Hawaii farmer's 50-pound taro might set world record

March 3 (UPI) -- A Hawaii farmer may have set a new world record when he harvested a taro that weighed 50 pounds.

Clarence Medeiros, a Big Island farmer who for 50 years has been growing taro, known locally as kalo, said he frequently harvests oversized taro on his property, including a 33-pound specimen last season.

Medeiros said he and his wife, Nellie, were shocked when a kalo harvested last week measured 27 in circumference.

"I thought it was going to be a little over 25 pounds. I was going low," he told KHNL-TV.

At 50 pounds, the taro might be a world record, Medeiros said.

"When it got put onto the scale and we saw it, and it said 50, we were like eyes wide open," Nellie Medeiros said. "It can't be that heavy!"

Officials with the Hawaii Ulu Cooperative witnessed the weighing of the taro as evidence for Guinness World Records.

"I've seen a lot of taro over the years, but nothing anywhere close to that large. So it was pretty amazing," the cooperative's Holokai Brown said.