Guinness World Records smashed a New Zealand couple’s dream of growing the world’s largest potato

Last October, Colin Craig-Brown and his wife, Donna, were weeding in their small farm in New Zealand when they came across a gnarled, tuberous mass in the dirt. Weighing in at 17.2 pounds, conveying the beauty of an oven-roasted chicken, and, per Colin, tasting like a potato, they presumed the hulking vegetable to be in fact not just a potato, but a likely candidate for the Guinness World Record for heaviest potato. They dubbed their future prize-winner “Dug” and submitted it to the Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture for DNA and genetic testing. For months, they anticipated outweighing the current record holder, a nearly-11-pound potato grown by the U.K.’s Peter Glazebrook, who, per The Guardian, also holds world records for 15 vegetables, including carrots, onions and tomatoes. And he may hang on to his potato record for a while longer, too: based on the lab results, “Dug” is not a spud, but rather a tuber of a gourd, disqualifying the Craig-Browns potato from competition, The Associated Press reports. “If it quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and has feathers on it, then it must be a duck,” said Colin in an interview with the New Zealand website, Stuff. “But nah—this one turned out to be a turkey.” —Matthew Sedacca