Chapter 698: Spare No Effort (1/2)
Official Wu wasn’t one of those people who only knew how to study. Prior to passing the court examinations, he had been with his family’s tenant farmers and personally helped his family manage their rice paddies. On the year he turned forty, he gave himself a goal. If he was unable to pass the exams again, then he would completely renounce his studies and spend the rest of his life experimenting with the rice paddy fields to get higher yields. After becoming a court official, he was also very interested in agricultural management and often traveled to farming villages, living and eating with these people, and becoming more experienced in the ways of farming. Because of that, the experimental paddies in Jinling had been put under his jurisdiction and he had also been promoted two levels.
When he saw the methods that Xiaocao gave him, he was struck silly. He even struck the table in amazement when he reached the main point. Many things that had puzzled him in the past were now completely clear to him after he read the great imperial envoy’s writings on the topic. It was no wonder that the emperor had placed so much importance on a mere woman. She really was more knowledgeable and talented than others! The emperor truly was a wise and capable ruler!
If Yu Xiaocao had known that Official Wu saw her in this way, she would have felt quite embarrassed. The things she had written down were all stuff she had put together piecemeal from the stuff she had learned in her past life about farming. She was only a little dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants! How could she possibly be that impressive?
Other than going out to try some delicacies from time to time, Xiaocao spent most of her time after she arrived at Jinling on the ‘hybrid rice paddies’. In her previous life, the hybrid rice paddies were able to produce a thousand and five hundred catties of rice per mu. Even the rice paddies watered with mystic stone water in this era could only get up to six hundred catties per mu.
It was said that hybrid rice paddies were the result of Yuan Longping’s, the father of hybrid rice, research and he had discovered a type of hybrid rice one day in a field somewhere. Yu Xiaocao decided that, in order to deceive others on the true process, she also needed to find a naturally occurring hybrid rice paddy somewhere. Following that, then they could begin research on it.
Following Xiaocao’s proposal, the emperor had already sent down an imperial order to have Jiangnan begin to try to grow two seasons of rice in one year. Because Jinling had experimental paddies, some of them were planted on the early side. Official Wu was originally afraid that the temperatures at the start of spring would be too cold and affect the seedlings’ growth progress. However, he didn’t expect that the rice seeds brought over from the capital grew very well despite the lower temperatures. The ordinary rice seeds, on the other hand, only had so-so germination and survival rates.
After Official Wu finished transcribing a copy of the great imperial envoy’s ‘Rice Growth Strategy Guide’, he immediately began his work in the fields and didn’t even bother returning home to visit. His entire mind was preoccupied on getting the fields up and running. He had to admit the rice seedlings grown by the methods provided by the great imperial envoy truly did better than the ones planted with traditional methods. When he felt the panicles of these rice plants, he could tell that they were at least a factor larger than the regular ones and were also more plump. The rice paddies grown with the new methods also had a shorter growth cycle, so it was likely that they’d be able to harvest them in the sixth month.
As it got closer to harvest time, Yu Xiaocao came by more frequently to the experimental rice paddies. In the past, she would go over every three to five days to supervise the work there. Now she came by every other day to inspect things. There were many plants in the experimental fields, so she couldn’t possibly look every single one over. However, she had her cheat item on hand and it’d be a waste for her to not use it.
She had the little divine stone emit its spiritual energy to make the young plants become more vigorous and strong. Then, she had Official Wu and his assistant come over to record them. Within the rice paddies, she ended up finding a real ‘crane within a flock of chickens’ rice patch. It had thick and tall stalks with plump kernels of rice. She carefully counted the number of rice seeds within the panicle and found that it contained around two hundred grains. It truly exceeded the number of grains found in other plants.
Alright ah, she now had the opportunity to give an experimental direction for Official Wu and his subordinates to look at. The most important part of hybridized rice was the ‘hybridization’ portion. In her past life, Xiaocao had been a little fan of the father of hybridized rice and looked over many things in regards to hybridized rice. However, since she was merely a layman, she only knew the foundations of breeding hybridized rice.
She knew that in order to make hybridized rice paddies, she needed three types of rice. One type had to have sterile pollen, and one type had fertile pollen. When the sterile type was fertilized with the pollen from the fertile type, they created hybridized rice, which was the third type. Although this type of hybridized rice had a higher yield, the amount it produced was around the same as the rice that was grown with mystic-stone water. Furthermore, it only lasted for one season and couldn’t be used for the next. They needed to continue to pollinate the sterile type with the fertile type to make more seed.
Based on that, they needed to have one set of fields devoted to breeding and the other set for harvesting. In the breeding fields, they needed to grow and plant the ones with sterile pollen before being fertilized with regular pollen while the other fields were the ones used to grow the hybridized rice plants for harvest.
In the fields, she found all of the rice plants with sterile pollen and marked them. They were set aside to be used in the breeding fields. When she got back to her personal courtyard, she concentrated solely on writing down all of the methods she could remember about ‘hybridizing rice paddies’ into a little pamphlet in preparation of giving it to Official Wu, so he could have other people investigate it. In terms of growing rice, she was merely an amateur dabbler and couldn’t compare to Official Wu, who had spent decades in the fields working with the farmers.
His hard working wife had completely forgotten Imperial Prince Xu, who was quite heartbroken by the matter. They had previously agreed upon traveling and seeing the sights here, right? Weren’t they going to try all of the delicacies to be had in the Jinling area? Hadn’t they agreed on journeying around Jiangnan to experience the saying: ‘the skies have the Heavens and the earth has Suzhou and Hangzhou’? Zhu Junyang stared at the back of his princess consort as she steadily worked through the night, ignoring him. Why did he have to marry a wife who was a workaholic ah?
As for that fellow, Su Ran, as soon as they arrived in Jiangnan, he had disappeared. It was said that the famous mountains around Jinling had all been toured by him. Furthermore, he would come back from time to time to brag and boast about the sights he had seen and the foods he had eaten. The most annoying part was that this fellow would always bring some snacks back from his travels, which would always take his wife’s attention away. Every day, when she wasn’t talking about work to him, she would be complimenting that loathsome fellow, Sir Su. It was truly too infuriating. Just who was her husband here?