A candidate for the coveted title of the world's largest potato suffered a huge blow this week after DNA testing revealed it is not actually a potato.

Colin and Donna Craig-Brown – a couple from near Hamilton, New Zealand – found an absolute unit of what they believed to be a potato in their vegetable garden last August. The potato-like growth, which they named Dug, weighed a whopping 7.8 kilograms (17.2 pounds), making it a contender for the largest potato in the world – if it was a potato, as they believed.

“We unearthed this hunk of tuber, and we thought to ourselves, ‘what is this? Was it some sort of a strange fungal growth?’” Colin told the Washington Post when the imposter potato made international news. They described how they kept digging, only to find more and more "potato" before they finally dug the beast of a "potato" out.

The notato survived the first round of testing, which involved Colin eating a chunk and declaring "honey, it’s a bloody potato!”

The couple submitted the potato to the Guinness Book of World Records. Dug should have easily beat the current world record of 4.98 kilograms (10.98 pounds), a mere baby potato in comparison.

However, the couple was then told that the Guinness Book of World Records wanted to verify that it was a potato via a DNA test before they could give Dug the record.

“Do they think I genetically modified it?" Colin said of the request. "It’s been a rollercoaster of emotion," adding that “while it’s extremely deflating, I want to prove them wrong. We will do everything they ask of us.”

Unfortunately, DNA testing mashed their large potato dreams when the couple was contacted by the Guinness Book of World Records last week with the results.

"Sadly the specimen is not a potato," an email to the couple said, the Independent reports. "And is in fact the tuber of a type of gourd. For this reason we do unfortunately have to disqualify the application.”

Though disappointed, the couple accepted the DNA evidence, and have made peace with Dug not being a potato.

“I say ‘gidday’ to him every time I pull out some sausages,” Craig-Brown told the Independent. “Whenever the grandchildren come round, they say, ‘Can we see Dug?'"

"He is the world’s biggest not-a-potato," he added.