Chapter 60 Seed Hunter
A revolutionary and epoch-making variety!

These words kept echoing in Guo Yang's mind.

Isn't this what he is pursuing?

After listening to Qiang's talk about the problems in the industry, Guo Yang also learned a lot.

The vegetable seed industry is not capital-intensive. Even if one has abundant financial resources, it is not necessarily possible to make a business bigger and stronger.

There are indeed many problems, but Guo Yang knows that my country's pepper seed industry will develop well in the future.

Although there is a shortage of high-end vegetable seeds, my country can basically achieve self-sufficiency in fresh peppers, processed peppers, and pepper seeds.

When the economy goes into a downturn, it is common for the pepper market to be in a slump, and pepper farmers are tortured terribly.

In 2022, the pepper market was good. Seeing that they could make money, many farmers expanded their planting areas in 2023, resulting in the production price of peppers in many areas being only two or three cents per pound.

Many farmers are unable to sell their peppers, so they can only pull out the pepper seedlings in advance and prepare to plant the next season of vegetables.

After the two chatted for a while, Guo Yang followed the person in charge of the vegetable research institute to get some bell pepper seeds.

This was something Guo Yang had already discussed.

But after listening to Bi Qiang's talk about the difficulties faced by Longjiao No. 2 cultivated by the vegetable research institute, Guo Yang suddenly had an idea and asked for more seeds of the screw pepper, a local variety of Northwest China, 'Pig Large Intestine'.

Before leaving, Guo Yang invited Bi Qiang: "How about coming to my company? You will be the head of the breeding department."

Bi Qiang really started thinking about it seriously.

Guo Yang was amused by this scene. His roommate was still as confident as ever.

But he is not kidding. The breeding team is dispensable to him now, but it would be great to build it up step by step.

"The salary is definitely higher than what you get at the research institute."

Bi Qiang thought for a while, then chuckled and said, "Isn't it a bad idea for us to discuss this topic in the institute?"

Guo Yang has long been accustomed to poaching people. To be honest, it feels pretty good to just throw money at them.

"Just say whether you're coming or not."

"Of course I'd like to come, but I don't want to be the breeding director. I just want to have a free research environment."

Hearing him say this, Guo Yang immediately thought of the germplasm resource bank that needed to be established urgently, and an idea came to his mind.

"Then come and help me collect germplasm resources. When the time comes, the beautiful mountains and rivers in China, and even the mountains and rivers in foreign countries, may be your destination."

Bi Qiang smiled and said, "That's perfect. I want to be a seed hunter and travel to every corner of the world to collect all kinds of ancient, rare, unique, and excellent plant seeds, especially those ancient varieties in our country."

Guo Yang was a little dumbfounded. He agreed so readily. He was a seed hunter?

Hey! Do you want to be so free and easy?

Bi Qiang ignored all this and continued to speak:
"Do you know Zhangye Wujiang rice? There are records of its cultivation since Li Hantong, the governor of Ganzhou, set up military farms. It has a history of more than 1300 years."

"However, in the past ten or twenty years, the original local varieties of Wujiang rice, 'white awn rice' and 'black awn rice', have become hard to find. If we don't carry out rescue collection and preservation, I think these old varieties will soon become extinct."

"In addition, I am targeting the endangered local varieties of crops and wild related plant germplasm resources in the province, such as yellow barley, white sand millet, red buckwheat, monk's head wheat, three white melons, small yellow millet, and even wild soybeans and wild watermelons!"

Listening to Bi Qiang's passionate words, Guo Yang felt something was wrong.

"Does your girlfriend and parents agree with you traveling away from home for such a long time?"

Bi Qiang was silenced all of a sudden.

Guo Yang suddenly had a bad feeling.

As expected, Bi Qiang sighed, "We broke up not long after graduation. She said I was conceited, but I only knew how to stay in the fields and greenhouses, and was willing to only take a few hundred yuan a month."

Guo Yang didn't know how to comfort her. It was hard to tell who was right and who was wrong in emotional matters. The salary at the Vegetable Research Institute was indeed low. Without counting the social security, housing fund and year-end bonus, the salary of the technicians at Muhe was two or three times that of Muhe.

"Let's not talk about this. It's agreed that I will come to your company. With your current assets, it shouldn't be a big problem to support a free man like me, right?"

Of course there is no problem with Guo Yang.

The charm of old crop varieties lies in inheriting farming culture and continuing Chinese civilization.

There are many people like Bi Qiang in China. Many of them are working as individual breeders in various harsh and dangerous environments just to find the slim and unique germplasm resources.

At the same time, germplasm resources are the basic materials for the selection and breeding of new varieties, and most of the germplasm resources in Long Province have high-quality special genes such as cold-resistant and drought-resistant.

In the future, Guo Yang will mainly work in cold and arid areas such as the Northwest.

Therefore, Bi Qiang's "seed hunter" idea will be beneficial to his breeding of new seeds both now and in the future.

Bi Qiang left the Vegetable Research Institute resolutely.

……

Since October, Jiuquan seemed to have made an appointment for winter in advance.

The first snow is quiet and mysterious, hiding the dead branches and leaves in its arms and displaying the beautiful scenery between heaven and earth.

The construction of greenhouses at the breeding base also came to a halt. Fortunately, thanks to Guo Yang's instructions, two greenhouses were built in advance.

Otherwise Guo Yang would be in trouble.

During its long-term system development, bell peppers have developed the characteristics of liking warmth, avoiding high temperatures and exposure, and being afraid of cold.

Temperature is the most sensitive to the growth and development of sweet peppers. When the temperature is below 5℃, frost damage will occur, while when the temperature is above 35℃, heat damage will occur.

Even in a greenhouse, given Jiuquan's climatic conditions, we have to wait until mid-January next year before sowing.

As for other seeds such as corn and wheat, it is still a long way from seed production.

Agriculture really cannot be rushed, but in the future we can build breeding bases in tropical regions or the southern hemisphere, but the natural conditions are changing too much.

Guo Yang has not been idle during this period. In addition to actively searching for germplasm resources such as sweet peppers and corn, he also began to match them one by one using seed stores.

There are also many varieties that look good, but they are all white-grade seeds.

It is a pity that it is tasteless.

As the sowing work of the 20-acre saline-alkali land improvement project came to an end, Guo Yang's natural energy point has reached 138 points.

The engineering improvements of the entire project provided him with a total of 220 points of natural energy.

But after the sowing was completed, the natural energy stopped growing, and it is expected that there will be no changes in the future.

When you become rich, you naturally have more ideas.

I can't hope for purple-level seeds, but I can still think about blue-level seeds with 20-100 points of natural energy.

It is best if all three varieties of corn, wheat, and sweet peppers have natural energy between 20-40 points. There is no other solution if they don’t have any.

This way he can also cultivate more seeds.

For example, for fresh screw peppers, Guo Yang discovered that the local variety in the northwest, 'pig large intestine', is indeed a variety with high quality, but its other traits are extremely poor.

When paired with most varieties, it can retain excellent quality, but the yield and resistance are always unsatisfactory.

But just a few days ago, when Bi Qiang was collecting local varieties in the towns and villages, he accidentally learned that an old farmer's peppers were put on the market one or two weeks earlier than others every year.

This attracted the attention of Bi Qiang and Guo Yang.

(End of this chapter)