Siberian Woman Grows World's Heaviest Tomato

Maria Priymak of Krasnoyarsk grew a tomato weighing 4.59 kilograms and topped the world ranking of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC). After the result was published, the current Guinness World Records holder wrote to her and asked for seeds.

Priymak cut the fruit of the Bigsteak Albi variety in her greenhouse on 14 August and weighed it on certified scales, having first verified their accuracy to within one gram — from a grocery store. In pounds it came to 10.12, and that figure is crucial: ten pounds is considered the threshold in the world of giant vegetables.

“Every year, hundreds of people around the world grow giant tomatoes, but fruits weighing more than ten pounds have been grown by only a few people in the world,” Maria Priymak told an NGS24.RU correspondent. “Usually the average weight of giants around the world ranges from four to seven pounds.”

Maria has been growing giant vegetables for her second season: last year she harvested a pumpkin weighing 413 kilograms (about 910 lb). But she did not count on a tomato record.

“Honestly, no, not at first. I was just interested in growing them,” the Krasnoyarsk resident says.

Realization came in July. The curator of the national competition Battle of the Giants looked at her monthly report and wrote that her fruit set was the most promising among all participants.

Midnight, garage, camera

The GPC verifies fruits heavier than ten pounds separately. Had Maria lived in the United States, a judge would have come and inspected the tomato in person, but no one traveled to Siberia. Instead, a video conference was arranged. It was already midnight in Krasnoyarsk, and Maria ran to the garage where the fruit is stored.

“At first they just asked me to point the camera at it and looked. Then they asked me to set the phone up stationary so that I could turn the tomato in different directions, wherever they said,” she recalls.

Several judges were online, and the inspection took about five minutes. The stem end, the opposite side, along the axis, against the axis. No cracks or rot were found, and the result was accepted.

A letter from a legend

But before the judges, another person contacted the Krasnoyarsk resident. Ten minutes after she posted a photo of the fruit on social media, she was messaged by Dan Sutherland, a legend among those who grow giants. His tomato, weighing 7.661 kilograms, was recognized by Guinness World Records as the heaviest in history.

“He wrote that he was impressed, because I’m growing for the first time, I’m growing in Siberia, and that for a first time it’s simply some incredible, fantastic result,” Maria says (screenshots of the correspondence are available to the editorial staff).

Sutherland suggested they exchange seeds to cross the two genetic lines. The request is weightier than it seems: the American does not share his secrets with anyone.

“He doesn’t reveal his secret to anyone and he doesn’t sell his seeds. There have been auctions where literally two seeds were sold, one to each person. And the price for a single seed exceeded two thousand dollars,” the Krasnoyarsk resident says.

One seed between two

There is plenty to see in the table itself. All the Americans in the top ten grow the Domigo variety, from which the world record was made. Russians follow different genetics and overtake them: besides Maria, there are three others in the top eight — Regina Bukhrametova from Moscow, Artyom Lomakin from Iskitim, and Maxim Lebedev from Zhukov. Second place went to Eduard Dmitriev from Estonia; he and the Krasnoyarsk resident had the same seeds.

And those seeds are from Minusinsk. They were given by Boris Sonin, whose tomato weighing 2.8 kilograms became the absolute record of the competition on Tomato Day in 2025. In the GPC table the mother seed is listed as 6.21 Sonin 2025, and 6.21 pounds is precisely that fruit. Both the first and second places in the world ranking grew from its seeds. The Sonins grew the same Bigsteak Albi variety and shared their secrets with NGS24.RU a year ago.

“On the day I was supposed to cut and weigh my tomato, there was simply some kind of commotion in the chat, everyone was waiting for me to post the information,” Maria says. “They also wrote there that America isn’t sleeping — America, Estonia, and Russia are waiting for Maria to weigh her tomato.”

‘A mutant from Chernobyl’

While three countries were awake, at home the Krasnoyarsk resident was being picked apart in the comments for the third day running: “a mutant from Chernobyl,” “a mutant,” “stuffed with chemicals.”

“Abroad, the topic of tomatoes being ugly doesn’t come up, because for some reason people there are more reasonable about the fact that this is a giant fruit and it can’t be beautiful. But here, probably 80% of the comments are bile, nasty things about it being a mutant stuffed with chemicals,” Maria says.

The misshapen form of giants is indeed no accident. Such tomatoes are grown only from double flowers, and a double flower results from several ordinary ones fusing into one. The phenomenon is called fasciation, and the fruit ends up consisting of several fused tomatoes. Hence the lumps, folds, and constrictions. A giant will by definition never be smooth, but it will be heavy. Maria Priymak explained in detail why giant tomatoes grow crooked to NGS24.RU in early August.

It was precisely such a fruit set that the competition curator noticed in the July report.

The judges are not interested in appearance at all. They assess weight and integrity: no cracks, no mold, no leaking juice, no blossom-end rot.

“There is no such thing as a beautiful giant tomato; for some reason people don’t understand that. When our competition is based on weight, no one judges how crooked, lumpy, or wrinkled it is,” the Krasnoyarsk resident adds.

Moreover, the Americans separately noted that for its category her fruit looks quite attractive.

On the subject of chemicals, Maria answers as a practitioner.

“If you stuff a tomato with chemicals, it will in principle stop developing; people should understand that. Everyone writes about nitrates. Nitrates are nitrogen. If you give a tomato too much nitrogen, it won’t even have flowers, it won’t bloom, or it will bloom but the fruits won’t set,” she explains.

What will happen to the record holder

Maria does not reveal the secrets of her growing methods. Little is known: the fruit is placed in a hammock, otherwise it would tear the bush down, and covered with a towel to shield it from the sun so it doesn’t start turning red prematurely. Once a giant turns red, it stops gaining weight. For the same reason it is cut when it is brown, unripe, because a ripe one weighs less and risks cracking, and a cracked one will not be accepted for the competition.

Now the record holder is ripening in the garage. When the flesh becomes soft, Maria will cut it open and extract the seeds. But everything will only become clear at the very end.

“I don’t even know how many seeds are in my fruit. There could be one, or there could be a hundred. It’s simply impossible to predict,” she says.

Several competition participants who grew the same variety found not a single seed inside. It may turn out that there will be nothing to give to Sutherland.

A day after the Krasnoyarsk weighing, on 15 August, Tomato Day was held in Minusinsk, where a car is given away for the heaviest fruit. This year a Niva was won for a tomato weighing 1,945 grams.