas” hand grenades are already underway, and trials are being conducted to test aerosol sprays that women can carry in place of mace, as well.

Fun fact: bhut jolokias are so hot, people in India sometimes smear them on fences to keep wild elephants away!

Check out research comparing the spiciness of bhut jolokia vs. Scotch Bonnet and Jalapeno peppers.¹

1 Liu Y, & Nair MG (2010). Capsaicinoids in the hottest pepper Bhut Jolokia and its antioxidant and antiinflammatory activities. Natural product communications, 5 (1), 91-4 PMID: 20184029

Mindbogglingly useful: a new, low-cost water purification protocol for the developing world now freely available* to download from CP Microbiology:

Unit 1G.2 Bioremediation of Turbid Surface Water Using Seed Extract from Moringa oleifera Lam. (Drumstick) Tree

In the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams described his fictional creation, the all language-translating Babel fish, as being something ‘so mindbogglingly useful’ that it seemed almost inconceivable that it could have evolved by chance. This notion might equally apply to the drought-resistant Moringa oleifera tree, which can yield – among other things – cooking and lighting oil, soil fertilizer, as well as highly nutritious and tasty food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. In addition, as is set out in this unit published in Current Protocols in Microbiology, its seeds can be used as part of an inexpensive drinking water treatment technique that could help significantly reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world.

Around a billion people in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily potable water needs. Of these, some 2 million are reckoned to die from waterborne diseases every year, the majority of these deaths being among children under 5 years of age. This amounts to a Mogadishu of fatalities every six months, and a Mexico City every decade. To help combat this appalling toll of avoidable mortality, Michael Lea* of Clearinghouse, an organization that researches and implements low- cost water purification technologies, has outlined a procedure that can reduce levels of harmful bacteria in water by around 90-99%, as well as reducing cloudiness, making the resulting drink aesthetically as well as microbiologically more acceptable for human consumption.

Water purification methods using seeds from the Moringa tree have been known about for centuries, but their use has been limited geographically. Cultivation of this tree as a food source is now spreading widely –amazingly the tree grows happily in all the regions where it can be most useful– but not many people know how to use the crushed seed powder as a coagulant to clean their water and potentially save lives. It is Lea’s hope that having the technique readily available via the internet from a reputable source in a protocol format – a first – will make dissemination to local community leaders, health workers and educational programs much easier.

The story doesn’t end there. This, after all, is the almost implausibly useful Moringa tree. Included with the protocol for purification is another that can be used for extracting a multi-purpose vegetable oil from the seeds, that leaves a ‘presscake’ that is just as effective in cleansing the water as the powder. Any surplus oil produced that is not needed for home cooking, lighting or mosquito repellent can then be sold, giving individuals a powerful economic incentive to use Moringa seeds over chlorine tablets—which are a daunting expense to people existing on small and uncertain incomes. Any surplus seed powder or presscake would also be saleable.

Michael Lea is at pains to stress that the use of these techniques will not be a panacea against waterborne disease. However, given that increasing the use of the Moringa tree can bring benefits in the shape of nutrition and income, as well as of purer water, there is the possibility that thousands of 21st century families could find themselves largely liberated from what should really be considered 19th century causes of death or debilitating disease. This prospect, and that of the human potential thereby released, is truly and happily mindboggling.

Made freely available as part of the John Wiley & Sons Corporate Citizenship Initiative.

A previous freely-available water treatment protocol authored by Michael Lea, Biological Sand Filters: Low-Cost Bioremediation Techniques for Production of Clean Drinking Water, is available here.