This super-sized strawberry has netted a world record. Photo / AP
This super-sized strawberry has netted a world record. Photo / AP
After a year-long jam, a mammoth Israeli strawberry is entering the record books.
Weighing a whopping 289 grams (10.19 ounces, more than half a pound), the titanic berry this week was declared the world's largest by Guinness World Records.
The strawberry was picked on Chahi Ariel's family farm near thecity of Netanya in central Israel in February 2021. But only this week, Guinness confirmed it as the heaviest on record.
"We waited for a year for the results," Ariel said. "We kept it in the freezer for a year. It's no longer as pretty as it was."
The supersized strawberry is a local variety called Ilan that tends to grow to a hefty size. Ariel said the record-setting specimen has shrunk to about half the size it was a year before.
The strawberry was grown at Israel's Agricultural Research Organisation, the Volcani Centre. Ariel said the berry was able to grow and ripen so slowly because of unusually cold weather conditions early last year.
The supersized strawberry is a local variety called Ilan that tends to grow to a hefty size. Photo / AP
The strawberry was 18cm long, 4cm thick and 34cm in circumference.
The previous record-holder for the heaviest strawberry was a Japanese fruit grown in 2015 in Fukuoka that tipped the scales at 250 grams (8.8 ounces).
