On 26 August, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced that through bringing Japanese strawberry breeds to South Korea without permission, so farmers can grow them there, Japanese producers have lost the opportunity to export them, suffering losses of over 22 billion yen (1.3 billion yuan) in the past five years. Other agricultural products have also been taken abroad. The Ministry is now working to support the developers by forbidding foreign breeds, in order to protect their own.
The Ministry states that different Japanese strawberry breeds, such as "Tochigi Otome", developed in Tochigi, and the individually developed "Zhang Ji" and "Red Pearl", are now taking up 90% of South Korea's strawberry production. They are also exporting them to Asia. In 2012, it already turned out to be impossible to prevent the registered breeds "Jin Xiang" and "Xue Xiang" from being grown outside of Japan.
In the past few years, the annual strawberry export was around 500 tons. The South Korean strawberry export, however, was over 4000 tons in 2015. Based on these numbers, the Ministry has calculated the damage for Japanese production. Even though they have not looked at other products, they have already confirmed that the high quality "Shine Muscat" grapes, developed by the Japan National Research Institute, are already grown in China as well. Furthermore, Kumamoto rushes are used in China for the production of tatamis.
