b'Winthrop University chemistry professorInside the Scoville ScaleCliff Calloway has worked with CurrieThere are more than 20 unique capsaicin for nearly 15 years, testing his hottestcompounds that can show up during peppers.HPLC testing, each with its own potency Peppers are submitted blind andvalue that contributes differently to the freeze-dried immediatelythe fresheroverall Scoville value.the better. To get the Scoville heat unit, you Peppers are around 85% water, somultiply that potency factor by the mass water is a major variable, Callowaypercentage of each compound, Calloway says. Were measuring the amount ofsays. heat-producing compounds per amountThis system is an improvement over of pepper. So, if one pepper has morethe previous method of gas chromatog-water than another, youll get misleadingraphy used in the 1970s, and is used in results. a wide range of applications, from food Dried peppers are then ground andchemistry and pharmaceutical work to extracted with ethanol.environmental analysis. Chromatography separates com- When it was introduced in the early pounds so that one shows up at a time,1900s, the Scoville value was how many Calloway explains. You put your mix- times you had to dilute a substance before ture in and collect data as a function ofyou stopped tasting heat, so if you saw time. If the capsaicin standard shows upa Scoville value of 10,000, that means Bonnie Plants Supply Chain Program Managerat eight minutes, and the pepper sampleyoud have to dilute it 10,000 times. It Joey Moorer connects proprietary peppershows a peak at eight minutes, Im confi- was more subjective, Calloway says. genetics with gardeners through retail plantdent thats capsaicin. production.Photo: Bonnie Plants Pepper testing is a unique way forWhy Flavour Comes Firststudents to get hands-on experience withDespite efforts to test and confirm HPLC, which is used in many otherScovilles, Currie isnt just obsessed with chemistry applications heat. He wants to enjoy the pepper flavour.32 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA MARCH 2026'