Chapter 320: Virus-Free

After leaving the reservoir construction site, the expressions on the faces of the two men surnamed Liang and Mi, seated on the electric tricycle, were none too good... If the water-control hub project progressed slowly, the impact on downstream agriculture would be enormous.

"It seems we can only step up the repair and reinforcement of the irrigation and drainage canals," Mi Shuo said thoughtfully.

"That still has an upper limit; we can't exactly dig the farm ditches into river channels," Liang Le sighed. "In the end, they're just capillaries. If the artery upstream isn't fixed properly, the downstream will suffer disaster no matter what, only the degree will differ."

After thinking it over, Mi Shuo said, "Vigorously expand the potato and sweet potato fields."

"Ah, that's all we can do. We'll just have to make do for a couple of years," Liang Le said helplessly.

... Since the reservoir couldn't be sorted out, the mountain floods from torrential rain every July and August were an unavoidable hurdle. Under these circumstances, increasing the planting area of root crops like potatoes and sweet potatoes became the only choice for agriculture.

The reasoning was easy to understand: potatoes and sweet potatoes hiding underground had far stronger resistance to mountain floods, heavy rain, and Pacific storms than delicate goods like rice.

Implementing this strategy, however, was not too difficult, because the staple crops of Tainan were originally potatoes and sweet potatoes; now they were merely continuing to increase their planting ratio.

One must realize that, under the current technical conditions of scarce fertilizer and few pesticides, the per-mu yield of rice was only five or six hundred jin; yet the yield from one mu of potato fields could easily reach three times that of rice, and could go even higher in the future — in the end, it's all starch, and the Transmigrators would naturally choose the one that could feed more people.

After finalizing the future planting plan, the two returned to Chikan, then followed the asphalt road along the coast all the way south. After running for about ten kilometers, they reached the boundary between Kaohsiung and Chikan: the vicinity of the Erren River.

Since the residential area had not yet expanded to this area, it was very desolate, surrounded entirely by blackened earth left bare after slash-and-burn. After following the Erren River eastward from the coast for another two li, a cluster of buildings appeared in the distance.

This was the core asset of the Grain Corporation: the Improved Seed Base.

The Improved Seed Base covered a vast area, composed jointly of the Biological Laboratory, greenhouses, experimental fields, a Boiler Room, and a Power Generation Room.

The Biological Laboratory was the core building of the Improved Seed Base.

At first glance, the laboratory formed by four two-story brick-and-concrete buildings was no different from the buildings of later generations. Large glass windows, iron railings, white enclosing walls.

The equipment inside the laboratory building was also made to match that of later generations as closely as possible.

Various imported biochemical instruments, including microscopes, were fully equipped here. Additionally, the building also contained some "domestically produced" low-grade experimental equipment, including a Constant Temperature Cultivation Room.

After presenting the Purple Skin Certificate representing the noble status of the Transmigrators at the guard post by the main gate, the tricycle drove into the base's main courtyard.

Yang Leyi, having gotten word of their arrival, came out to greet them.

Yang Leyi was considered relatively young among the Transmigrator group, only twenty-five years old this year. This gentleman's university major was bacteriology, but after graduation, he tossed his major aside and went to work as a "Business Manager" specializing in running trips to Zambia for a trading company.

He had originally thought life would just continue like that, but who would have guessed that after crossing over, he would actually pick up the major he had thrown away... Yes, the "nation and people" needed his expertise.

Seeing a group of people in white lab coats come out of the building to greet them, Liang Le and Mi Shuo immediately piled smiles onto their faces, put on the air of leaders on an inspection tour, and enthusiastically stepped forward to grasp Yang Leyi's hand, shaking it vigorously. "Leyi, you've been working hard, working hard. There's a serow on the truck; we two brothers hunted it specially for you to use in a clay pot stew!"

"Thank you, thank you!" Yang Leyi's round face was also piled with smiles at this moment. "I've got some beef here; we'll have a good feast tonight."

Chatting, the group entered the building.

The First Floor was mainly used for conducting various experiments and as a Warehouse; Yang Leyi would also usually synthesize some chemicals here.

After entering the foyer, the attendants brought by Liang Le and the others stayed behind: everyone understood the purpose of today's visit was mainly to see the Second Floor, so only the two men, Liang and Mi, went upstairs.

After going up to the Second Floor, the two men put on isolation suits in the foyer, pulled on rain boots, and then, after stepping through a calcium oxide pool used for disinfection, followed behind Yang Leyi into Laboratory One.

The seemingly quiet laboratory actually held quite a few people: ten "female workers" in white lab coats, each with a microscope and some bottles and jars set before them, were busy behind the long workbenches.

Bending over behind a female worker to look for a few moments, Mi Shuo, who had once worked as an agricultural technician at a seed company, whispered into Yang Leyi's ear, "Not bad, their technique is getting more and more proficient."

"Practice makes perfect, after all," Yang Leyi said with a smile and a nod.

Potato and sweet potato seed stock needs to be virus-free. The work of these female workers was one step in the virus-free process.

In improved sweet potato and potato seed stock, as the number of planting generations increases, the plants become smaller, growth vigor declines, tubers shrink, and yield and quality drop markedly — this is called varietal degeneration.

