The historical documents are not written the same way
NARO's rice variety database holds "variety historical documents" — digitised reports issued by the experiment stations that bred each variety. Nearly every parent-child link on this site rests on one of them.
Having read forty-odd, what stands out is that there is no settled way of writing them. This page sets the differences side by side. How a document is written bears directly on how it may be read.
The commonest form runs on in one sentence
"Etsunan No.15 was crossed in 1946 at the Konosu Testing Site of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Agricultural Experiment Station, taking 'Paddy Rice Norin No.22' as the mother and 'Paddy Rice Norin No.14' as the father; in 1947 the F1 seed was distributed to the Ministry's Izumo Agricultural Improvement Laboratory" (Wakasa)
Year, place, mother, father and the moves afterwards, run together without a full stop. It is in this form that the seed and pollen parents are given in words — "as the mother", "as the father".
Split into heading and explanation
Short-culmed Short-culmed, about like Norin No.1. Panicle somewhat short Larger than Norin No.1's, but not reaching Aiko No.2 or Norin No.17.
This is Natsuminori's (Tohoku No.58) character section. It reads like a form with fields to tick and fill.
A list of fields with no sentence at all
Cross combination "Paddy Rice Fujisaka No.2" × "Paddy Rice Norin No.1" Year and place of cross 1946, Tohoku Branch, MAF Agricultural Experiment Station
Yamaseshirazu's (Tohoku No.63) history section. The parents are joined by "×" and the words for seed and pollen parent are absent.
By convention what precedes the "×" is the mother. But this site does not assert what is not written in words. Tohoku No.58, from the same station five years apart, does write it in words, so a change of format cannot be a reason to supply what is not there. This is the first reason this page exists.
Numbered with kanji numerals
One. Its maturity is later than "Paddy Rice Norin No.20"'s but earlier than "Fukoku"'s. Five. Its lodging resistance is weaker than "Paddy Rice Norin No.20"'s, about that of "Paddy Rice Norin No.28".
Paddy Rice Norin No.42 (Hokkai No.103), numbered one to seven.
Numbers inside brackets
Grain set is fairly good and shattering hard (1). To stripe disease it is weak (9), like ordinary Japanese paddy rice.
Yamafukumochi (Chugoku Mochi No.19) and no other. It reads as a nine-point scale with 1 the strong end, but the document carries no key. This site does not assert what the numbers mean; it quotes them.
Dated in the Western calendar
"Fukei No.62" was crossed in 1954 at the Fujisaka Testing Site of the Aomori Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station
Mutsukogane (Fukei No.62) alone. Every other document dates in the Shōwa era; this one never uses it once.
Documents with a preface, documents without
The older Norin-numbered documents carry a preface, and there are two kinds of it.
The eight-district system
In order to breed fine new varieties of paddy rice, this Ministry has since fiscal 1927 divided the country into eight districts by climate and soil, designated one prefectural agricultural experiment station in each, and granted it the whole of its costs
The preface of Norin No.6, No.8, No.20, Hokuriku No.19 and Norin No.19. The same sentences, reused with one number rewritten.
| Year of preface | Document | "already" |
|---|---|---|
| 1936 | Paddy Rice Norin No.6 | 10 varieties |
| 1937 | Paddy Rice Norin No.8 | 18 varieties |
| 1941 | Paddy Rice Hokuriku No.19 | 32 varieties |
| 1943 | Paddy Rice Norin No.19 | 38 varieties |
| 1943 | Paddy Rice Norin No.20 | 38 varieties |
The two from 1943 carry the same number. The count belongs to the year of the report, not to the variety.
The famine-prevention trial
As one measure for preventing crop failure in the Tohoku region, this Ministry has since 1935 designated the prefectural agricultural experiment stations of the six Tohoku prefectures and granted them the whole of their costs
The preface of Paddy Rice Aiko No.2 (Ayashi, Miyagi) and Paddy Rice Toono No.2 (Tono, Iwate). A different programme from the eight-district system, and both testing sites were founded in 1935.
The signatures differ too. Toono No.2: "March 1941, Agricultural Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry." Aiko No.2: "March 1944, Agricultural Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce" — the years when the two ministries were merged. The same preface, three years apart, under two different ministries.
Sixfold differences in thickness
| Document | Characters |
|---|---|
| Paddy Rice Fujisaka No.4 (Fukei No.19) | 479 |
| Paddy Rice Norin No.50 (Tohoku No.50) | 476 |
| Paddy Rice Norin No.42 (Hokkai No.103) | 664 |
| Mineasahi (Chubu No.17) | 2,330 |
| Tarehonami (Hokuriku No.60) | 3,139 |
Norin No.50's description of character ends at "a disease-resistant, high-yielding line" and never says resistant to what. Tarehonami gives a line per disease.
Nor is it simply that the older ones are thinner. Paddy Rice Norin No.1's 1931 report writes out the method for measuring eating quality. The density of the record changes with where and when it was written.
There are four ways of naming the mother and the father
Which words a document uses depends on where it came from. This site asserts the seed and pollen parents only where one of those wordings is present.
| Wording | Example | Asserted? |
|---|---|---|
| "taking X as the mother, Y as the father" | Wakasa and most NARO breeding reports | Yes |
| "mother", "father" | Tsubusuke (JATAFF Journal) | Yes |
| "mother parent", "father parent" | Yosakoibijin (Kochi Agricultural Research Center) | Yes |
| "as its two parents" | Harumi (ZEN-NOH, Green Report) | No |
| joined by "×" alone | Yamaseshirazu (Tohoku No.63) | No |
| "bred by crossing B onto A" | most of the variety registration database | No |
"As its two parents" sets two names side by side and says nothing about which is which. The line is not drawn by how many words a document spends, but by whether it states the distinction at all.
What this site therefore does
- A difference of format is never a reason to supply content. Where the seed and pollen parents are not given in words, the site records "not stated"
- Where a document gives no key to its numbers, the site does not decide what they mean. Bracketed figures are quoted as they stand
- Nothing is read out of a thin record beyond what it says. What is not written is treated as not written
Sources
- イネ品種データベース検索システム 交配系譜図「近畿9号（水稲農林6号）」 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-09-10
- イネ品種データベース検索システム 交配系譜図「近畿15号（水稲農林8号）」 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-09-10
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「北海86号（水稲農林20号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「北陸19号（水稲北陸19号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「北海79号（水稲農林19号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「あ系3号（水稲愛子2号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「遠系3号（水稲遠野2号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「東北50号（水稲農林50号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「北陸60号（タレホナミ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「東北58号（ナツミノリ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「東北63号（ヤマセシラズ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「北海103号（水稲農林42号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「中国糯19号（ヤマフクモチ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「ふ系62号（ムツコガネ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「ふ系19号（水稲藤坂4号）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01
- イネ品種データベース検索システム「中部17号（ミネアサヒ）」品種来歴文書 Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ accessed 2026-10-01