Is This Pumpkin the Largest Fruit Ever?

In Switzerland in 2014, pumpkin enthusiast Beni Meier successfully grew a pumpkin weighing more than one tonne – 1056kg to be exact – claiming the title of the world’s largest ever fruit.

The pumpkin is believed to be more than 7ft wide and a mere 84 days old. Its short life means that it grew an average of 12.5kg per day, or a little more than 500g for every single hour of its existence. That’s some fast-growing fruit!

The Latest in a Long Series of Gargantuan Fruit

Whilst Beni’s 1056kg-pumpkin may sound like a freak of nature, it’s actually not quite as uncommon as you might think. Indeed, records for the largest fruit of all time are broken on a continual basis – so much so that scientists at Harvard University in Massachusetts decided to investigate why it is that such mammoth fruit are able to be grown, and whether or not there will be a ceiling limit to their eventual size.

Dr Jessica Savage, one of the lead scientists investigating the project, divulged the difficulties in determining the lineage of these prize-winning pumpkins.

“Competitively grown pumpkins were originally bred from Hubbard Squash and their lineage can be traced back through a series of varieties, each progressively increasing in size. In fact, the Atlantic Giant variety used today is likely a descendent of the award-winning Mammoth pumpkin that held the world record from 1904 to 1976,” explained Dr Savage. “However, in the intervening years, seeds from this pumpkin were crossed with many other Mammoth varieties and the exact parentage of older plants is often unknown.”

It seems, then, that poor documentation of pumpkin-rearing methods over the last century or so is to blame for our lack of understanding of where genealogically these gargantuans come from.

We do know, however, how the cultivators are able to rear such behemoths. Firstly, they are pruned to only yield a single fruit per plant, diverting all of the organism’s attentions to one specific fruit. They are also fed and watered heavily during their short cultivation period, attempting to maximise their potential growth.

Meanwhile, inside the fruit itself, changes are occurring to accommodate its super-size. The plant is responsible for growing extra “phloems”, which are the vascular bodies responsible for carrying sugars around the plant and enabling its growth.

No Country for Giant Pumpkins

Although the pumpkins may be good for winning competitions, they don’t offer up as delicious a meal option as may be expected. Composed of 98% water, they offer little in the way of sweetness or taste. As a result, they are generally used as novelty items, such as decorative pieces or improvised boats.

However, the ever-increasing sizes of pumpkins produced means that we can’t be sure where exactly the ceiling limit for such growth lies. Although Beni Meier’s pumpkin was not grown with the help of genetic modification, this is another avenue which holds possibilities for even bigger fruit production. To learn more about this discipline and the various arguments for and against it, read this article: The Pros and Cons of Genetically-Modified Organisms.