Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

After a military parade that shocked most of the world's leaders, Yanik felt no need to verbally intimidate them anymore. After letting the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and others continue to entertain these people, he came to the German Agricultural Research Institute to inspect the research progress of the "Wheat Yield Increase Project".

The geographical environment of Europe (the overall latitude of Europe is very high) is not suitable for large-scale planting of rice, and only a small amount is planted in countries such as Spain and Italy; in most areas, wheat is the main food crop. But even European countries that grow rice and eat rice have completely different eating habits from China. For example, in Spain and Italy, the rice they make is in a raw state due to the cooking time. In the eyes of the locals, this maintains the original flavor of the food and makes it more flavorful. Rice is a dessert in the eyes of the French. Rice is mixed with sauce and served with tuna and salad; or rice is cooked with milk, added with sugar and other spices to make pudding.

Arriving at the institute, after a warm welcome ceremony, Yannick went straight to the topic and talked about the purpose of his trip. "How's the wheat hybrid research going?"

A project leader in a white coat replied with a frightened look on his face. "Your Highness, there has been no substantial breakthrough yet."

Seeing the beads of sweat on his forehead, Yannick smiled. "Don't be nervous. I also know that the difficulty of this research is no less than that of a Nobel Prize-winning project. It is not easy to achieve results."

In fact, he already had an answer to this question. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, in order to cope with the food demand brought about by the rapid growth of population, various countries have conducted research on the utilization of hybrid advantages in crops. Around the 1930s, the United States took the lead in industrializing hybrid corn; in the 1970s, China's Yuan Lao also industrialized hybrid rice.

As for research on wheat hybridization, although it started quite early (as early as 1919, research papers on hybrid wheat appeared internationally), until his time travel, there were no major achievements in wheat hybridization technology in the world. , that is a full 100 years.

The main difficulty is genetic issues. In diploid crops (most organisms are diploid), trait improvements can work as long as the genes on both sets of chromosomes remain coordinated and consistent. However, wheat is hexaploid, so it is significantly more difficult to keep the relevant genes on the six sets of chromosomes coordinated and consistent, and the metabolic network for trait improvement is even more complex. It is precisely for this reason that it is more difficult for wheat to create a functional and genetically stable male sterility and recovery system to utilize hybrid vigor.

"The project continues to be studied, but we can't hang it on a tree. We have to adopt other methods." Yannick knew that this research would not yield results easily, so he came here in person today to express his support for the research. After all, he was deeply influenced by concepts such as "food is the most important thing for the people" and "don't panic when you have food in hand". Secondly, he thought of another way to increase wheat production.

That is the radiation breeding method; using various rays to irradiate wheat seeds, plants, pollen and other organs, affecting its genetic material, changing its heredity, and causing various mutations. It's just that this kind of variation has no specific direction. For example, some wheat will have no leaves, some wheat will break easily, some wheat will be shorter, and some wheat will have higher yield. Scientists need to use artificial directional selection to select excellent genetically mutated individuals and cultivate them into new varieties.

That is, artificial intervention speeds up the genetic mutation of wheat. The speed of gene mutation in the natural environment is very slow. This is because organisms use DNA as genetic material, and DNA has double strands, which can correct each other. So every time wheat replicates itself, only a very few genes exist. It will mutate, but since genetic mutation has no direction, it is very difficult to select high-yield genetic mutations and it will take longer.

If wheat seeds can undergo more genetic mutations in a short period of time, the breeding speed will be greatly increased.

After briefly explaining the principles and uses of radiation to these people, Yannick suddenly thought of the "space vegetables" and "space fruits" that became popular in later generations.

It is to send various plant seeds into the sky. There are many high-energy particles in space. These high-energy particles cannot penetrate the geomagnetic lines and the ozone layer and affect life on the ground. But without the protection of geomagnetic lines and the ozone layer in space, various seeds can receive excessive amounts of high-energy particles, causing their genes to change. After returning to the ground, the various vegetables and fruits grown are larger and taste better. etc. There was even a period of time when there were high-priced fruits and vegetables using space seeds as a gimmick.

However, with the popularization of various knowledge, Yannick gradually understood that the link was not as simple as reported by the media. The seeds did go around in space, but no one knew which one of them had a genetic mutation when they returned to Earth. At this time, breeders need to cultivate them and select some individuals with genetic mutations. And even if it mutates, this mutation is completely random and has no rules at all.

This means that not all seeds that travel to space will produce larger fruits. The fact is that when planted, these seeds will produce all kinds of weird fruits, such as more bitter, more sour, smaller, even uglier, etc. These mutations naturally fail and need to be eliminated, leaving those with favorable traits, such as large fruits, good taste, resistance to pests and diseases, and strong resistance to lodging, through artificial selection, and through various methods such as hybridization, backcrossing, and selfing. Finally, fruits that meet human needs are obtained.

However, when reporting, the media likes to select eye-catching species for reporting. Since the fruits are sweeter and need to be tasted on the spot, it is difficult for the people eating melons in front of the TV to feel them; and the brighter colors are not as bright as the larger ones, so the media They always like to report on bigger space fruits, so the audience falls into the survivor bias and thinks that all fruits grown from seeds that have gone to space will be big. In fact, the probability of picking out two or three high-quality mutant seeds out of a thousand seeds is already considered very high.

Now that Germany's space project is in full swing, it is not difficult to find a "flight" to send these seeds into space. Thinking of this, Yanik immediately asked people to prepare various plant seeds and send them to the space launch base in Algeria.