South African farmers grow world's heaviest plum

Sept. 11 (UPI) -- A pair of South African farmers harvesting their crops made a startling discovery: a record-breaking plum weighing in at 16.3 ounces.

Dean and Deon Barnard, owners of the Oppie Plaas Boerdery farm, said they never set out to break records with their plums.

"It hasn't been bred to set records," Dean Barnard told Guinness World Records. "The record plum came off a commercial tree with about 150 plums on it. I didn't do any special preparations to get it this big."

The plum is 3.8 ounces heavier than the previous record-holder, which was grown in Japan in 2021.

"Our area has a lot of very unique microclimates and that helps the plums a lot," Dean Barnard said. "We do soil samples yearly and then put into the soil what is needed. I also have a top plum specialist to help us with production and quality."

The Barnards said the plum the largest of a few in the recent harvest to surpass the previous record.