Italian farmers have grown the world’s largest cherry, shattering the record with a mammoth 33g fruit.
The carmen cherry was grown by Alberto and Giuseppe Rosso from Pecetto Torinese, about four miles south-east of Turin, in Piedmont, a town renowned for the production of cherries. The Rosso family have been growing cherries for more than a century.
Alberto Rosso told la Repubblica: “For some years now we have noticed that our carmen cherries are Guinness world records in size and this year we decided to do things right and called a panel of experts.”
The new largest and heaviest cherry weighs 33.05g (1.16 oz), beating the previous record mark of 26.45g achieved by another Italian farmer, in Ferrara in February this year.
The record was broken despite 2021 being a bad year for Italian cherries, with one out of every four lost to bad weather, the Italian farmers’ group Coldiretti told the news agency Ansa.
“In spite of the bad year, Italy remains the main producer in the European Union, with almost 30,000 hectares cultivated, situated in Puglia, followed by Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto e Lazio,” the Coldiretti group said.