“Their weight generates tension, which pulls cells apart and accelerates growth,” says David Hu, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta whose team has submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal.

Such research doesn’t just illuminate the story behind record-setting pumpkins, like the nearly 1,811-pound behemoth recognized this month by Guinness World Records. The work also addresses larger questions of plant development, such as how tissues cope under stress, Hu says.

All giant pumpkins are grown from a single strain, the Atlantic Giant seed, which has a longer growing season than normal pumpkins. The fruits start out round, but once they get to about 220 pounds they begin to flatten under their own weight, eventually resembling a giant deflated sack.

Wondering how the monsters got so large without splitting, Hu’s group squashed regular-sized gourds in the lab see how much stress they could take before rupturing. The researchers then created a mathematical model of how the fruits could accommodate the stress.

The model predictions matched observations of giant pumpkin dimensions sent in by 50 farmers from around the country. Hu says that plastic, or irreversible, deformation allows the fruit to distribute stresses so it can grow — sometimes adding 50 pounds a day — without breaking.

The New York Botanical Garden, where the world’s biggest pumpkin will be carved this weekend, says that a 2,000-pound pumpkin could be grown within the next few years.

Image: Flickr/martine266

Videos: Vimeo/David Hu/Georgia Tech

See Also:

• Rewiring Plants Could Supersize Crops
• Some Tips for Punkin Chunkin
• Self-Irrigating Desert Plant Discovered
• Frankenfood Gets Supersized
• Give Thanks? Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner

Authors: Alexandra Witze

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