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Yomohikari

Parents: Norin No.22 (seed parent) and Ginbozu Chusei (pollen parent). Crossed in 1946. Bred by Niigata Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station (cross) → Nagaoka → Hokuriku Agricultural Experiment Station.

Hokuriku No.62 HOK0000620

Pedigree

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Norin No.8 → Norin No.22 Norin No.6 → Norin No.22 Ginbozu → Norin No.8 Asahi → Norin No.8 Joshu → Norin No.6 Sen'ichi → Norin No.6 Norin No.22 → Yomohikari Ginbozu Chusei → Yomohikari Yomohikari Hokuriku No.62 Norin No.22 Kinki No.34 Ginbozu Chusei Norin No.8 Kinki No.15 Norin No.6 Kinki No.9 Joshu Sen'ichi Ginbozu Asahi
The diagram shows this variety's own parents and the line that connects it to Koshihikari. Among the descendants only the main varieties are drawn; the other parent of each cross, and every descendant not drawn here, are listed in full below. Faint boxes are unnamed breeding lines.

Parents

Descendants

Relations are counted along the shortest line of descent. The rows in the diagram follow the order of crosses, so a variety with more than one path down can sit lower in the diagram than its relation here suggests.

Crossed back onto its maternal grandmother's line

"Hokuriku No.62" was crossed in 1946 at the Ministry's designated paddy rice breeding trial site in the Niigata Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station, taking "Norin No.22" as the mother and "Ginbozu Chusei" as the father, and was thereafter selected and fixed at the Ministry's Nagaoka Agricultural Improvement Laboratory and the Hokuriku Agricultural Experiment Station.

The mother is Norin No.22; the father Ginbozu Chusei.

Ginbozu is the mother of Norin No.8, and Norin No.8 is the mother of Norin No.22 — so Ginbozu is Norin No.22's grandmother.

A mid-maturing line out of Ginbozu, crossed back onto Norin No.22. A cross that reaches three generations back.

Same mother as Koshihikari, and the same cross year, 1946.

"Exceedingly strong" against rice stem maggot

Hokuriku No.62's resistance to rice stem maggot is exceedingly strong.

The rice stem maggot bores into the stem. This document gives resistance to an insect the same weight as resistance to disease.

On how it ripens, it is equally definite:

Dying-back of the lower leaves is far less than in the two varieties compared with it, and the ripening colour is excellent.

The lower leaves do not die back and the ripened colour is good. Appearance sits among the traits because inspection at the time set the price by grade.

Long, and still standing

The culm is rich in flexibility and, for its length, lodges little — about as much as Shirogane — but it does not snap.

Tarehonami (Hokuriku No.60) was described as stiff, with a risk of snapping. This one is the reverse: supple, and so it does not break.

Two lines from the same year, the same station and the same mother are assessed as opposites on the matter of the culm. The same mother, a different father, something else comes out.

Sources disagree

On naming

Variety names are proper nouns. We use a name in this language only where a published source for it can be cited; otherwise the Japanese name stands.

What we have not yet confirmed

We have not looked below the top twenty

The site covers the twenty most widely planted varieties of the 2024 crop and the varieties that connect them back to Koshihikari. Many descendants exist below that line; we have not yet verified them against primary sources.

The year Masshigura was crossed

Neither Aomori Prefecture's table of recommended-variety characteristics nor the NARO database gives the year Masshigura (Aokei No.138) was crossed. The cross itself, Ou No.341 / Yamagata No.40, and its adoption as a recommended variety in fiscal 2004 are confirmed from primary sources; the year of the cross is not. For the same reason we do not say which parent was the seed parent. On 8 October 2026 we went back to the breeder's own side. The Masshigura page in the variety database of the Aomori Prefectural Industrial Technology Research Center's Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute carries a heading reading “The origin of Masshigura” — with nothing under it. Of the institute's bulletins, only No.42 (2015) onward are online, and the issue that would hold the breeding report for Masshigura is not among them. So the year of the cross is absent from the breeder's own published material as well.

Sources

The source document is in Japanese.

  1. イネ品種データベース検索システム 交配系譜図「越南17号」 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-10
  2. イネ品種データベース検索システム 交配系譜図「近畿34号（水稲農林22号）」 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-10-01
  3. 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 ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-10
  4. 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 ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-10
  5. コシヒカリのエピソード1 〜交配から系統の育成まで〜 — Niigata Prefectural Government ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-10
  6. 戦後日本のイノベーション100選「コシヒカリ」経緯 — Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation ・ accessed 2026-09-10
  7. イネ品種データベース検索システム「近畿15号（水稲農林8号）」品種来歴文書 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-16
  8. イネ品種データベース検索システム「近畿9号（水稲農林6号）」品種来歴文書 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-09-16
  9. イネ品種データベース検索システム「越南12号（ヤマコガネ）」品種来歴文書 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-10-01
  10. イネ品種データベース検索システム「北陸62号（ヨモヒカリ）」品種来歴文書 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-10-01
  11. イネ品種データベース検索システム「山陰47号（ヤエホ）」品種来歴文書 — Institute of Crop Science, NARO ・ primary source ・ accessed 2026-10-01