Varietal degeneration severely impacts crop yield, and what is the cause of varietal degeneration? Viruses.

The plant viruses in sweet potatoes and potatoes spread ceaselessly within the crops through vectors like insects, nematodes, and fungi, causing each generation of the crop to be worse than the last.

And the most important task of the seed base at this stage was to use the Stem Tip Virus-Free Technique, commonly employed in later generations, to obtain virus-free improved seed stock.

Anyone who has seen a moldy slice of bread or potato knows: the mold is not spread evenly across the bread, but forms patches of varying sizes like drops of ink, which is the normal growth pattern of bacterial colonies.

The Stem Tip Virus-Free Technique exploits this very point: viruses are unevenly distributed within plant tissues.

The virus-free technique involves first cutting off the apical growing point from a virus-carrying tuber, then performing tissue culture on these areas with relatively low virus concentration to generate plantlets, and finally selecting virus-free plantlets from them through testing.

These female workers bustling at the workbenches were currently carrying out the procedure of selecting virus-free seed stock using microscopes.

Generally speaking, the virus-free rate for a batch of seed stock is only a few percent or a few thousandths of a percent. This is also the reason the laboratory needs so many female workers: each one of them must tediously test hundreds or thousands of material samples before she can pick out a few virus-free plantlets.

As for the true identities of these female workers, they were just ordinary refugee women who had crossed the sea, the vast majority of them illiterate.

Yet, just like those female workers on the electronics production lines of later generations, the laboratory did not need them to understand any science or technology; it only needed them to exercise the innate patience of women and mechanically pick out the virus-free seed stock.

Passing through Laboratory One, the three people arrived in the long strip-shaped second laboratory.

Laboratory Two had been created by knocking through all the remaining rooms of this building. Along both sides of the long corridor were large glass windows, with externally mounted wooden windows added — these were for blocking light and storm winds when necessary.

The long corridor created after knocking through the walls had a very sci-fi feel.

Long strip-shaped LED light tubes extended far into the distance above people's heads; along the baseboards ran extended cast-iron hot-water heating pipes. Tier after tier of iron racks were piled high along both sides of the aisle, and on each tier sat glass constant-temperature cultivation chambers like sealed fish tanks. The light tubes inside them also emitted a soft glow, illuminating row after row of triangular glass vessels until they shone translucently.

This was the seed stock cultivation facility.

The virus-free seed stock selected by the female workers would be cut into segments and then placed into triangular flasks. An MS Culture Solution would have been prepared in advance inside the flasks. Once the virus-free seed stock was placed inside, under suitable temperature and light conditions, it would take root in 3-5 days and grow into a full plant in about 20 days... At that point, it could be cut again for further propagation, or directly used for breeding foundation seed.

The entire process described above had to be carried out under sterile conditions, which was also the reason everyone had to wear isolation suits.

Of course, besides this virus-free method, the laboratory also used heat treatment and some chemical agents to treat viruses in different varieties.

And the daily work of Base Director Yang Leyi, apart from managing the base personnel and this seed stock, also involved being responsible for synthesizing chemical agents and the culture solution for the seed stock in the laboratory downstairs.

This task occupied the majority of his time: the chemical composition of the culture solution was rather complex, and the Chemical Plant, limited by its scale, could currently only supply raw materials in bulk; the specific, fine operations still required Yang Leyi to do them personally in the laboratory.

In the corridor mingled with daylight and electric light, after Liang Le carefully observed the petri dishes inside the glass cases for a while, he turned his head and asked Director Yang a key question: "After the new year, we're going to reclaim another 300,000 to 400,000 mu of new fields, with the main crops still being potatoes and sweet potatoes. Can your seed stock supply keep up?"

"No, I can't handle it all by myself," Yang Leyi shook his head and said. "The batch-by-batch screening and seedling cultivation are manageable; just adding more female workers will do, since it's all just following procedures. But for synthesizing the culture solution and such, I alone can't keep up. I need an assistant."

Yang Leyi emphasized his tone here: "A real assistant, the genuine kind."

"I understand, I understand..." Junior Grand Secretary Liang rubbed the space between his brows with a finger; this was his habitual gesture when encountering something troublesome.

The so-called assistant referred to those top students at Chikan Middle School. Biology and chemistry were advanced subjects; at this stage, only a small number of top students at the middle school had been exposed to junior-high-level physics and chemistry. And what Yang Leyi needed was precisely this kind of student who could be cultivated long-term as a researcher.

However, the matter was not so simple. Previously, the Great Office had specifically issued a document to all departments: top students must complete the entire high school curriculum before half-work, half-study would even be considered; pulling up seedlings to help them grow was not permitted.

So Old Liang was now getting a headache: laboratory assistants absolutely required knowledge of physics and chemistry, but these people were currently being held back.

After habitually exchanging a glance with Mi Shuo, it was instead Mi Shuo who came out with a hard line: "This matter must be resolved. There will be even more fields to reclaim in the future; even if Director Yang works himself to death, he alone can't handle it. You go find Xia tomorrow."

"Yeah!" Liang Yue now also realized how serious the problem was. "Anyway, that's the situation. This isn't us forcing their hand — I'll bring it up at the council meeting tomorrow and see what they do. If they've got the guts, they can go without the grain!"