The chili pepper (also chile pepper or chilli pepper, from Nahuatl chlli /ttili/) is the fruit[1] of

plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. In Britain,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India,[2] and other Asian countries, the word "pepper" is
usually omitted.
The substances that give chili peppers their intensity when ingested or applied topically
are capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) and several related chemicals, collectively
called capsaicinoids.
Chili peppers originated in the Americas.[3] After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili
pepper spread across the world, used in both food and medicine. Chilies were brought to Asia
by Portuguese navigators during the 16th century.
India is the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of chili peppers. [4] Guntur in
the South Indian state of Andhra Pradeshproduces 30% of all the chilies produced in India,[5] and
Andhra Pradesh as a whole contributes 75% of India's chili exports.
Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC. The
most recent research shows that chili peppers were domesticated more than 6000 years ago in
Mexico, in the region that extends across southern Puebla and northern Oaxacato
southeastern Veracruz,[6] and were one of the first self-pollinating crops cultivated in Mexico,
Central and parts of South America.[7]
Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter them (in the Caribbean), and
called them "peppers" because they, like black and white pepper of the Piper genus known in
Europe, have a spicy hot taste unlike other foodstuffs. Upon their introduction into Europe, chilies
were grown as botanical curiosities in the gardens of Spanish and Portuguese monasteries. But
the monks experimented with the chili culinary potential and discovered that their pungency
offered a substitute for black peppercorns, which at the time were so costly that they were used
as legal currency in some countries.[8]
Chilies were cultivated around the globe after Columbus.[9][10] Diego lvarez Chanca, a physician
on Columbus' second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain
and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494.
The spread of chili peppers to Asia was most likely a natural consequence of its introduction to
Portuguese traders (Lisbon was a common port of call for Spanish ships sailing to and from the
Americas) who, aware of its trade value, would have likely promoted its commerce in the Asian
spice trade routes then dominated by Portuguese and Arab traders.[11] Today chilies are an
integral part of South Asian andSoutheast Asian cuisines.

There is a verifiable correlation between the chili pepper geographical dissemination and
consumption in Asia and the presence of Portuguese traders, India and southeast Asia being
obvious examples.
The chili pepper features heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of
a Portuguese colony (e.g., vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of a Portuguese dish). Chili peppers
journeyed from India,[12] through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where they became the
national spice in the form of paprika.
An alternate, although not so plausible account (no obvious correlation between its dissemination
in Asia and Spanish presence or trade routes), defended mostly by Spanish historians, was that
from Mexico, at the time a Spanish colony, chili peppers spread into their other colony
the Philippines and from there to India, China, Indonesia. To Japan, it was brought by the
Portuguese missionaries in 1542, and then later, it was brought to Korea.