Dug the giant spud to get DNA test in Scotland

A sliver from what could be the world’s biggest potato has been sent to Scotland for DNA testing to see if he’s actually a spud.

Dug the Potato, weighing 7.9kg, was hauled out from under the soil on his small farm near Hamilton when his caregivers, Colin and Donna Craig-Brown, were cleaning up in their vegetable garden in late August.

Surely the monster masher could tip the scales from the current Guinness World Record holder in Nottinghamshire, with their tater coming in at a mere 4.99kg, thought the couple.

‘‘I said to Donna, ‘should we go for the Guinness World Record?’,’’ Colin recollects. ‘‘Can you really be bothered?’’ she replied.

‘‘Why not?’’ he said.

They read the 128-page application guide on the Guinness World Records website, completed the online application form, supplied pictures and a video of the potato on the certified scale at their local PGG Wrightson and sought verification by an agronomist and Wilcox – a vegetable grower in New Zealand – to confirm what Dug is.

A potato.

Colin thinks Dug might be the moonlight variety but admits he also plants any rogue spuds that sprout in the cupboard.

Yet the Guinness World Records, based in the United Kingdom, needed more proof. They asked if they could send an expert around in person and contacted Colin’s verifiers personally to cross-reference, Colin said.

They never came.

‘‘Do they think I genetically modified it?’’ Colin wonders.

‘‘It makes me feel s..., it’s been a roller-coaster of emotion.

‘‘While it’s extremely deflating, I want to prove them wrong. We will do everything they ask of us . . . so at the end of the day, they can say yes or no.’’

Colin doesn’t know how long it will be until he hears if Dug is an official record holder, if Guinness World Records have accepted that he’s actually a potato, or if they’ve accepted his original weight.

If they decline the new record, Colin’s response is: prove it.

‘‘Records are there to be beaten, and I hope someone one day breaks my record because I hope to one day break it again.

‘‘Wouldn’t that stick it to them [Guinness World Records], if I grew an even bigger one?’’

While Colin and Donna waited to hear if they do have the biggest potato in the world, the root vegetable started to get smelly and not even a good wash with Janola could fix it.

‘‘He was getting smaller and smaller every day. He was losing juices through his stab wounds where he was impaled by the garden fork,’’ Colin said.

The walks around the garden on his little trolly, or strapped in on the bike, wouldn’t have helped either.

In the end, he was wrapped inside a few plastic bags and put in the freezer. Dug weighed about 7kg at his last check, Colin said.

‘‘He still looks the same, he’s just got lighter.’’

In the end, Dug’s future could be in a bottle of vodka, labelled ‘‘Done’’.

Colin was even considering making an artificial clone of the spud, so he could take him to the beach, sit him on a beach chair with a pair of sunnies, and people could continue to enjoy the worldfamous potato forever.

‘‘Even if you’re a silly potato, your life could be something,’’ Colin quipped.