The World Largest Potato Is a Fraud?
Learn why Dug, the 17.2-pound potato, will never garner the coveted Guinness title of world's largest potato.
This article is more than 2 years old
For Colin and Donna Craig-Brown, growing the world’s largest potato was about to change everything. With a Guinness record comes massive attention and worldwide admiration for one’s farming prowess. So when the duo discovered that their astronomically large potato, affectionately named Dug, was not a potato at all, the closeness of a record-breaking title fell quickly to the waste side.
When the New Zealand farmers reported that they had grown an outstanding 17.2 lb potato, Guinness wanted to ensure that this root vegetable was the real deal. A potato sample was sent to the Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture, ready to test its genetic makeup. The researchers at the lab found that Dug was not a potato at all but some sort of gourd. This realization crashed the world’s largest-potato dream the Craig-Browns almost achieved, but the genetic test doesn’t take away from their unbelievably massive tuber.
The investigation persists on how these farmers crafted the potential world’s largest potato. Colin Craig-Brown commented that Dug could’ve sprouted from a crossbreeding of a cucumber and gourd, though he doesn’t know for sure. The most frustrating part for the New Zealand farmers was how much the gourd resembled a real potato.
Unfortunately for the Craig-Browns, even tasting the world’s largest potato wasn’t enough to accurately define its nature. Several months before submitting the DNA, the farmers taste-tested the root vegetable to see what the flavor was like. Surprisingly, Dug tasted exactly like a regular potato, which startled the couple even more when they found out the DNA wasn’t a match.
This is a significant relief for Guinness champion Peter Glazebrook, a farmer who has held record-breaking titles in 15 different categories, including world’s largest potato. Some of his achievements include preposterously sized carrots, onions, tomatoes, cauliflower, and pumpkins. He’s held the world’s largest potato record for the past decade and, thanks to Dug, will remain the titleholder for the foreseeable future.
The 76-year-old Glazebrook continues to be a force to be reckoned with in the record-breaking vegetable game. Aside from his decade-long reign with the world’s largest potato, he also held the world’s largest tomato record. Unlike the Craig-Brown fiasco, Glazebrook’s tomato was recently overtaken by a British farmer’s produce in 2020. This tomato weighed 6.85 pounds, just slightly larger than Glazebrook’s.
This failure to produce the world’s largest potato hasn’t stopped the enthusiasm and farming drive for the Craig-Browns. The couple wants to invest in creating a monstrously large potato that is an actual potato, unlike their unfortunate, fraudulent one. Today, they’ve come to peace with their Guinness-record denial, happy that they weren’t awarded a prize for a fake potato. The Craig-Browns are yet to discuss their technique for growing an actual Dug, but their excitement for producing a massive potato won’t be stopping anytime soon.
Growing the world’s largest potato is a competitive sport. For Peter Glazebrook and the Craig-Browns, unearthing an ungodly vegetable is a neverending goal. Farmers all over the world continue to pull out insanely large produce from their farms, inspiring people globally that the impossible is suddenly possible.
