South Korea's fruit imports grew 4% year-on-year reaching 655 million metric tons (MT) in 2015, according to data from the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).

Volume of the country's largest fruit import, bananas, inched up 1% year-over-year to 363.466 million MT.

Dates saw impressive triple-digit growth of 112% hitting 351,935MT, while avocados (+38% to 1,515,420MT), mangoes (+27% to 13,469,424MT), lemons (+28% to 17,274,037MT) and grapes (+12% to 66,192,504MT) also saw strong growth.

Each of these fruits saw record volumes imported in East Asian country last year.

While oranges did not hit records, growth was solid at 14% to 111,743,161MT. The uptick in orange imports resulted from the significant drop in these imports in 2014.

Pineapples (-9% to 68,372,529MT), stone fruit (-6% to 12,582,825MT), mangosteens (-31% to 448,001MT) and figs (-31% to 396,517MT) saw the largest drops.

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