wasabi-root-1As if it were a diamond, wasabi is one of the most expensive market plants. In addition, It is considered the most difficult plant to grow for commercial purposes, making price increases further.

The wasabi is a type of Japanese horseradish highly prized because of the great difficulty that care product really has been a defendant in recent 30 years. And this kind of Japanese horseradish is a very valuable asset for these reasons.

The first thing to know about wasabi japonica Wasabia, its scientific name, It is that you probably have never really tested.

Is that green paste that restaurants put together the pink ginger on the plate of sushi? No, that's probably a mixture of mustard, European horseradish and food coloring. In fact, sometimes, alone 5% wasabi served in Japanese restaurants around the world come from the stem or root of the plant.

Methods for eating wasabi differ significantly from those coming powder, particularly if the plant is fresh.
In its most traditional preparation, the root is placed on a grater made of sharkskin glued to a wooden pallet. Using a circular motion in the direction of clockwise, the root is pressed against the grater until a paste is formed.

The spiciness, clearly less strong than imitation wasabi, but equally intense, lasts only 10 to 15 minutes, so it should only prepare the quantity to be eating.
Nobu Oichi has been buying wasabi produced by Oates from the beginning and selling it to customers in the Japanese restaurant Zen, in downtown Vancouver, Canada.
“We offer the customer with wasabi grater, to enjoy the experience of preparing”, dice Oichi. “Once you try the real wasabi, and you do not want to go back to the other”.

The wasabi was initially emplelado by the Japanese many centuries ago to prevent disease. The story goes that initially was not used for its pungent flavor, but to raw fish it put in order to prevent poisoning or stomach illnesses.

But as the wasabi grows in a different way to other crops, It has been cultivated mostly by Japanese for its own market. “It is a plant that loves water, but should not grow completely submerged as lilies or something similar”, explains Professor Carol Miles, horticulture department at the University of the State of Washington.

The farmer Brian Oates is one of the few Americans who has managed to move forward with this product, and monetize on the market, He is according to account in his interview with the BBC.

“This is almost like gold… and one expects to charge a lot for gold. Good, we hope to charge a lot for the wasabi” Oates admits, dueño at empresa Pacific Coast Wasabi.

And is not for less! This plant is sold to listed 160 dollars a kilo when the sale is wholesale and 308 dollars restaurants. Its high price is based not only on the difficulty of growing (especially the amount of water that must receive this product), and therefore, its scarcity in the market, but also in its complicated preparation.

Carol Miles, professor in the department of horticulture at the University of the State of Washington explains that “It is a plant that loves water, but should not grow completely submerged as lilies or something similar. In general, water runs over the crop, so that it grows into a kind of waterbed and that is not very common in the United States”.

Usually it obtained after pressing the root of a special grated (usually made with shark skin as this is much harder and rough). curiously, the pungency that characterizes this only lasts product between 10 and 15 minutes after processing.

And as always, where there is a difficulty there is a challenge and a new market. This was what had to think Nobu Oichi, owner of a Japanese restaurant in Vancouver, which it offers its customers the possibility of developing this product in situ. “We offer the customer with wasabi grater, to enjoy the experience of preparing”. Not only it brings a new feel to the guests, but also do not have to invest time and effort in making it.

Oates said that the first is interested cultivation was wasabi 1987, but it took him six years to get access to good seeds.

During years, He cultivated in greenhouses at the University of British Columbia (UBC), in Vancouver, where he worked, but he found obstacles permanently: if exposed to high humidity, whimsical wasabi can die. A wrong mix of nutrients also can kill. And later, There is also the problem of size.

“There seems to be agreement on agriculture if you keep your little culture is good in which, but when they get large these edges you did not have before suddenly appear”, apuntó Oates.
In your experience, wasabi tends to get sick when planted on a large scale.

However, After working with students from UBC, Oates developed a method which is now commercially secret that allows the wasabi be cultivated on an industrial scale without dying from disease.

After avoiding the problems of culture, Oates found a common problem for every entrepreneur, is a farm or business technology: where to find funding.

Brian Oates offers a franchise to start a farm for a price of US $ 70,000. “There was no one who would take the risk of investing in something as unknown as the wasabi”, he explained.

That forced him to take a model currently used by PWC is, essentially, the franchise. The first commercial farm began in PWC 2012, and currently they have nine: four British Columbia, four Washington state and one in New York.

On average, each farm needs US $ 70,000 per acre of wasabi to start. To this we add the wasabi needs more than one year to mature, so farmers need to be patient.