Sorsogon snares new world record
By Bobby Q. Labalan
Sorsogon City- Sorsogon province bagged its second world record as it successfully assembled the world’s biggest nut brittle, locally called “conserva”, earning another citation from the Guinness World Records.
The feat was achieved today, October 16, as part of this year’s Kasanggyahan Festival marking the province’s 131st foundation anniversary.
According to the organizers some 260 cooks were pooled together and successfully assembled the “conserva” measuring 144.16 square meters using 1,430 kilos of pili nuts (canarium ovatum) as verified by Guinness adjudicator Austin Clark Johnson.
After the verification by Johnson, Gov. Edwin Hamor officially received the Guinness certification as he thanked all the participants and the various support groups who made the achievement possible.
The “conserva” record was no mean feat as the planning for it started as early as mid of last year as part of the provincial government’s effort to have Sorsogon declared as the Pili Capital of the Philippines.
Conserva is one of the specialties of local pili processors and among the favorite “pasalubong” of tourists and visitors that can be bought in various pasalubong centers in the province.
Sorsogon has long prided itself as the “Pili capital of the world” as it accounts for more than half of the total pili production in the country as shown by the data from the Department of Agriculture and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Earlier, the Department of Agriculture announced the re-entry of Pili products into the European market in 2023 after it passed the EU’s food safety and labelling requirements boosting its potential for market expansion.
“The export of pili nut, which is considered a novel food or those that have not been significantly used for human consumption in the EU before May 1997, has been temporarily stopped following new EU rules for novel foods in 2015”, the DA said in a press release.
It sees the EU market opening as a huge “benefit to local pili processors and exporters including thousands of pili farmers as this opportunity enables them to gain more income from higher value commodities such as pili’, the agriculture department added.
This year’s Pili nut record is the second world record for Sorsogon as it earlier achieved a similar acknowledgment for the largest Filipino folk dance on October 31, 2019, with a performance of the “Pantomina sa Tinampo” by 7,127 participants also during the Kasanggyahan Festival that year.
The event, which took place along a five-kilometer route in downtown Sorsogon City, was led by then Governor Chiz Escudero who has now gone back to the Senate. with reports from PIA-Sorsogon