Sumitomo Forestry has signed an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to commercialize the production of pollen-free cedar trees to combat hay fever. Based on the mass production technology for pollen-free cedar seedlings through tissue culture developed by the National Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute and Niigata University, the company will commercialize a technology that can increase the number of trees more efficiently than the conventional methods of propagation from cuttings or seeds.
According to Sumitomo Forestry, the company will receive pollen-free cedar cones from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, establish propagation, cultivation and production methods, and provide the technology to seedling producers in Tokyo. Test planting is scheduled for spring 2026. The company will check whether the cones are pollen-free, their growth habit, and the quality of the material after a certain period of growth. In the future, the company will work with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and seedling producers in Tokyo to build a system for producing more than 10 seedlings per year, aiming to commercialize the full-scale production of pollen-free cedar seedlings around 2030.
To propagate, immature seeds extracted from the cones are first cultured to produce callus (a mass of cultured undifferentiated plant cells). DNA is extracted from the callus, and pollen-free callus is selected and cultivated into somatic embryos (tissue that arises from the somatic cells of a plant without fertilization), which are then mass-produced. This method was published in a paper by the National Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Niigata University, and others in 2022.
Pollen from plants such as cedars and cypresses causes allergic symptoms such as runny noses and sneezing. In Japan, cedars and cypresses that were planted after the war are now being cut down, and the large amounts of pollen released are causing an increase in the number of people suffering from hay fever. In particular, hay fever from cedars, which have a large plantation area, is said to affect about 4% of the population.
For this reason, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government sought collaborators to put into practical use pollen-free cedar propagation technology for a project to cut down artificial cedar forests and replace them with pollen-free cedar trees, and chose Sumitomo Forestry.
reference:[Sumitomo Forestry] Agreement reached with Tokyo Metropolitan Government to commercialize the production of pollen-free cedar trees - Measures to combat hay fever using mass propagation technology through tissue culture -
[Niigata University] Innovative technology developed to mass-produce pollen-free cedar seedlings - Contributing to hay fever prevention through DNA analysis and tissue culture -
