Before and after a name

A variety has a stretch of life before it has a name. In the longest case here, twelve years. Through it the same thing is called by a number, then by a code, and at last by a name.

That is why this site prints both the variety name and the regional number in its pedigrees. What a parent was called at the cross and what it is called in the document are different. Assemble a pedigree from variety names alone and you will count one thing as two.

The name changes in three stages

Paddy Rice Norin No.19's document sets it out most plainly.

From April 1934 under the provisional name "411", and from April 1936 under the line name "Hokkai No.79", its seed was distributed within Hokkaido, chiefly to the northern districts with a short rice-growing season, to confirm regional suitability; in April 1941 it was given the variety name "Paddy Rice Norin No.19".

From	Called	Stage
1929	(crossed)
April 1934	411	provisional name
April 1936	Hokkai No.79	line name
April 1941	Paddy Rice Norin No.19	variety name

Twelve years from the cross to the variety name.

When the provisional name was nothing but a number

Document	Provisional name	From
Paddy Rice Norin No.19 (Hokkai No.79)	411	April 1934
Paddy Rice Norin No.42 (Hokkai No.103)	1735	1942

Both at the Kamikawa Branch of the Hokkaido Agricultural Experiment Station. The same place, the same way of numbering.

Norin No.1's listing of children holds a row named simply "1718" (cross combination: Norin No.1/Norin No.15) — a four-digit number that stayed as the name.

A line name renamed partway

In April 1939 it was given the line name "Aikei No.3" (later renamed "A-kei No.3")

Paddy Rice Aiko No.2's document. Aikei No.3 → A-kei No.3. Only kanji giving way to kana, but the document itself supplies the change in a bracket.

Sources that give different line names

Paddy Rice Toono No.2's line name differs between sources.

Source	Spelling
Its historical document	Enkei No.3
The listing of Koshihikari's parents' children (and ineCode TOK0000030)	Tokei No.3

This site takes the document's wording as primary and keeps the listing's as an alias. Neither is called a mistake. It is a different matter from flaws in the sources: here there are simply two spellings for one thing.

At the cross, the parent had no name

Where the year of the cross and the year the parent was named do not line up, the documents supply it in brackets.

Document	How the parent is written	Year of cross
Paddy Rice Hokuriku No.19	"Shin No.88" (the line that later became "Paddy Rice Norin No.1")	1930
Hatsuminori	"Hokuriku No.23" (the line that later became Paddy Rice Norin No.21)	1941
Tedoriwase, Yaeho	"Kinki No.35" (Norin No.23), "Kinki No.34" (Norin No.22)	1941
Mineasahi	"40-11" (later Kiho, bred at the station's Inahashi Branch)	1966

Hokuriku No.19 is the oldest cross using Norin No.1 that this site holds. Crossed in 1930; Norin No.1 was named in 1931. A year apart, and the name changes.

Year of cross	How the father is written
1930, Paddy Rice Hokuriku No.19	Shin No.88
1931, Paddy Rice Aiko No.2	Norin No.1
1931, Paddy Rice Norin No.21	Paddy Rice Norin No.1

One parent, written three ways.

The listing is built on identity, not on names

This is the most interesting part.

Norin No.1's listing of children holds a row for Paddy Rice Hokuriku No.19. Its cross-combination field reads:

Iwata Asahi No.3/Shin No.88

The name "Norin No.1" appears nowhere in it. And yet the row stands in Norin No.1's listing of children.

So the listing was not made by searching the text of cross combinations. It is built on the identity Shin No.88 = Norin No.1.

Norin No.22's listing is the same. Within one listing, rows writing the parent as "Norin No.22" sit alongside rows writing it as "Kinki No.34" (Koganenami has Kinki No.34, Azusa has Norin No.22). The spellings are not uniform; the gathering is.

How a pairing was confirmed for a variety with no document of its own

The correspondence between a line number and a Norin number is usually settled by the variety's own breeding report, because the document records its own renaming — "named Hokuriku No.4 in March 1930 … renamed Suito Norin No.1 in March 1931".

But Suito Norin No.22 (Kinki No.34) has no breeding report. The Norin-number reports were never digitised, so there is no document in which it records its own renaming. On this site that was the one name-pairing left without a source.

It was closed in the end by documents written about other varieties.

• Yamakogane (Etsunan No.12) — "in 1941, taking 'Kinki No.34' (Norin No.22) as the mother"
• Yaeho (San'in No.47) — "taking 'Kinki No.34' (Norin No.22) as the father"

Where nothing was written about a variety itself, what was written about the varieties bred from it can stand in its place. Reading the pedigrees sideways has by-products like this.

What this site therefore does

• Pedigrees print the variety name and the regional number together, so a parent can be found under the name it had at the cross
• Where a source writes "later X", the bracket is part of the quotation. The bracket is what marks the change of name
• Where one thing has two spellings, the document's is primary and the other becomes an alias. Neither is called a mistake