A research group led by Associate Professor Hajime Hanaoka of Shizuoka University's Faculty of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Forest and Forestry Research Center of the Shizuoka Prefectural Agricultural and Forestry Technology Research Institute, the Kanagawa Prefectural Nature Conservation Center, and the Forest Tree Breeding Center of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, has developed the pollen-free cedar variety "Haruna." The variety has been recognized as an excellent variety by the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute's Excellent Variety and Technology Evaluation Committee, and there are high hopes for it as a measure against hay fever.
According to Shizuoka University, pollen-free cedars arise from a mutation in one gene and can be produced by crossbreeding individuals with the mutant gene. The research group selected pollen-free individuals that had no defects in characteristics for forestry varieties, such as growth rate and material, from the cedars born from artificial crossbreeding of "Tahara No. 1" from Kanagawa Prefecture and "Ooi No. 7" from Shizuoka Prefecture, which have the mutant gene.
This individual was jointly developed by the Kanagawa Prefecture Nature Conservation Center and the Shizuoka Prefectural Agriculture and Forestry Technology Research Institute Forest and Forestry Research Center in 2010, and is being cultivated at the Shizuoka Prefectural Agriculture and Forestry Technology Research Institute Forest and Forestry Research Center's experimental site. In the future, it will be used as a forestry variety in Shizuoka Prefecture and elsewhere, and will be used as breeding material to create new pollen-free cedars by crossbreeding with existing superior varieties.
Japanese cedar pollen allergy has become a serious social problem in Japan, and the development and popularization of pollen-free cedar varieties is needed as a solution. However, there are still few pollen-free cedar varieties, and it is necessary to improve breeding materials for developing new varieties.
