How hot do you like your peppers? Researchers at the University of California are working the heat levels of the jalapeno pepper down to a science. Farm Advisor Aziz Baameur of the UC Cooperative Extension explains that they are experimenting with various field inputs such as nitrogen and water to produce hotter jalapenos.

"Nitrogen seems to be promising, high nitrogen because it allows also for high yields so in that combination that looks promising. Low nitrogen also is high pungency; it brings a lot of heat in the peppers. However, it is correlated with lower yields. Water by itself, so far has not shown what the common knowledge is that less water the hotter the pepper we have not seen that."

He says that one of the goals of growing hotter peppers is to reduce the amount of additional products added during processing in order to reach the optimal heat level.

"The goal is to increase that pungency to a level where it allows them to use less materials, that are expensive, to reach a certain maximum heat that they are looking for."