  There is a striking suppression of the cross section for production of octet
baryons in $e^+ e ^-$ annihilation, as the mass of the produced hadron
increases. We present a simple parametrization for the fragmentation functions
into octet baryons guided by two input models: the SU(3) flavor symmetry part
is given by a quark-diquark model, and the baryon mass suppression part is
inspired by the string model. We need only eight free parameters to describe
the fragmentation functions for all octet baryons. These free parameters are
determined by a fit to the experimental data of octet baryon production in $e^+
e ^-$ annihilation. Then we apply the obtained fragmentation functions to
predict the cross section of the octet baryon production in charged lepton DIS
and find consistency with the available experimental data. Furthermore, baryon
production in $pp$ collisions is suggested to be an ideal domain to check the
predicted mass suppression.
