Israeli farmer Chahi Ariel grew the world’s largest strawberry, and has earned an entry into the Guiness World Book of Records. The strawberry reportedly weighs nearly five times that of the average strawberry. It measured 18cm in length and 34cm in circumference.
When they saw how huge the fruit were growing on his family farm last year, Ariel thought he’d found a winner. He’s been storing the enormous strawberry in the freezer as proof while waiting for confirmation that it was a record. This strawberry is of the Ilan variety and was grown by Ariel’s family business “Strawberries in the Field”, located in Kadima-Zoran, Israel.
“When we heard, it was an amazing feeling. I jumped in the car, laughed and sang,” said Ariel, during a Zoom interview with CNN Travel. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
When Ariel weighed the world’s largest strawberry after weighing an iPhone XR, the size of the strawberry was put into perspective. The iPhone weighed 194 grams, less than a hundred grams less than the enormous strawberry.
Dr Nir Dai, an Israeli Agricultural Research Organisation (ARO) researcher, developed the Ilan strawberry cultivar at the ARO Volcani Centre in Bet-Dagan, near Tel-Aviv.
“The Ilan variety of strawberry is known for producing large fruits,” Guiness World Records said via its website.
“During this strawberry season in late January and early February it was particularly cold,” explained Dai, who was one of the witnesses during the strawberry’s weigh-in. “The strawberry developed slowly for more than 45 days from flowering which caused it’s large size at full ripening stage.”
Dai’s cold weather conditions resulted in a bumper strawberry production for Ariel’s fruit farm, yielding not one, but four large strawberries.
“The previous record for world’s heaviest strawberry was 250g. The berry was grown by Koji Nakao (Japan) and was weighed in Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan, on 28 January 2015. The strawberry was a Japanese variety called Amaou,” Guiness said.
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