A massive strawberry grown by Israeli farmer Chahi Ariel has been declared the world's largest by Guinness World Records.
The 289 gram (10.19 ounces) strawberry was originally picked in February 2021 on Ariel’s family farm near the city of Netanya in central Israel, but was just confirmed by Guinness this past week.
Ariel did his best to preserve the strawberry so it could set the record by keeping it in the freezer.
"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 strawberry was 8 centimeters (7 inches) long, 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) thick, and 34 centimeters (13 inches) in circumference, according to Guinness World Records.
There is a local variety of strawberries called Ilan that are often pretty big, but this enormous strawberry was nearly five times the average weight of a regular berry. He added that the strawberry shrunk to about half its size from a year ago, but it was worth the wait to get the record.
"When we heard, it was an amazing feeling. I jumped in the car, laughed and sang," Ariel said. "We've been waiting for this for a long time."
The description of the record on the Guinness website gave some reasoning from Ariel as to why this specific strawberry grew to be so big. He credited the "unusually cold weather conditions in early 2021" that allowed the strawberry to keep growing and ripen slowly.
The previous record for largest strawberry in the world belonged to a Japanese farmer in 2015 and weighed 250 grams (8.8 ounces).
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