Is it true that huge cherries were developed in China?

At the beginning of July 2024, footage of fruits of gigantic size spread across social networks. We have verified the authenticity of this video.

As reported in the description of the viral video, breeders from East Asia bred cherries (in some publications - sweet cherries) the size of a fist. As evidence, there is a 7-second video in which you can see very large fruits on a tree branch.

The video became popular on various platforms and sites: in TikTok one of the videos collected more than 6 million views, on Pikabu - 466,000, in "VKontakte" - 104,000. It also went viral on Telegram, where it was published by the channels "Ax 18+"(2.6 million views), "Live broadcast" (834 000), "Ax Live"(656,000), "Dvach" (317,000) and "KB"(254,000).

The fruits of cherries and sweet cherries are far from the largest in the plant world. In 2021 media reportedthat Italian farmers brought out cherry varieties Carmen with the heaviest fruits - 33 g, which is 6 g more than the previous record. Although the mass for cherries is really impressive (usually its fruits weigh from 7 to 15 g, cherries - and at all 5-7 g), this does not at all look like the size of a fist.

Nevertheless, the result of breeders from Italy to this day fixed on the Guinness Book of Records website. How reported Japanese media, a similar variety was bred several years ago in Yamagata Prefecture, and the fruit is comparable in size was sold at auction for 100,000 yen (about $630).

“Verified” did not find any reports in major media in Russian, English and Chinese that appeared in 2024 about the development of a record-breaking variety of sweet cherries in China or any other country.

A viral video is the result of editing. In the first fragment, ordinary cherries (or cherries) on the branches are visible in the background, in subsequent fragments - columnar, which is characterized by massive clusters along large branches, without additional branching and expansion of the crown. At the same time, giant fruits appear only at the beginning of the video.

Using Google's reverse search tool, Verified found footage from this video in a video that was published on February 28, 2024. Instagram, Youtube And TikTok Indonesian user Inspirasi Tanaman Buah (this nickname can be translated as “fruit inspiration”). In each of the social networks, the 19-second video was accompanied by the caption: “It turns out that cherries grow without problems in Indonesia” (or cherries; in many foreign languages ​​these concepts are not distinguished. - Ed.). All three videos became popular and received hundreds of thousands of views.

However, a fruit blogger from Indonesia did not appear to be the author of the segment showing the huge cherries. Back in May 2023, a more complete version of the video published American TikTok user @love_fruitss. In that video, in particular, you can see how two large cherries are not picked, but simply removed from the branch, and the rest of the fruits on it are of normal size. This footage was cut out in the Indonesian video.

The color of large fruits (as well as their stalks) is noticeably different from the rest.

The end of the stalk also looks unusual, with a flat cut and an “industrial seam” in diameter.

Even the leaves on the stalks, supposedly from the same branch, are noticeably different.

At the moment when the person filming the video unfolds one of the fruits, the second one, due to its weight, should pull the stalk down, but it is directed to the side.

All this leads to the assumption that the two large fruits around which the plot of the viral video and the news articles dedicated to it are built are not real.

Indeed, in online stores you can purchase lots of big plastic ones cherry, very similar to those shown in the video.

Many visitors to both American and Indonesian blogs also agreed that these shots show plastic cherries. The author of the video probably placed them on a real branch and filmed them.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on topic: