Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/63651

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the technical change in Japanese wheat breeding research. The recent policy change has linked wheat prices to wheat quality. This quality-based price system has transmitted market demand to wheat farmers. And it may increase the farmers' demand to high quality wheat. Wheat breeders are now urged to offer the high-quality wheat, specifically the one with high protein-content (HPV). Breeding research can be regarded as the production process of the technological knowledge. We focus on this seed producing process, and analyze the breeding result by taking qualitative result into analysis. We applied the induced technical change, and an output distance function is employed to withdraw the technical change rate and its biases. Output distance function allows us to analyze multi-output production system, and price data are not necessarily required. We use Norin number as the proxy of the technology variable. The result implied that the breeding research has been "protein-favoring", so that the research resource is allocated efficiently to meet the farmers' demand, i.e. to develop the desirable new varieties, HPVs. Also, we investigated the effect of "Recharge" of the gene resource. We created the recharge rate from the pedigree data, and investigated the effect on the technical change. The technical change is significantly affected by this recharge rate. Therefore, it is important to encourage the researchers' interaction both domestically and internationally, and we may have to pay attention to the internationally strengthened property right, which may restrict the researchers' access to gene resources.