How heavy is the world-record watermelon?

Chris Kent, a grower from Sevierville near Knoxville, Tennessee, took the melon to the Operation Pumpkin festival in Hamilton, Ohio, in October 2013. On the official scale at that Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) weigh-off it came to 350.5 lb (158.98 kg), and Guinness World Records lists it as the heaviest watermelon, verified on 4 October 2013.

Kent started growing watermelons in 2008. Like most competitive growers he uses Carolina Cross, a variety bred for size, and he plants seeds saved from earlier giants. Those seeds are named after the weight and the grower, so the record melon came from a “291 Kent” seed (from his own 291 lb melon of 2010) crossed with pollen from a “274 Kent”. Before the weigh-off, tape measurements had put it at about 348 lb, so the scale came in slightly above the estimate.

Giant melons get a head start indoors. Kent soaks the seeds for an hour, sprouts them in potting mix in mid-April at about 32 °C (90 °F), hardens the seedlings outside by day for about two weeks and plants them out in early May.

For decades the biggest melons came from Hope, Arkansas, whose watermelon festival dates back to the 1920s and was revived in 1977. In 1925 Hugh Laseter won there with a 136 lb (62 kg) melon that was shipped to President Calvin Coolidge. The Bright family pushed past 200 lb (91 kg) in 1979, Jason Bright grew a 260 lb melon in 1985 at age 10, and on 3 September 2005 Lloyd Bright cut a 268.8 lb (121.9 kg) melon that Guinness recognised as the record.

Kent’s 291 lb (132 kg) melon in 2010 was already heavier than that. His 2013 melon then beat the old Guinness mark by about 82 lb (37 kg), a bigger jump than the record had made in the previous 26 years.

Not very. The GPC publishes every official weigh-off result, and no watermelon since has matched 350.5 lb. The runner-up in 2013 was Bill Edwards of Michigan with 316 lb (143 kg). In recent seasons the best melons were 308.1 lb (Kent again, 2023), 309.5 lb (Nick McCaslin of Kentucky, 2024) and 319.2 lb (144.8 kg, Maxim Lebedev of Russia, 2025).

In the 2026 results posted so far, the heaviest melon is 280 lb (127 kg). So the best melons of recent seasons have still finished 31 to 70 lb (14 to 32 kg) short of the record.

A typical watermelon weighs 20 to 25 lb (9 to 11 kg), of which about 14 to 18 lb is edible flesh. Small “icebox” types such as Sunshine weigh 8 to 10 lb, and personal-size melons can be as light as 2 to 4 lb (1 to 2 kg).

Carolina Cross, the giant variety, normally produces fruit of 65 to 150 lb (29 to 68 kg) in about 90 days from planting. Watermelons in general range from under 1 kg (2 lb) to more than 90 kg (200 lb), so a 159 kg melon sits far beyond what any ordinary crop produces.