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On particularly hot days, Vancouver Island farmer Blake Anderson will often open up the sides of his greenhouses.

The airflow protects his crops from overheating — but it also provides a tempting target to the nearby forest full of deer, rabbits and raccoons. However, says Mr. Anderson, you only need one deer to take a nibble, before the rest of the forest knows to stay well clear. “It’s like they tell each other,” he said.

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Such is the benefit of growing wasabi; spicy Japanese horseradish.

In the coastal areas of British Columbia, a wasabi empire is starting to take root. Backed by 20 years of top-secret Canadian-led research, a budding network of high-tech, computer-controlled greenhouses are emerging to churn out industrial quantities of one of the world’s most finicky crops.

And if all goes according to plan, a rising West Coast cadre of wasabi growers see their operation as a New World check against a looming Japanese wasabi shortage, a possible pipeline to revolutionary wasabi-based pharmaceuticals and a way to give fresh wasabi to a nation of sushi-eaters who have unknowingly been eating a fake version this whole time.