The place that crosses and the place that selects

Read enough historical documents and you notice that the place that made the cross and the place that selected it are almost always different. Not by chance: the system was built that way.

Two systems

The prefaces on the older documents explain the machinery. There were two of them.

The eight-district system (from fiscal 1927)

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, granted it the whole of its costs, and conducted trials with the Ministry's own Agricultural Experiment Station as the pivot.

That is, the Ministry's Agricultural Experiment Station makes artificial crosses on many varieties and handles the early hybrid generations, distributing the hybrids it judges promising to the designated prefectural stations, where trials on regional adaptability are conducted while fixing is pursued

The state crosses; the prefecture selects. The state pays the whole cost. This is the preface of Paddy Rice Norin No.6, No.8, No.20, Hokuriku No.19 and Norin No.19.

The famine-prevention trial (from 1935)

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

distributing the hybrids it judges promising to the famine-prevention testing sites at the six prefectures' stations, where trials on the verification of regional adaptability are conducted while fixing is pursued, and moving them on to the famine-prevention trial plots at those stations to confirm that they are sound

A separate system, for the six Tohoku prefectures only. The preface of Paddy Rice Aiko No.2 (Miyagi) and Paddy Rice Toono No.2 (Iwate). National station → the prefecture's "famine-prevention testing site" → the prefecture's "famine-prevention trial plot": three stages.

Two testing sites were founded for this system.

Prefecture	Testing site	Founded	Variety	Line name
Miyagi	Ayashi	1935	Paddy Rice Aiko No.2	Aikei No.3 → A-kei No.3
Iwate	Tono	1935	Paddy Rice Toono No.2	Enkei No.3

Two sites founded the same year, each producing one child of Norin No.1, each line named "No.3", each variety named after its site.

Konosu crosses, and everywhere selects

Of the national testing sites that took on the crossing, the one that appears most often in these documents is the Konosu Testing Site.

Crossed at Konosu	Selected at	Year of cross
Paddy Rice Aiko No.2	Miyagi (Ayashi)	1931
Paddy Rice Toono No.2	Iwate (Tono)	1932
Paddy Rice Norin No.50	Miyagi → Furukawa	1936
Koganenami	Niigata → Fukui	1941
Yaeho	Shimane → Izumo → Shimane	1941
Natsuminori	Miyagi → Furukawa	1941
Wakasa, Yamahonami	Izumo → Fukui	1946

Seed crossed at one testing site scattered from Iwate in the north to Shimane in the west. And where it scattered to differs, one cross becomes different varieties.

Station names keep changing

The documents supply the name as of the time of writing, in brackets. Under the name it had at the cross, it can no longer be found.

Document	Inside the bracket
Natsuminori	Konosu Testing Site (now the MAF Kanto-Tosan Agricultural Experiment Station)
Natsuminori	MAF Furukawa Agricultural Improvement Laboratory (now moved to the Furukawa Branch)
Yamaseshirazu	Tohoku Branch (now Cultivation Section One, Tohoku Agricultural Experiment Station)
Mineasahi	Inahashi Branch (now the Mountain Technology Experimental Farm, Aichi Agricultural Research Center)
Yamafukumochi	MAF Chugoku Agricultural Experiment Station (then in Himeji)

Yamafukumochi's bracket gives not an organisation but a location. The name had not changed; the place had.

Chokai's document packs a move and a rename into one sentence.

the Miyagi Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station … and thereafter at that station and, from 1947, having moved into the Furukawa Branch (as the MAF Furukawa Agricultural Improvement Laboratory in 1947-50), it was bred and selected

The same place was a national laboratory for four years only.

And Chiyohikari's document writes "this station" and never names it. This site's breeding-site field reads "this station (the document does not name it)".

Borrowing a prefecture to go faster

Outside the system, places were used in another way.

Mutsukogane went Aomori → Kagoshima → Aomori; Nikisakae used the winter at its own station's Ibusuki site. Both borrowed warm country to advance the generations (see At what generation it was handed on).

What this site therefore does

• The breeding-site field lists the places in the order the document gives them — "Konosu Testing Site (cross) → Izumo → Fukui → Fukui Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station". It is not condensed
• Where a document does not name the organisation, neither does this site. Even where the line name and the adopting prefecture make it guessable, the field reads "this station (the document does not name it)"
• The "now —" in a bracket is part of the quotation. The bracket is what marks the change of name