If You Have Ever Been To A Japanese Restaurant,

or buffet where sushi is served,

normally next to the soi sauce you will find a green paste, a root crop it is wasabi, I guess we all take it pretty much for granted, but it is apparently very difficult to grow, it’s “deemed by most experts to be the most difficult plant in the world to grow commercially.” but why?

1. Cultivation: it’s grown unlike any other plant, it needs plenty of water but it can’t be submerged like a water-lily. 
2. Access: one wasabi farmer said it took 6 years simply to get access to viable seeds.
3. Temperment: too much humidity or the wrong nutrient composition can wipe out an entire crop of finicky wasabi.
4. Development: wasabi takes just over a year to mature, which means that farmers have to be patient before money starts coming in.
5. Scale: wasabi is especially prone to disease when planted on a large scale.

 but it can be done,

 as can be seen from these pictures from Japan’s largest wasabi farm, the Daio Wasabi Farm in Nagano, 

as an aside it was used as one of the sets in Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film Dreams and its picturesque rivers and water mills makes it a big tourist attraction, but back to wasabi, before you try it and compliment how good it is only 5% of restaurants around the world serve real wasabi root, well it does cost nearly $160 per kilogram at wholesale prices, the other 95%? chances are it’s a concoction of mustard, European horseradish and food coloring.