Release of the World's First F₁ Hybrid Cabbage "Suteki Kanran"

Suteki Kanran, the First F₁ Hybrid Cabbage

At Sakata, we have many "ground-breaking stories". One such story is that of the Suteki Kanran (cabbage), released in 1940. This product takes its name from Suteki Shinohara who bred the variety. At the time, cabbage was of an 'open pollinated' variety with an inconsistent harvest period and size, making harvesting time consuming. Shinohara developed his own cultivation methods and bred an F₁ (F₁ hybrid) product strain whose uniformity was well-suited well to large-scale farming, enabling Sakata to develop the world's first F₁ cabbage. While Suteki Kanran came under war-time seed control and was not released into the market, it became the foundation of future mainstream F₁ products.