Prince might have had his purple rain, but we will soon have our purple carrots. Donnelly Fruit & Veg, one of the State's main vegetable distributors, is planning to introduce purple carrots to our supermarket shelves in July.
A farm in Ely, Cambridgeshire, is growing a crop of the carrots which are dark purple with orange insides. Sainsbury's will be the first major supermarket chain to stock them in Britain.
The carrots contain purple pigments called anthocyanins, which act as anti-oxidants and are believed to protect against certain cancers and heart disease.
According to horticultural experts, carrots originally came in an assortment of colours, including white, purple, yellow, black and red. The vegetable originated in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries about 5,000 years ago, but when it came to the West, Dutch breeders became the main carrot breeders and developed the patriotic orange variety.
But Sainsbury's will not be the first to pioneer the unusual carrots - they already made a limited debut here last year. Donnelly's imported a small number from a grower in Texas and stocked them in Superquinn's Blackrock branch in Co Dublin.
"We didn't get a huge reaction," said Mr Harry McNamee, Donnelly's procurement manager. "But they came all the way from America so they were probably suffering from jet lag."
