There was no progress in the C4 rice project, and Li Xu was depressed. So during the break, I came to the cornfield to relax, and the smallpox was neatly drawn out of the cornfield, and the red whiskers on the waist floated in the air, which was very beautiful.

"How does corn achieve the four cycles of carbon?" Li Xu looked at the corn, she didn't have a clue at all.

Corn is currently the main crop of human beings, and it is also the crop with the highest yield. The goal of C4 rice is to imitate maize, but at present, after the C4 gene of maize is transferred into rice cells, rice does not become C4 plants. Li Xu, who was originally full of confidence, also became a lot of loss.

"Hello Aunt Su'er!" Yaya's immature voice came.

Li Xu looked at the source of the sound, and it was the cute girl who was greeting her.

"Ya Ya is good!"

"Didn't Auntie say to go see Yaya's farm?" Yaya was suddenly a little unhappy, and adults always talk and don't count.

"Yaya, I'm sorry, Auntie has been very busy lately."

"But the plants that Yaya planted are growing well." Yaya pouted, and her little hand took Li Xu to her farm.

Yaya's farm is not large, it is a square with a side length of 4 meters. The perimeter is enclosed by glass, and it is entered and exited through an electronic door. There are four plants planted in the field: peppers, carrots, chrysanthemums, and corn. A little weed grows between the crops, which is a common weed in the previous life, and the seedlings are very similar to rice, which is also a carbon-four plant.

Yaya's plants are randomly distributed, and there are no ridges like adults farming.

"Aunt Xu'er, the corn is blooming!" Yaya pulled Li Xu's sleeve with one hand, and pointed to a corn plant with the other.

"Really." When Li Xu took a closer look, there were 5 corn plants, 3 of which had been pumped out of smallpox, and the other two had not yet pumped out smallpox. But why do the other two have red whiskers on the tops?

Generally, the male corn flowers bloom at the top, which is often called smallpox, and the female flowers bloom at the waist, and the female flowers produce what is often called corn cob. Corn on the cob sometimes has red or yellow whiskers, which are the pistils of corn. It is rare for maize, male and female flowers, not to be in the same place, in grasses, such as rice, wheat, sorghum, and millet are monoecious. The reason why it is difficult to form hybrid rice is because the female and male flowers are too close to each other, and the flower buds are automatically pollinated before they open. In the previous life, Mr. Yuan Longping found wild male abortion rice opened the era of hybrid rice, in which male abortion means that the flowers of rice only have pistils, and the stamens do not develop.

According to the biological knowledge of his previous life, Li Xu remembered that when the corn was developing, the top and waist were monoecious. In subsequent development, the female flowers at the top degenerate, leaving only the male flowers to develop into smallpox; On the other hand, the male flowers degenerate, leaving only the female flowers to develop into corn cobs.

But in this field, the tops of these two plants are abnormally female flowers. Did the smallpox originally bloom, but did the girl accidentally break the smallpox?

"Yaya, are these 5 plants planted at the same time? Also, did these two plants bloom before? Li Xu asked, pointing to two abnormal corn plants.

"They were all planted 2 months ago. Didn't see the flowers, today is the first time I've seen them bloom. Yaya tilted her head and thought.

"That's weird, can you let me stay a little longer? I'd like to see again. ”

"Good! Auntie watched slowly, I removed the grass. ”

Li Xu investigated five plants and found that one of the plants that extracted smallpox did not have a female flower at the waist. This kind of mutated corn is plucked and replanted with new corn when it is found in soilless farms, so you can't see this strange corn in soilless farms. Instead, mutated plants appear on artificial soil farms.

Memories slowly emerged, and Li Xu remembered that this was a more common variation. Corn has several pairs of genes that control female and male flowers, and because it is easy to hybridize, there are occasionally a few mutant plants. Plant A has only male flowers at the top and no female flowers at the waist; The male flowers at the top of the B plant become female flowers, and there are female flowers at the waist; The C strain has only the top female flowers and no waist female flowers.

Li Xu recorded these traits and took photographs to record them. After obtaining Yaya's consent, Li Xu kept the bud tip cells of several plants in a petri dish, after all, these corns belonged to Yaya's private property.

These smallpox losses were a simple way for corn to remind Li of the increased yield of corn in his previous life.

"How did I forget, and to go to the male!" Li Xu walked among the soilless cultivation farms, looked at the corn full of smallpox and suddenly realized.

Emasculation was a common method of increasing the yield of maize in previous lives, using physical means to remove the stamens when they were first released, leaving only a few smallpox plants upwind. In this way, the corn can collect the nutrients for the corn cob. Corn that is not maleed has a 10% increase in yield compared to corn that is not male. This simple method was lost due to the effects of mass extinction, and the corn is now preserved with smallpox.

However, there is no evidence, and physical evidence is needed. On the one hand, Li Xu wrote his ideas into a report, hoping that Yu Ka could emasculate a few corn fields that had just been pumped out of smallpox, so that it would not take three months, but only one month to produce results.

The corn of this era was hybridized, and the light, water and fertilizer were kept at the highest efficiency, and the artificial light adjustment made the corn flower and bear fruit earlier. Corn is a short-day plant that blooms as long as the light time is shortened, so the corn production cycle in later generations is about 3 months.

On the other hand, Li Xu is not satisfied with physical emasculation. Not only is this time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the pumped ceiling is also a waste of corn nutrients. The best way to do this is, of course, to start with only female flowers, so that the yield may be increased. After sorting out his thoughts, Li Xu immediately set out to collect mutated corn sprout tip cells for experiments.

"Going to the male?" Yu Ka was taken aback by Li Su's report. Although similar methods have been proposed before, there are few strong winds on the farm because the three-dimensional farm is closed and the air flow is difficult. After emasculation, the breeze may not be able to scatter pollen from a few plants on the female flowers of most plants, which will cause a decrease in the rate of corn cob fruiting. This led to a reduction in corn yields. So no one actually experimented with it.

Uka endured and then read the report.

The report reads: "I conducted field research and found that the wind was very weak on the farm, and it was difficult to pollinate the corn. However, it is possible to modify the foliar fertilizer spraying device. The stamen plant corn sowing time is advanced and the stamen pollen is collected and pollinated by a robot. Not only can 100% pollination be achieved, but it can also be pollinated as soon as the female flowers are ripe. It saves much more time than waiting for the pollen to fall naturally from the top male flowers, promotes early seed set, and further shortens the production cycle.

"The cost of renovating the leaf spray fertilizer device is not very high, so you can give it a try. Well, give her the farm on the first floor to experiment. Yuka said decisively. Now is the time for Oasis to live and die, and if there are feasible methods to increase production other than C4 rice, we must try it.

The leaves absorb fertilizer, and spraying fertilizer directly on the foliage can speed up plant growth. Foliar fertilizer spraying is basically available on the farm. As long as the foliar fertilizer delivery pipe is replaced with a pipe that can transport pollen, pollination can be achieved by using a blower.

A one-story farm is half a square kilometer, equivalent to 50 hectares. In the face of an unknown technology, experimental field planting should be carried out first, and it should be proved that it can produce high yields before it can be put into large-scale production. Uka's decision is not without boldness.