A couple in New Zealand were devastated after Guinness World Records revealed that a potato they dug up on their farm was actually a gourd. Colin Craig-Brown and his wife Donna applied to Guinness World Records in August for the world’s heaviest potato but were told that a scientific study determined it to be a gourd tuber in the Cucurbitaceae family. It was a giant potato-like mass that had captured worldwide attention after Mr. Craig-Brown and Donna discovered it in their garden. It was affectionately named “Dug” by the couple. It “looked and tasted” like a potato, according to the man.
However, months after completing the paperwork and submitting the photos, they received an e-mail last week from Guinness World Records saying, “Dear Colin, the specimen is not a potato, but rather the tuber of a gourd. As a result, we must, unfortunately, disqualify the application.”
The husband and wife are heartbroken, but they are powerless to intervene because the results are based on DNA samples.
Dr. Samantha Baldwin of New Zealand’s Plant and Food Research told The Wall Street Journal, “He just wasn’t behaving as a potato should.” “We were unable to identify DNA sequences that are unique to potatoes.”
Dr. Baldwin’s team performed a number of tests on tuber samples. She went on to say that the samples were sent to Scotland’s Science & Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA), which determined that Dug’s genetic sequencing closely matched that of gourds.
“He’s still the world’s biggest not-a-potato,” Mr. Craig-Brown told the Wall Street Journal.
The tuber had become a local celebrity after the couple posted photos of it wearing a hat on Facebook and even built a cart to pull it around.
They also had a local farming stone weigh it, which came out to be 7.8 kilograms.
The current world record for the heaviest potato is held by a potato grown in Britain in 2011 that weighed just under 5 kg.
