Cultivar
Okuyutaka
おくゆたか Okuyutaka
おく (oku, the conventional prefix marking a late-budding cultivar — the same one in Okumidori, Okuhikari, Okumusashi and Okuharuka) plus ゆたか (yutaka, abundant), carried over from its seed parent Yutakamidori. The name reads as "the late Yutaka", which is a fair description of what it is.
A 1958 Kanaya cross of Yutakamidori against the breeding line F1NN8, registered in 1983 as Cha Norin No. 34 — a late sencha cultivar that yields around half again as much as Yabukita and sometimes close to double, with a mild, amino-acid-heavy cup that reads as its seed parent slowed down by a fortnight.
Okuyutaka is the late version of Yutakamidori, and its name says so: おく for a late cultivar, ゆたか taken straight from its seed parent. Registered in 1983 as 茶農林34号, it buds about eight days after Yabukita and is plucked about six days after, which puts it near Okumidori in the season and gives a grower planting both Yutakamidori and Okuyutaka a picking window stretched at both ends.
Lineage
- Yutakamidori ♀ (ゆたかみどり) — itself an Asatsuyu open-pollinated seedling.
- F1NN8 ♂ (茶本F1NN8) — an unreleased Kanaya breeding line, recorded by MAFF’s registry as たまみどり×S6.
This is one of the very few records in the collection whose grandparents are all documented here. Tamamidori is a Uji zairai selection registered in the same 1953 batch as Yabukita; S6 is the Shizuoka landrace selection that also produced Kanayamidori; and Yutakamidori descends from Asatsuyu, another of the 1953 Uji selections. Shunmei was selected from the same Yutakamidori × F1NN8 cross, so Okuyutaka and Shunmei are full siblings.
History
The cross was made in October 1958 at the national station at Kanaya. Individual seedlings were selected between 1964 and 1966, and the line carried the strain name 金谷3号 through clonal comparison and regional adaptability trials that ran to 1982. MAFF registered it in May 1983.
Documentation is thinner than for its neighbours in the registry. NARO’s current tea cultivar handbook covers recent nationally funded releases and has no entry for a 1983 cultivar, so the characteristics below rest on secondary compilation rather than the breeder’s own publication.
Characteristics
The headline is yield: around fifty per cent above Yabukita overall, and approaching double at some trial sites and in some seasons. That, plus the late season, is the whole commercial case for it — a late cultivar that also out-yields the reference is a straightforwardly good thing to plant at the tail of a picking programme.
Field cold damage is reported lower than Yabukita’s and anthracnose incidence low, which is what put it in the recommended list for mountain districts. It is grown from southern Shizuoka and Gifu southwards — Mie, Kyoto, Kochi, Kumamoto — rather than in the north, despite the cold tolerance.
In the cup it is mild and umami-heavy, with amino acid levels well above Yabukita’s and slightly lower catechins, which is the same profile its seed parent is valued for. Late budding and a high amino-acid, low-catechin leaf is the combination that makes a cultivar worth shading, and it is mildly surprising that Okuyutaka is not more often used that way.
Lineage
A controlled cross at Kanaya, Yutakamidori against the unreleased breeding line F1NN8. Both of F1NN8's own parents are in this collection — Tamamidori, a Uji zairai selection, and S6, the Shizuoka landrace selection that also produced Kanayamidori — so Okuyutaka is one of the few cultivars here whose grandparents are all documented. Shunmei (茶農林37号) comes from the same Yutakamidori × F1NN8 cross, which makes the two full siblings.
Sources
Documentation: sparse — a Cha Norin registry row and secondary compilations; no NARO handbook entry (the 6th edition covers recent releases) and no release paper was retrieved for this record