Lebanon farmer grows super-sized spud

Lebanese farmer Khalil Semhat holds his giant potato in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. The enormous vegetable weighs 11.3 kilos (24.9 pounds) and Semhat says he is planning on contacting the Guiness Book of Records. (AFP null)

TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) A farmer from Lebanon couldn't believe his eyes when he discovered he had grown a prize-winning potato on his land, he told AFP on Saturday, saying he was hoping to enter the Guinness World Records.

"This giant weighs 11.3 kilos (24.9 pounds)," Khalil Semhat said at his farm in the Tyre area, 85 kilometres (50 miles) south of Beirut.

"I've been working the land since I was a boy, and it's the first time I've seen anything like it."

Semhat, 56, said he had not done anything special to cultivate such a super-sized spud. "I didn't use any chemicals at all," he insisted, adding that he had to ask a friend to help him haul the huge tuber out of the ground.

Now he hopes the find will get a mention in the famous Guinness Book of Records, and said he will send in the details for possible inclusion next year.

He said he was "very proud" to have grown the enormous specimen on his farm, which took a pounding in 2006 during the war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement.

© 2008 Agence France-Presse

Original here