Pretty cool article in the LAtimes.com about NMSU’s Paul Bosland and their Chile Pepper Institute. Whether you like Paul Bosland or not, you should at least respect the dedication he gives to the awesome-est fruit on the planet…the chile pepper.

N.M. school helps provide a red-hot spice of life
In New Mexico, where the chile is king, experts bring spice to daily life.
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
April 29, 2007

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Jit Baral, a researcher at New Mexico State University, stepped into the lab and pulled a plastic gas mask over his face. He and two students strapped on heavy rubber gloves and lab smocks. They activated an exhaust fan to cycle air quickly from the room.

Then Baral gingerly lifted the object that triggered all the precautions — a small, wrinkled red chile. This was no ordinary pepper. Baral was about to prove that the bhut jolokia, originally from northeastern India, is the hottest chile in the world.

He plopped it into an electric grinder, and caustic fumes filled the room. Next, Baral ran the powder through a machine to measure its spiciness, which registered as 100 times that of a typical jalapeno. The research landed the pepper in the Guinness World Records and was another coup for a school with an unusual academic flavor.

Some universities are known for their particle accelerators, others for their basketball teams. NMSU is renowned as a hotbed of chile innovation. Its agronomists create new strains of the pepper — more than two dozen in the last 20 years. Engineers design equipment to harvest and process it. Geneticists try to modify the fiery fruit to resist diseases, and the university library is starting an archive for all things chile.

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