Ryofu

Ryofu is a sencha cultivar from the national station at Kanaya, registered in 1997 as 茶農林45号, and it is one of the few in this collection named for a flavour rather than for a colour, a season or a place. NARO’s handbook explains the choice: the tea is clean and brisk enough to suggest new shoots moving in a cool wind, and 涼風 says exactly that. The same handbook notes, with unusual frankness for a breeder’s publication, that opinion on that character divides: その評価が分かれることもある.

Lineage

• Horyoku ♀ (ほうりょく) — itself an open-pollinated Assam-type seedling.
• Yabukita ♂ (やぶきた).

That combination is worth noting. Horyoku descends from Assam-type (var. assamica) material, the germplasm that in this collection otherwise leads to black-tea cultivars — Benihomare, Benifuki, Benihikari. Ryofu takes it in the other direction, crossing it back against the national green-tea reference to produce a sencha cultivar. Nothing else here has that shape.

History

Bred at Kanaya under the strain name 金谷17号, registered by MAFF as 茶農林45号 in 1997, and registered again under the Plant Variety Protection Act as No. 9204 in August 2001. That second registration is still live enough to carry restrictions: propagating material may not be taken out of Japan, and self-propagation requires a licence, though a free one.

Characteristics

Plucking runs two to four days after Yabukita. The bush is somewhat upright (やや直立型) with vigour a little above Yabukita’s, and yield is level with Yabukita to twenty per cent above it. NARO flags two cultivation quirks: the bush tends to set fewer buds, so it wants pruning a little deeper, and it is slow to reach 出開き — the point at which a shoot’s terminal bud opens — so judging picking time by that signal, as growers do with other cultivars, will make you pick late.

Disease resistance is good across the three that matter most: anthracnose, ring spot and bacterial shoot blight are all medium or better, which is a clear improvement on Yabukita. Against mulberry scale it is weak and against mochi disease somewhat weak, and split-bark frost injury occurs at the same rate as Yabukita, so it is not a cold-hardiness cultivar.

Processing quality is good and the colour is singled out as excellent. The caution is that bitterness and astringency come out readily, so NARO advises easing the spring pressure on the primary roller and not letting the leaf sit — a cultivar that repays being handled with a light touch, and punishes not being.