29-kilogram giant turnip breaks Guinness world record

A Canadian gardener’s giant 29-kilogram turnip has broken the Guinness World Record which weighed roughly as much as an adult husky or a 65-inch television.

Damien Allard, a gardener from Gaspé city in Canada’s Quebec province, became Guinness World Record holder for the giant turnip he unearthed in November last year after crushing the previous 2014 record of a 17.7-kilogram turnip.

The gardener is a cabinetmaker by profession who lives in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec unearthed the turnip on November 2 last year which had a circumference of 138 centimetres, a height of 35 centimetres and a width of 46 centimetres.

“There are eight billion of us on Earth. I’m the only one who managed to make a big turnip like that,” he said at the time. “It’s a bit exceptional.”

According to the Guinness World Records website, Allard has had his eye on this particular title since 2016, when he dug up a seven-kilogram turnip and decided to check the world record, CBC reported.

After continuing his efforts to break the previous world records, he had almost achieved the target in 2018 with a 15.5-kilogram turnip.

Later, officials and journalists attended Damien Allard’s harvest to verify his latest contender’s weight and size in 2020.

The turnip broke the previous record with a total of three turnips, the Guinness site said, with the other two turnips weighing in at 22.9 and 24.4 kilograms.

“I am very, very happy. It’s been two years that I have been working quite intensely on my turnips. I suspected very strongly that this year was the right one, but I never thought I would have been more than 10 kilos above the old record,” Allard told Radio-Canada in November.