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The Origin and History of Chili Pepper

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The Origin and History of Chili Pepper
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Chili Pepper

Cayenne pepper

Small white variety of chili grown in Udupi district, India
The chili pepper (also chile pepper or chilli pepper, from Nahuatl chīlli ['t͡ʃiːlːi]) is the fruit[1] of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India,[2] Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without "pepper".
Chili peppers originated in the Americas. After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread across the world, used in both food and medicine.
India is the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of chili peppers.[3] Among which the city of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh produces 30% of all the chilies produced in India,[4]and the state of Andhra Pradesh contributes to 75% of all the chilli exports from India.[5]
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History
Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in southwestern Ecuador that chili peppers were domesticated more than 6000 years ago,[6][7] and were one of the first self-pollinating crops cultivated in Central and South America.[8]
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, chilis 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

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