Doug the ugly potato could be world’s biggest

Colin and Donna Craig-Brown were weeding their garden in New Zealand when Colin’s hoe struck something huge just beneath the soil’s surface. As the couple knelt down and began digging around the object, Colin wondered if it was a giant white kumara, or sweet potato. After Colin pried it out with his garden fork, he scratched away a bit of the skin and tasted it. A potato. “We couldn’t believe it,” Donna said. “It was just huge.” And not exactly pretty. Donna describes its appearance as more of an ugly, mutant look. But it’s quite possibly the largest potato on record. When the couple lugged it into their garage and put it on their set of old scales, it weighed in at a remarkable 7.9 kilograms. That’s equal to a couple of sacks of regular potatoes, or one small dog. The current Guinness World Record-holding potato weighed 4.98 kg in 2011. Since their unusual find on Aug. 30, the couple’s potato has become something of a celebrity around their small farm near Hamilton. They’ve named the potato Doug, after the way it was unearthed, and Colin even built a small cart to tow Doug around. (AP) This article was provided by The Japan Times Alpha.