Sweet potatoes

The American Sweet Potato Marketing Institute has revealed that the US share of the European sweet potato market is increasing.

The group has outlined figures from Eurostat showing that the US share of the European sweet potato import market stood at 63 per cent in 2014 - well up on the 49 per cent share it boasted in 2011.

The US was followed by Honduras (9.3 per cent), Egypt and Israel (8.7 per cent respectively), China (7.6 per cent) and South Africa (2.3 per cent) in sharing out the European market, the Eurostat numbers revealed.

Consumers are clearly getting a taste for sweet potatoes - in 2014, the Benelux, France and Germany imported a combined 46,000 tonnes from outside the EU, a figure double that seen in 2009.