Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 776: Building a Granary

The "father" of rice pollinates the "mother", and together they provide the genetic basis for the "offspring" hybrid rice. In order to get good "offspring", the genes of the "father" and "mother" must be good.

Hualei hopes to find a high-yield rice variety through mixed cross planting, but this is only the first step in hybrid rice, that is, to find a "mother" with good genes for hybrid rice.

After finding a "mother" with good genes, we still need to find a "father" with good genes, but rice is "hermaphrodite". In principle, there is no "father".

Because the "mother" can reproduce offspring by herself and does not need help from others, hybrid rice is more difficult to achieve.

Therefore, we need to find a rice "father" that is naturally incapable of pollinating itself, and use it to pollinate the rice "mother", and then we can get hybrid rice.

Of course, this "father" is definitely not easy to find, and the flower buds can only be found by appearance. Generally speaking, the plants of this "father" are usually more compact, shorter, and have weaker tillering ability.

The time of heading and flowering is long and scattered, the neck of the ear is wrapped, the anthers are thin and shriveled, white or light yellow in color, and do not crack.

Having said so much, it is actually very difficult to distinguish. In addition to paying more attention, you may also need some luck.

After all, this "father" is extremely rare, and finding him is undoubtedly like "looking for a needle in a haystack."

Moreover, transportation here is inconvenient, and some people cannot leave the area within a hundred miles in their entire life, which sets an upper limit to the range of searching for "father".

There are no high-end instruments for detection, and sometimes, even if you see it, you may not be able to recognize it, so the hope of finding this "father" may be even slimmer.

But no matter what, Hualei always believes that no matter what you do, you need to prepare by doing, rather than doing by preparing.

We cannot let the expected difficulties hinder our progress. This is why she has been working hard to improve the genes of the "mother" of hybrid rice, even though the "father" of hybrid rice is nowhere to be found.

This year, I still need to plant several varieties that I have selected, hoping to get better high-yield and disease- and pest-resistant varieties to serve as the "mother".

In fact, Xichang's climate is very special, probably because of its long and narrow terrain and the many hillsides, hills and basins in its territory.

Hualei felt that the weather in the states south of Xichang was a bit like the weather in Guangdong and Hainan in her previous life. However, the weather in the states north of Xichang was a bit like the weather in Xinjiang and Gansu in her previous life.

In fact, in such completely different weather, there are more varieties of crops. However, Hualei has never found the figure of the "father" of hybrid rice.

On the way to Xichang Prefecture, Hualei bought many different rice seeds from various prefectures and brought them to Xichang Prefecture to plant, thinking that there might be surprises. Unfortunately, so far, nothing has been found.

If the hybrid rice "father" really cannot be found in Xichang Prefecture, Hua Lei will then prepare to take this relatively excellent "mother" back to the capital first.

The success of hybrid rice in the past took a long time and involved a lot of manpower and material resources in research and practice, as well as the assistance of a lot of sophisticated machines, plus strong support from the national level.

Here, I can only take things slowly. Perhaps, I may not succeed in my entire life. Hualei stood by the field of mixed rice and sighed softly.

At the beginning, Rong Jin didn't know about Hualei's experiment with hybrid rice and thought that Hualei wanted to increase the yield.

However, later, after Hualei's occasional knowledge dissemination, he is now very concerned about the hybrid rice experiments and also put forward many suggestions during the planting process.

Although the success of hybrid rice is still a long way off,

Hualei's focus shifted to the construction of a granary in Xichang Prefecture. Years ago, the Ministry of Industry had already chosen the location of the new granary.

One is in Changhui Prefecture, in the outer city. The other is in Changhuai Prefecture, but in the city. Next, the Ministry of Works will recruit a large number of people locally to start building granaries.

The construction requirements of a granary are much higher than those of an ordinary house. Therefore, the selection of raw materials is also more demanding.

However, in Xichang Prefecture, there are plenty of stones, and all the stones that were excavated when Hualei dredged the river were framed. Therefore, now they are just right for laying the foundation for the granary.

Moreover, Emperor Shengwu was so kind that he even allocated money for building granaries. Therefore, Xichang Prefecture did not need to allocate money, which made Hualei even happier.

However, the manpower for building the granary requires the cooperation of Hualei. This is no problem, except that the people will perform corvée according to the normal number of days.

The extra days were also settled with the people at a wage of thirty coins per day. Therefore, invisibly, it also gave the local people an extra opportunity to do things.

In addition to letting Wan Tongpan issue a notice requiring corvée labor for building a granary, Hua Lei also issued a notice recruiting people for building the granary and distributing monthly silver as normal.

Soon, the staffing was almost complete. Hua Lei asked Hao Shijie from the workshop to take charge of the matter, and she stopped interfering.

In the government office, she carefully looked at the map of Xichang Prefecture, thinking about what to do next. Now that Changliang Prefecture has a lychee industry, as long as the people take good care of it and the lychee processing workshops are strong, there will be no shortage of money.

The people of the neighboring Changjin Prefecture have begun to follow the pace of Changliang Prefecture and have started to maintain litchi trees since last year.

This year, the lychees they produced have been sold to the lychee processing workshop in Changliangzhou, and then sold outside Shangjing City, which also earned them some income from lychees.

In another year or two, when the lychee trees in Changjin Prefecture are better maintained, the local area will have enough lychee production.

By then, some of the wealthy merchants in Changjin Prefecture will definitely follow the example of those wealthy merchants in Changliang Prefecture and set up lychee processing workshops.

Then we will buy ships, purchase mules, set up a transport team, and independently deliver the local lychees from Changjin Prefecture. Although it may take two or three years, there will be no major problems afterwards.

The people of the two state cities can fight on their own or rely on each other, which will form a virtuous cycle of competition.