LAS CRUCES, N.M., April 29 New Mexico State University is a hotbed of chile pepper innovation where scientists have created more than two dozen new strains during the last two decades.Researchers at NMSU design equipment to harvest and process peppers while geneticists try to modify the fiery fruit to resist diseases, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.The university recently scored another coup when its research got a pepper from northeastern India declared the hottest chile in the world by the Guinness World Records.Professor Paul Bosland founded the Chile Pepper Institute in 1992 to make the university the chile pepper center of the world.Bosland won Harvard's "Ig Noble Prize" for dubious achievement when he developed a pepper with no heat that is used to thicken salsa. "I got e-mails accusing me of selling my soul to the devil after that one," Bosland said. Copyright 2007 by UPI
