WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand couple who believed they had dug up the world's largest potato in the garden of their small farm near Hamilton have had their dreams turned to mash after Guinness World Records wrote to say that scientific testing had found it wasn't, in fact, a potato after all.
"Sadly the specimen is not a potato, and is in fact that tuber of a type of gourd," Guinness wrote in an email to Colin and Donna Craig-Brown. "For this reason we do unfortunately have to disqualify the application."
"What can you say?" Craig-Brown told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "We can't say, 'We don't believe you,' because we gave them the DNA stuff."
Colin Craig-Brown unearthed the giant gourd tuber in August with a garden hoe. The couple weighed the specimen at 7.8 kilograms or just over 17 pounds.
The couple had named their find Doug, which they took to spelling Dug. The specimen had become something of a local celebrity after the couple began posting photos of it on Facebook with a hat on and even built a cart to tow it around.
According to The Associated Press, the disqualification means the title for the world's largest potato remains in the U.K. Harvested in 2011, that spud weighs just under 5 kilograms or 11 pounds.
