New Zealand

Record-breaking 'Dug the Spud' is not a potato after all

Oh my gourd, it's not a potato.

Oh my gourd. Dug the Spud isn't a spud after all.

The recording-breaking, headline-grabbing, monster "potato" which originated from a Hamilton farm last year has received its DNA results. Turns out it's 100% not potato.

Colin and Donna Craig-Brown had sent a sample of their 7.9kg spud to the UK for DNA testing before Guinness World Records could consider it to be the worldest heaviest spud.

Instead, the scientists at the Science & Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) defined Dug as a "tuber of a type of gourd". And with that, Dug's application was denied.

"I'm disappointed, but he's still 'Dug - not the biggest potato'," Colin told Stuff on Monday.

"I'm trying to rationalise how this has happened," he said.

"The mysterious part is why did it grow so big? And why does it taste and look like a potato?"

"If it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and has feathers on it, then it must be a duck. But nah – this one turned out to be a turkey."

Colin assumes that if it's not potato, it perhaps is a crossbred gourd-cucumber.

The current supreme Spud record remains with the current Guinness World Record holder in Nottinghamshire, at 4.99kg.

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