Chapter 16: Chapter 16: A New Direction
October Golden Week.
The company gave some of its employees time off.
However, Jiang Miao and his brother-in-law were still at the Salt Town Village aquaculture farm, where they had been negotiating to lease fish ponds for the past few days.
They had already secured deals with two owners: one for a 40-mu pond and another for a 50-mu pond, totaling 90 mu of fish ponds, plus 3 mu of open land.
On the 3rd, they finalized a deal with the last owner. This property was right next to the aquaculture base and consisted of 120 mu of shrimp ponds and 8 mu of paddy fields. It was a prawn farm jointly run by several households, which also made it the most difficult negotiation.
After all, partnerships are a breeding ground for conflict. Over the past few years, all sorts of disagreements, big and small, had caused relations between the five cooperating families to become strained. The farm was now on the verge of collapse.
To avoid the hassle, Jiang Miao had initially decided against it. In the end, however, his brother-in-law stepped in and secured the 120 mu of shrimp ponds and 8 mu of paddy fields by negotiating with each of the five families separately.
The rent averaged 1,430 yuan per mu per month on a 10-year lease, with a 50% penalty for breach of contract.
All told, the land acquisitions amounted to 210 mu of ponds and 12 mu of open land.
Jiang Miao planned for the new indoor aquaculture base, a 20-mu facility, to be built next to the old one.
Soon, his cousin’s construction team was on-site, beginning work on filling the land, reinforcing the foundation, and laying underground pipes.
Construction was expected to be finished by the end of the year.
Bulldozers, dump trucks, and excavators carried out the work methodically.
After watching the work at the construction site for a while and chatting with his cousin, Jiang Miao sent him a test report that had just come in the day before.
"Brother Yao, just as I suspected, that powder contains two types of steroids: dexamethasone and dexamethasone acetate. Taking too much of that stuff can easily cause femoral head necrosis. You have to stop taking these folk remedies."
"That son of a bitch! He actually fed me steroids! I’m gonna report him," Jiang Yao cursed.
Jiang Miao quickly reminded him, "You can report him, but don’t do anything rash like beating him up. Things are different now."
"I know." Jiang Yao wouldn’t act rashly. He had made a good amount of money from these recent projects, after all. There was no need to risk it all over someone like that.
The two chatted for a while longer, then Jiang Miao went back to the aquaculture base next door.
However, he didn’t go to check on the eel breeding pools. Instead, he went to the back of the aquaculture base, where a small building had been made from four stacked shipping containers.
To one side of the container structure stood a row of plastic greenhouses covering about half a mu. The area had been converted from a vegetable patch left over from the previous renovation.
Next to the greenhouses were the eight mu of paddy fields from the lease signed just yesterday.
Jiang Miao had no intention of using these eight mu of paddy fields for the new aquaculture base; instead, he planned to develop it into a larger greenhouse area.
He opened the door to the container building.
Inside, countless glass and plastic bottles lined shelves, each with a specialized label.
The labels read: "Ethyl methanesulfonate," "Diethyl sulfate," "N-Ethyl-N-nitrosourea," "Ethylene imine," "5-Bromouracil," "2-Aminopurine," "Maleic hydrazide," "Nitrous acid," "Sodium azide," "Colchicine," and so on.
These were all chemical compounds known to be potent mutagens, capable of inducing genetic mutations in cells.
He placed some of the chemical reagents into a special container and carried them into the adjacent shipping container room.
This room was set up with two rows of metal shelves and a metal table. The shelves were filled with glass petri dishes.
Inside the glass petri dishes were seeds of various sizes.
Jiang Miao had started conducting a secret experiment here back in July: a seed breeding project.
For Jiang Miao, who possessed the Appraisal Panel, the difficulty of seed breeding plummeted. After all, for most agricultural breeding companies and institutions, cultivating a single commercial variety from a vast pool of candidates was a long and arduous process.
For herbaceous plants, developing and cultivating a new, commercially valuable variety takes at least five years.
For woody plants, that timeline extends to at least ten years.
Why was it so difficult and time-consuming?
The answer lay in the verification stage.
Inducing genetic mutation in seeds is relatively simple. Physical methods like ultraviolet light, X-rays, fast neutrons, or cryogenic freezing, as well as chemical methods and even genetic modification technologies, can all induce mutations in seeds on a massive scale.
However, once the seeds have mutated, researchers have no way of quickly ascertaining the specific nature of those changes.
This requires a lengthy cycle: planting the seeds, observing the results, running tests, and selecting promising individuals. Then, they must harvest the seeds from those individuals, plant them again, observe, and test once more. Only after repeating this cycle several times can they begin to get a preliminary understanding of the mutation’s characteristics.
This is what makes the time investment so immense.
But Jiang Miao was different.
He could instantly see the post-mutation details of every single seed, including its survival rate, plant size, fruit size, fruit sweetness, cellulose content, various micronutrients and vitamins, and, most importantly, the stability of its genetic traits.
This allowed Jiang Miao to save 99% of the time. He only needed to induce mutations with chemical reagents; then, using his Appraisal Panel, he could sift through the seeds one by one and pick out the valuable variants.
The plants he selected as breeding targets were strawberries, pepino melons (also known as Ginseng Fruit), soybeans, and Purple Alfalfa.
He had, of course, chosen these four plants after careful consideration.
First, all four are herbaceous plants, which means they can be bred relatively quickly.
Second, breeding strawberries and pepino melons was a financial decision; both fruits command a high market value.
As for breeding soybeans and Purple Alfalfa, that was a move for the future. After all, both are tied to the core national interests of food security, cooking oil security, and animal feed security.
Although Jiang Miao couldn’t stand certain people, he knew that when the nest is overturned, no egg stays intact.
Jiang Miao couldn’t predict where this era was heading, so all he could do was prepare as much as possible.
Having finished the day’s work on inducing mutations, Jiang Miao went into the plastic greenhouse located near the container structure.
After more than two months of nursing and planting, dozens of strawberry seedlings had grown lush and leafy. He took a sterilized knife and a cup of Duchangling solution and began cutting runners from the plants.
These cuttings would be used for runner propagation, a common reproductive method in the strawberry industry.
After all, a single mutant plant could hardly produce enough seeds for the next steps. Both cross-breeding and mass seed production required a much larger stock.
The greenhouse currently housed 35 mutant seedlings. Each one was a variant he had personally selected for its genetic stability, high heat resistance, disease and pest resistance, good fruit firmness, moderate sweetness, high yield, and unique flavor compounds.
When it came to the unique flavor compounds, however, the Appraisal Panel couldn’t provide specifics. He would have to wait for the fruit to grow and taste it himself to know for sure.
Of course, having purchased many different kinds of strawberries in the past, he had also gathered data on their specific flavor profiles.
This allowed him to make an educated guess about the flavor profiles of some of the variants. However, among the 35 mutant seedlings, 15 possessed flavor compounds that were completely new to the market.
Or rather, not that they didn’t exist, but that their concentrations were too low to be perceived by taste.
After all, flavor compounds are incredibly diverse, and their concentrations within a fruit vary. Compounds with higher concentrations are easily perceived, while less prominent ones are often overlooked.
And that was precisely where the potential value of this batch of mutant seedlings lay.
