A giant feijoa, weighing almost half a kilogram, finally dropped from a backyard tree in Waikato this morning.
Kihikihi woman Chevon Hunapo-Love was collecting feijoas from around her tree when she spotted the monster fruit.
Weighing 441 grams, about the size of a tennis ball, Hunapo-Love said she had never seen one this big in her life.
She told 1News that her family had been monitoring the fruit for some time as it kept on growing larger and larger.
“We had checked to see if the feijoas were growing and saw a few that were getting pretty big. We kept checking on this one in particular, and it wasn’t ready to drop,” she said.
“It just kept growing bigger and bigger until this morning it dropped.”
She said the family was “really surprised” when they picked up the fruit as “last year we got quite big decent ones but not as big as this year’s crop”.
Compared to the grapefruit she also grew in her backyard, Hunapo-Love said the feijoas were larger.
She posted the mega-fruit to the Feijoa Appreciation Society Facebook group, and people marvelled at its size.
“It’s a world record size congratulations! Keep it in the fridge,” one person commented.
“Mite [sic] be the biggest in the world,” wrote another.
Several people asked how she managed to grow such a large feijoa – Hunapo-Love said there was no secret.
“There is no technique. I’m pretty sure the soil is just full of the right nutrients, yet we have never added anything extra.”
She is yet to cut it open but plans on eating it with some feijoa ice cream that was made last night.
“I’ll cut it open, scoop the flesh out, fill the skin with ice cream and use it like a bowl and add the feijoa on top,” she said.
According to Feijoa’s UK, the average size of the fruit is around 50g, with some “mammoth” feijoas in New Zealand growing between 100 to 200 grams.
In 2020, 1News reported an Auckland family had found a 423g feijoa.