After a year-long jam, a mammoth strawberry grown by Israeli farmer Chahi Ariel has become the world's heaviest strawberry, according to Guinness World Records, and is now entering the record books.
Weighing a whopping 289 grams (10.19 ounces), the titanic strawberry was about five times the average weight of a regular berry of the local Ilan variety, said Nir Dai, a researcher at Israel's Volcani Institute where the strain was developed.
The strawberry was 18 centimeters (7.08 inches) long and 34 centimeters in circumference, the online Guinness entry said, as it was was declared the world's largest by Guinness World Records.
Ariel had been hoping he was onto a winner when they saw how big the fruit were growing on his family farm near the city of Netanya in central Israel in February of last year. He has been waiting for confirmation it was a record while keeping the giant strawberry in the freezer as proof.
"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."
"When we heard, it was an amazing feeling. I jumped in the car, laughed and sang," said Ariel, proudly displaying his certificate on a laptop. "We’ve been waiting for this for a long time."
The supersized strawberry is a local variety called Ilan that tends to grow to a hefty size. Unusually cold weather in early 2021 slowed the strawberry's ripening process, allowing it to continue gaining weight, according to the record book's website.
Ariel said the record-setting specimen has shrunk to about half the size it was a year before.
The previous record-holder for the heaviest strawberry was a Japanese fruit grown in 2015 in Fukuoka that tipped the scales at 250 grams.
"We are very happy to be in the Guinness World Records," Ariel said.
