Vegetable
Covington
S tier
Covington is a modern North Carolina orange sweet potato bred for high yield, attractive rose skin, and consistent shape that grades well for large packers. Moist flesh sweetens after curing and holds a deep orange colour valued by retail buyers. Disease package and plant vigour made it a successor favourite where Beauregard still performed but pack-out could improve. Dominant in much of contemporary US fresh sweet potato supply: bake, fry, mash, and process for puree. Roots size uniformly enough for automated packing lines. Chefs treat it as the baseline moist orange type—swap dry Japanese cultivars only when a drier, chestnut-like texture is intentional.
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Grades are placed along a shared scale so systems can be compared side by side.
History
North Carolina State University released Covington for commercial orange production.
Southeastern acreage shifted rapidly toward Covington for pack-out and yield.
Covington became a leading US fresh-market sweet potato cultivar by volume.
Packers continued to rely on Covington as the default moist orange shipper.