Aiko No.2

Out of a trial for preventing famine

This historical document carries a preface, and it opens by explaining the system.

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, granted them the whole of their costs, and — keeping close mutual contact with the Ministry's own Agricultural Experiment Station as the pivot — conducted trials on the breeding of fine new varieties of paddy rice and other crops and on the improvement of cultivation methods

A trial for preventing famine. From 1935 the state designated the agricultural experiment stations of all six Tohoku prefectures and paid the whole of their costs.

Of these, as to the breeding of fine new varieties, the Ministry's Agricultural Experiment Station carries out the basic research, makes a great many artificial crosses and handles the early hybrid generations, and distributes the hybrids it judges promising to the famine-prevention testing sites at the six prefectures' stations

The national station crosses, nurses the hybrid through its early generations, and sends the promising ones to the prefectures' "famine-prevention testing sites".

The shape that recurs across this site — the place that crosses and the place that selects are separate — is in this document called famine prevention.

In 1935, on the founding of the Ayashi Testing Site, the Ministry-designated famine-prevention testing site at that station, the F4 seed was transferred there as its test material

The Ayashi Testing Site was founded in 1935 for this trial. The variety's name comes from the name of the testing site.

The second case of Norin No.1 as the mother

"Paddy Rice Aiko No.2" was crossed in 1931 at the Konosu Testing Site of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Agricultural Experiment Station, taking "Norin No.1" as the mother and "Aikoku No.6" as the father

The cross was made in 1931 — the year Paddy Rice Norin No.1 was named.

And Norin No.1 is the mother. On this site that is the second case, after Paddy Rice Fujisaka No.4.

Natsuminori's page notes "Aiko No.2" appearing among its comparisons. Natsuminori also has Norin No.1 as its father, so the two are half siblings. And Aiko No.2 itself, here, has Norin No.1 as its mother.

The signature reads "Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce"

The preface ends like this.

March 1944, Agricultural Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce

Not Agriculture and Forestry but Agriculture and Commerce.

It is the signature of the years (1943-45) when the agriculture and the commerce ministries were merged into one. The prefaces of Paddy Rice Norin No.6 and No.8 read "Agricultural Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry".

The same preface continues, with only the name of the ministry changed. A source's signature copies the shape of the state at the time it was written.

The handling of the line name changed too.

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

From "Aikei No.3" to "A-kei No.3". Even the line's own symbol was rewritten along the way.