Titanic turnip earns Quebec gardener a world record

Gasp gardener Damien Allardis officially a Guinness World Record holder for the29-kilogram turnip he unearthed in November.

Weighing roughly as much as an adult husky or a 65-inch television, the turnip crushed the previous record of 17.7 kilogramsset in 2004.

Allard and his wife received confirmation from the Guinness World Records management team on Wednesday morning.

Allard, a cabinetmaker by profession who lives in Carleton-sur-Mer, Que., unveiled theturnip on Nov. 2 at its official weigh-in.

It had a circumference of 138 centimetres, a height of 35 centimetres and a width of 46 centimetres.

"There are eight billion of us on Earth.I'm the only one who managed to make a big turnip like that," he said at the time. "It's a bit exceptional."

According to the GuinnessWorld Records website,Allardhas had his eye on this particulartitle since 2016,when he dug upa seven-kilogram turnip and decided to check the world record.

From there, he got to work. He nearly brokethe existing record in 2018 with a 15.5-kilogram turnip, but fell about two kilograms shy of a win.

In 2020, officials and journalists attended Allard's November harvest to verify his latest contender's weight and size

Allard actually broke the previous record with a total of three turnips, the Guinnesssite said, with the other two turnips weighing in at 22.9 and 24.4 kilograms.

"I am very, very happy," Allard told Radio-Canada in November.

"It's been two years that I have been working quite intensely on my turnips. I suspected very strongly that this year was the right one, but I never thought I would have been more than 10 kilos above the old record."