Zairai: A single cultivar or a blend?

在来という品種：単一品種？それともブレンド？

This is one of the field plots of Zairai plants at Miyazaki Sabou, a family tea farm in Miyazaki. 

Zairai plants are a group of indigenous tea plants in Japan, and usually treated as one cultivar in the tea label. Then, is it a simple equivalent of a cultivar like Minamisayaka (a cultivar from Miyazaki) ?

The answer is Yes and No.

Each Zairai plant are completely different to each other in terms of growth and flavor characteristics. The reason is because tea plants are cross-pollinated, meaning that a tea plant makes seeds only when it crosses with another tea plant. 

When two tea plants cross to polinate, the children (= seeds) inherits the characteristics of both parents. 1/2 of their father and 1/2 of their mother. Therefore, the children are always genetically different from their parents. That's difficult when you always want the seedlings with the same characteristics as the parants. You cannot get the same tea if you use seeds to propagate your plants. 

In order to solve this issue, all tea cultivars are made by the cuttings from each specific plant. This method uses the principle that, when you cut different branches of a plant and let them grow, these new plants are exactly the same plant as the original plant. In the world of tea cultivation, a cultivar is a group of clones.

In the field of Zairai plants, on the other hand, each plant is the child of different parents with different genetic background. Each plant is unique and has different characteristics, such as the size of the leaves and the taste of the tea.

This photo shows a bush of zairai plants from a farm in Kyoto. If you make a close look at, you will find different patches in different shades of green, or brown parts from the frost damage. The border of these batches is the border of the different plants.

To make Japanese tea, one plant is often not enough. Therefore, Zairai tea is made by mixing leaves of different Zairai plants. 

So, "Zairai" is a name of one cultivar category, which is the indigenous plants. However, when you make a close look at, the tea of Zairai is a blend of different trees in one farm.