Apples still maintain a robust presence however, now that the southern hemisphere is fully in its stride. Marks & Spencer is still progressing with its Best of Season concept focusing, apparently, this week on Chilean Braeburn. The days when New Zealand Cox held sway at this time of the year are past, but perhaps the Kiwi industry will win back its laurels with Jazz, which is due shortly.

There are still Spanish strawberries available though, alongside some excellent glasshouse arrivals from UK growers. And considering the number of special offers on shelf, there seems to be no overall shortage of fruit.

But there is always room for something a little different, and M&S is offering some huge US berries from Driscolls at £2.99 for eight whoppers. King strawberries, as they are labelled, is a term known in the trade but is not widely recognised by the public. However, I suspect that as the terminology is easy to understand, it will soon become descriptive text for everyone. Another example of etymology serving the retail fruit trade well when it comes to widening the selection.

While there are several months ahead for the annual berry fruit saga to unfold, peaches, plums and cherries have yet to make their presence felt. In the meantime, marketing is going through a period where it has the last real opportunity to feature citrus in volume. This was certainly the case in my local Sainsbury’s with two-for-£2 pre-packs of Valencia on offer. What intrigued me is that the displays were a mix of similar packs sourced from both Spain and - more surprisingly - Egypt. If there is a difference in product from the two sources it clearly does not count at store level.

In the same store I came across a tomato six-pack at 99p which shrieked of being British. It does not seem long ago that the industry had to cajole the retail sector to identify one of the most important salad lines at this time of the year as British.

Come to think of it, it might be a good idea if flags (not necessarily as large as my example) could be used on all packs as legal indications of source making it far easier to spot the origins of a product at a glance.

And finally, while steady rains and bursts of warm weather bode well for fresh summer vegetables, some self-appointed custodian either of UK agriculture or public taste is bound to come across the packs of Australian Brussels sprouts (£1.69) which are on Tesco’s shelves.

Personally I do not see anything wrong in this, despite the outcries about air miles. To paraphrase Bruce Peterson from Wal-Mart at the Re:fresh Conference earlier this month: “If customers want to buy it we sell it”.

What I did think was interesting was that the pre-pack film has been designed to look like a traditional sprout net.

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