An Australian farm has smashed the record for the world’s largest blueberry with a fruit the size of a table tennis ball. Picked in November and stored in a freezer since, the berry was almost 4cm wide and weighed 20.4g, which is about 10 times the average blueberry. The title was previously held by a 16.2g berry grown in Western Australia.
The specimen is of a new variety developed by the Costa Group, to meet demand for larger berries. Brad Hocking says the Eterna variety consistently yields huge fruit, but recent growing conditions had led to a bumper crop at their farm in Corindi, northern New South Wales.
Brad’s team had noticed some promising berries on the bushes but were shocked when they were weighed. “It wasn’t really until we put them on the scale that we realised what we found,” the lead horticulturalist told the BBC. “The record-breaking fruit was obviously particularly large, but we would have picked 20 or more fruit that morning that would have broken the previous world record.”
After 12 weeks, the berry was certified by Guinness World Records as the heaviest ever documented.