Sakimidori

Sakimidori is a sencha cultivar bred at the Miyazaki Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station and registered nationally in 1997, then again under the Seed and Seedling Law in 2001. It buds a little ahead of Yabukita and yields substantially more, but the trait it is really built around is colour: an unusually high chlorophyll content that gives both the leaf and the liquor a vivid, stable green. It is a minor cultivar by planting area, grown mainly in its home prefecture, but it matters beyond its own acreage as a parent — crossed with Saemidori in both directions, it produced Kirari 31 and, later, Haruto 34.

Lineage

• F1NN27 ♀ — an unreleased breeding line from the National Tea Experiment Station at Kanaya, Shizuoka, itself a cross of Yabukita and Shizuoka Zairai No. 16 (静在16). It was never released as a cultivar in its own right, only kept on as breeding stock; the same MAFF registry table lists Okumidori under its own former strain name F1NN29, with the identical recorded parentage (Yabukita x Shizuoka Zairai No. 16), which suggests the two numbered lines came out of the same Kanaya crossing programme, though no source confirms they share a single seed batch.
• ME52 ♂ — a Miyazaki landrace (zairai) selection, contributing local adaptation and, per one vendor account, tracing to an individual plant selected in 1932 (unconfirmed elsewhere).

This is a controlled cross, not a landrace selection: F1NN27 and ME52 were crossed deliberately at the Miyazaki station in 1979, and a single clone was picked out of the resulting seedlings by individual selection in 1984. The same parent pair, F1NN27 x ME52, was crossed again two years later, in 1981, to produce Harumoegi (はるもえぎ, registered 2006) — making Sakimidori and Harumoegi full siblings by parentage, though from two separate crossings rather than one shared batch of seed. F1NN27 was evidently a workhorse line for the Miyazaki programme beyond this pair too: MAFF’s registry also credits it as the pollen parent of Minamisayaka (みなみさやか, Cha Norin No. 42, registered 1994, out of the seed parent Miya A-6).

Sakimidori’s own place in the pedigree continues forward. It was crossed with Saemidori in both directions by the same Miyazaki station: as the seed parent against Saemidori’s pollen in 1994 to produce Kirari 31 (registered 2016), and as the pollen parent against Saemidori’s seed in 1997 to produce the reciprocal cross, Haruto 34 (registered 2020).

History

The cross was made in 1979 at the Miyazaki Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station, pairing F1NN27 — a numbered F1 hybrid line bred at the national station in Kanaya but never itself released — with ME52, a Miyazaki zairai selection. A single clone was selected from the resulting seedlings in 1984 and carried forward first under the strain name Mi84-117, then from 1988 under the trial designation Miyazaki No. 15 (宮崎15号). Regional adaptation trials ran from 1988 to 1996 across fifteen tea experiment stations, with characteristic testing for blister blight and frost-crack injury at two more. The cultivar was registered nationally as 茶農林47号 (Cha Norin No. 47) in August 1997, and separately registered under the Seed and Seedling Law on 16 August 2001 as Plant Variety Registration No. 9203.

The 1999 release paper, “煎茶用品種「さきみどり」の育成” (Breeding of the sencha cultivar ‘Sakimidori’), published in 茶業研究報告 (Tea Research Journal, vol. 87, pp. 67-76), credits seven researchers: Furuno Tsuruyoshi, Yoshidome Hiroshi, Maso Ryuichi, Sato Kunihiko, Ueno Sadaichi, Hirakawa Imao and Abe Tsugio, working out of the Miyazaki Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station and associated agricultural offices. A follow-up paper in 2000 examined the cultivar’s chlorophyll and pheophytin content specifically, finding chlorophyll levels 1.3-1.5 times higher than Yabukita’s and a slower conversion to pheophytin during processing — the biochemical basis for the bright, stable green that the cultivar is named and marketed for. One Japanese retailer reference describes that same colour as giving Sakimidori “high value as a food ingredient” beyond tea drinking, though no source in this record confirms Sakimidori being processed as tencha or matcha specifically; its registered use (用途) is sencha.

Sakimidori is a full sibling of Harumoegi by parentage — the same female F1NN27 and male ME52 — though from a separate 1981 crossing at the same station, registered five years later in 2006. The Miyazaki station returned to F1NN27 at least once more, using it as the pollen parent (against the seed parent Miya A-6) to produce Minamisayaka, registered in 1994. Sakimidori itself went on to parent two further Miyazaki cultivars: crossed with Saemidori as the seed parent in 1994 it produced Kirari 31, registered in 2016; crossed the other way, as the pollen parent against Saemidori’s seed in 1997, it produced Haruto 34, registered in 2020.

Characteristics

Sakimidori buds early. NARO’s current handbook puts its first-flush harvest at the same time as Yabukita’s or up to two days earlier; the cultivar’s own 1999 release paper gives a slightly wider margin of two to three days earlier; Ito En’s reference gives one day earlier. All three agree it is an early cultivar, just not on the exact margin. Tree form is intermediate, with vigour noticeably stronger than Yabukita’s — strong enough that NARO’s handbook flags it as an asset against mulberry scale insect and anthracnose damage, though not a substitute for control where those are prevalent. Yield is substantially higher than Yabukita’s: 20-40% more across both first and second flush, a figure NARO’s handbook and Ito En’s reference agree on almost exactly. Cold hardiness and resistance to frost-crack (bark-splitting) injury are rated comparable to Sayamakaori’s, one of the more cold-tolerant cultivars in cultivation. Disease resistance is mixed: somewhat strong against ring spot, but weak against anthracnose, red blight and, to a lesser degree, mulberry scale insect, so it needs active disease management rather than resistance alone in affected districts. NARO’s handbook also notes two cultivation quirks: the canopy can thin out if pruning isn’t managed carefully, and young trees sometimes throw branches out sideways rather than upright, a habit that becomes less noticeable as the bush matures.

Made into sencha, the cup is mild and without a pronounced aftertaste — “香味が温和でくせがなく” in NARO’s own phrasing — carried less by intensity of flavour than by colour: a vivid, deep green leaf and liquor that holds up even when the leaf is picked early, the trait the cultivar was bred and named for. Chemical analysis backs this up directly: chlorophyll content 1.3 to 1.5 times Yabukita’s, with a slower breakdown into pheophytin during processing, which is what keeps the green from fading. NARO’s processing note is the flip side of the same trait — the leaves are wide and comparatively large, and picking has to stay on schedule, because picking late is exactly what costs the cultivar its signature colour. Beyond sencha, a specialist single-cultivar retailer (Shinkoju) sells Sakimidori as deep-steamed (fukamushi) sencha, pan-fired (kamairicha) tea and black tea, though sencha remains its only officially registered use. It is not among Japan’s widely planted cultivars — cultivation is concentrated in Miyazaki — but its colour has made it a recurring parent in the prefecture’s own breeding programme, most visibly in Kirari 31 and Haruto 34.