In August remaining yr, whilst weeding in a patch of lawn at the back of their house in New Zealand, Colin and Donna Craig-Brown struck gold, or what appeared like the arena’s biggest potato.
“I had a large hoe in my hand, and it went, ‘clonk,’” mentioned Colin Craig-Brown, talking by means of telephone on Thursday from his farm close to Hamilton, the place a cow may well be heard within the background. “I mentioned to my spouse, ‘What the hell’s that?’”
Then, he mentioned: “I were given an ideal giant four-pronged lawn fork and laid into it, like an overexcited Viking warrior. I thrust my foot deep into the earth, dragged this factor out, kicking and screaming. It was once the scale of a garbage bin lid.”
They referred to as it Doug.
Doug, spelled Dug in some information experiences, was once as bronze and as burly as any Thanksgiving turkey and weighed 17.4 kilos. It got here apparently out of nowhere, and to the couple, it appeared, tasted and felt very similar to a large potato. (They bring to a halt and ate a small piece of it — uncooked.)
The invention made its approach into the inside track media, and with next weigh-ins, pleasure grew. After family and friends steered the protuberance could be a contender for the Guinness Guide of Global Information, the couple submitted an software for “the arena’s heaviest potato,” sat again and waited.
All over the place the arena, other folks have grown, proudly displayed and now and again gained prizes for his or her massive pumpkins, potatoes and tomatoes. In February, a farmer in Israel was once showed to have grown the arena’s heaviest strawberry, in keeping with Guinness: 289 grams (10.19 oz.). For some, it’s a interest; for others, an obsession with the promise of an international document, fleeting repute and in all probability a couple of chuckles. For the Craig-Browns, it was once an coincidence.
Colin Craig-Brown, 62, is the son of a horticultural scientist. He and his spouse, Donna, 60, ran a small farm. The couple had no longer up to now grown potatoes, that means Doug would have needed to had been self-seeded. At 17.4 kilos, it was once considerably better than the arena’s heaviest recognized potato, which weighed in at 11 kilos and was once unearthed in 2010 by means of Peter Glazebrook, a seasoned grower of big greens in Britain.
Because the couple waited for phrase from Guinness, doubts started to creep in in other places. To a couple within the business, the pictures of Doug steered that, whilst spectacular, it wasn’t relatively a potato.
Then, an electronic mail from Guinness landed in Colin Craig-Brown’s inbox remaining week. A slice of the expansion were submitted for DNA trying out, and the effects showed the doubters’ suspicions: Doug was once no longer a potato in any respect.
“Unfortunately the specimen isn’t a potato and is, in truth, the tuber of one of those gourd,” a spokesman for the group wrote, including, “Because of this we do sadly need to disqualify the appliance.”
To these with out inexperienced thumbs, “tuber of one of those gourd” could be frustratingly indirect wording. A tuber may also be any roughly swollen underground stem — together with a potato. Gourds, which come with pumpkins, marrows and cucumbers, are fully unrelated vegetation.
So what’s Doug in reality, the place did it come from, and why did it display up within the lawn close to Hamilton, a town in New Zealand’s North Island? No transparent solutions have emerged.
Chris Claridge, a horticulturist and the manager government of the trade staff Potatoes New Zealand, which assisted within the DNA trying out, described the expansion as a type of scar tissue on a wound, very similar to the lumps now and again observed on timber after a department is got rid of.
“It will have had an an infection, it will have had a illness, it will have simply shaped and grown as an coincidence of nature,” he mentioned. “But it surely’s no longer even the similar circle of relatives because the potato.”
He added: “Put it this fashion: We’re excellent at rising potatoes in New Zealand, however we’re no longer that excellent.”
For Craig-Brown, the end result was once disappointing. It was once additionally a puzzle that stored him wakeful at evening.
“How may a bloody gourd get in my lawn?” he recalled considering.
After which, a conceivable leap forward.
“There was once a level the place I used to be rising those hybridized cucumbers, proper the place Doug gave the impression,” he mentioned. “All the way through a hybridization procedure, who’s to mention they didn’t crossbreed it with a gourd plant to offer it super illness resistance or prolific flowering?”
In a commentary, Adam Millward, managing editor of Guinness Global Information, mentioned, “This has been a captivating adventure of discovery, and we’re happy we’ve been ready to get to the foundation — neatly, technically, tuber — of the subject.”
He additionally wanted the Craig-Browns the most efficient of their long run horticultural endeavors.
As for Doug, Craig-Brown mentioned: “He’s an attractive cool persona, aye.”
“He’s lovely glad sitting there within the cryogenic garage facility that we’ve were given right here at the farm — the deep freezer. He’s no longer fazed in any respect.”