A doctor at a Hawaii hospital said an avocado brought in by a local farmer dwarfs the Guinness World Record holder — but is unlikely to be officially recognized.
Dr. Joy McElroy said farmer Kenji Fukumitsu has been donating giant avocados to the staff at Urgent Care of Kona for years, and some workers recently started to wonder about the Guinness World Record for the savory fruit.
“Every month or so we would hear a big clunk, and there’s a bag or a box of at least 20 or 30 avocados,” McElroy told the Big Island Video News. “At least 6 pounds each, even bigger. And it occurred to us that this is not normal. This is very special.”
McElroy and her colleagues did some research and found out the Guinness World Record for largest avocado was a 5 pound, 8 ounce fruit grown by Hilo, Hawaii, resident Felicidad Pasalo. They weighed the largest avocado from Fukumitsu’s most recent batch and discovered it tipped the scales at 6 pounds, 11 ounces.
The doctor said she tried to get official Guinness recognition for Fukumitsu, but ran into some red tape.
“We contacted Guinness, got online. The problem is they have to have someone to authenticate … which takes 12 weeks. Well, this baby isn’t going to last 12 weeks, so that’s why we called the news,” she said.
Fukumitsu said he isn’t too disappointed that his avocado won’t be in the record books.
“We didn’t think nothing of it,” he said. “We just pick and eat it. And we sold some.”
He said the avocado and its large siblings come from a tree planted by his brother in 1941. He said he does not know why the tree produces such large fruit.
