China imported agricultural products worth 657 million U.S. dollars from Zimbabwe in 2022, up 22.64 percent year-on-year, the Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe said Wednesday.

This underlines China as a big market for Zimbabwean agricultural products, such as tobacco, macadamia nuts and cotton, the embassy said in a tweet.

"Meanwhile, Zimbabwean farmers reap big from the export boom," it added.

China has become one of Zimbabwe's top export destinations, ranking as the third-largest importer of Zimbabwean goods last year, according to data from the country's trade promotion body ZimTrade and statistics office, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency.

Zimbabwe's agricultural exports to China are set to grow further after the two countries in 2022 signed a citrus protocol that could expand citrus exports to China, one of the world's biggest consumers of citrus products.

Overall trade between the two countries surged 29.2 percent year-on-year to a record high of 2.43 billion dollars in 2022.