Yuichiro Asai
Yuichiro Asai is the President and CEO of Asai Nursery, Inc. The company was founded in 1907 and he is the fifth-generation owner of his family business. Originally, they produced trees and shrubs for 110 years, but the burst of Japan’s bubble economy in the early 1990’s changed that situation. The tree market sharply decreased, and they could not continue with only the tree business. After graduating university, Yuichiro worked for five years at a management consulting farm in Tokyo. Then he moved back to hometown and took over Asai Nursey in 2009. At the same time, he attended Mie University where he earned Ph.D., majoring in functional genomics and tomato breeding. That experience would be his company’s strong point. Making full use of its strengths, the company has successfully increased its market share. In addition, he is developing Tomato harvesting robots for several years by collaborating with Automobile company in order to solve the lack of human resource. His company’s concept is to be “An R&D oriented agricultural company dedicated to improving field performance.” Asai Nursery has been able to construct an agricultural value chain through variety development, highly systematised production, and national market distribution. Also, they are proud to be a diverse company with talented team members from around the world who will be agronomists skilled in business, science and cultivation. Since 2019, we have been engaged in a large-scale kiwifruit orchard project teaming up with Zespri, a leading kiwifruit distributor in New Zealand.