Chapter 79 - 78: Protection Mechanism
Chapter 79: Chapter 78: Protection Mechanism
Lab One in the experimental zone was one of Jiang Miao’s personal, exclusive labs, specifically designated for genetic modification.
He didn’t let anyone else get involved in his research. This was mainly because his methods were unconventional, and working with others could easily expose his secrets.
Right now, Zhang Chengdong and his team were working on the tissue culture propagation of strawberry seedlings. This so-called tissue culture propagation was actually similar to growing plants from cuttings, except it couldn’t be done in greenhouses or open fields. It had to be conducted in a professional, sterile laboratory.
For this reason, seedlings from tissue culture are also known as virus-free seedlings.
In truth, the Jasmine Strawberry, Vanilla Strawberry, and Cheese Strawberry varieties that Jiang Miao had painstakingly selected were all highly disease-resistant. Even without using tissue culture for virus removal, they could be continuously cultivated in the same field for about four to five years before any specific bacteria or viruses might appear.
The main purpose of starting tissue culture production at this stage wasn’t actually virus removal, but to rapidly scale up production capacity.
After all, propagation from runners or seeds was far too slow and wasn’t conducive to large-scale expansion.
Within the entire experimental zone, a 15-mu area of laboratory space was specifically designed for tissue culture propagation.
Using tissue culture technology, once the first four generations were cultivated, each mu of laboratory space could produce over two hundred thousand strawberry seedlings every 45 days or so.
Under normal circumstances, one generation of strawberry tissue culture propagation takes about 45 days, with each subsequent generation yielding six to seven times the quantity of the previous one.
Starting with an initial batch of 100 seedlings, after 45 days, the second generation would yield 700 seedlings.
After another 45 days, the third generation would number 4,900...
And after another 45 days, the fourth generation would reach 34,300...
Following this pattern, the fifth generation could reach around 240,000 seedlings.
If all 15 mu of the propagation labs were put into full use, then after about half a year, they could produce 3.6 million strawberry seedlings every 45 days.
In reality, 3.6 million seedlings wasn’t a huge amount for Hailufeng Company. This was because the greenhouses at Nanhu Farm used a combination of ground-level and elevated planting, requiring 12,000 seedlings per mu.
At that rate, 3.6 million seedlings would only be enough to plant 300 mu.
Considering Nanhu Farm’s current area totaled only 600 mu, with just 200 mu designated for strawberries, this was more than enough. Of the remaining 400 mu, 50 were experimental fields, 150 were for Ginseng Fruit, and 200 were for Tomatoes.
Therefore, the lab couldn’t go overboard with tissue culture propagation, or they would have no choice but to sell the excess seedlings.
Although Hailufeng Company had already applied for seed production and sales licenses, and had registered patents for the three strawberry varieties, Jiang Miao had no intention of selling seedlings at this stage.
For one, the three new strawberry varieties weren’t yet well-known in the market, so proactive sales efforts wouldn’t be very effective.
On the other hand, as high value-added products, they were currently in a high-profit phase. There was no need to sell seedlings and create competitors for himself.
Besides, Jiang Miao was all too familiar with the mentality of some domestic farmers.
China’s disorganized, individual farmers tended to flock to whichever crop had a high market price, expanding their operations without any planning or risk management.
Once the produce flooded the market, they would be at the mercy of distributors. Then, the farmers would start undercutting each other on price, ultimately driving their own profits lower and lower, while the retail price barely budged.
From Shatang mandarins to Shine Muscat grapes and kiwifruit, one tragic case after another served as a living testament to this cycle.
Therefore, even if Jiang Miao decided to sell seedlings in the future, he wouldn’t do so indiscriminately across the country. At most, he would designate one or two counties to grow an exclusive variety and prohibit its cultivation elsewhere.
Otherwise, if farmers everywhere engaged in a race to the bottom, they could drive the price of Hailufeng Company’s three strawberry varieties down to dirt-cheap levels.
At that point, to protect their profits, farmers would choose to lower quality control to cut costs, leading to a vicious cycle.
Where did the Shine Muscat grapes selling for six or seven yuan a jin on the market today come from?
It was the result of a fanatical race to the bottom, which caused a decline in quality control. Consequently, distributors became unwilling to buy, forcing farmers into low-price dumping. These cheap, low-quality Shine Muscat grapes then created a "bad-drives-out-good" effect, compelling even the quality-conscious growers to cut their prices, leading to a steady erosion of profits.
Thus, to ensure a reasonable profit margin for new varieties, controlling the cultivation area and scale was an absolutely necessary measure.
At the same time, you couldn’t give farmers too much free rein, or they would quickly be picked off one by one by distributors.
Take last year’s Cui Xiang kiwifruit, for example. A major controversy erupted because some e-commerce vendors demanded that farmers harvest and ship their fruit early. Fruit that should have been picked at the end of September was instead being harvested in August.
Prematurely picked kiwifruit would never soften, no matter how long you let it sit. Even if it did, the quality would be extremely poor.
In an environment where farmers were all fighting for themselves, some would naturally compromise for short-term gains and give in to the e-commerce vendors. Meanwhile, some unscrupulous e-commerce companies, also chasing short-term profits, would rush shipments without any regard for product quality.
This behavior led to the collapse of the product’s reputation.
The e-commerce company could rebrand itself and move on, but the farmers couldn’t. Their only option was to switch to growing a different fruit.
But what about the huge initial investment?
Especially for non-herbaceous fruits, it takes at least one or two years from planting to harvest. After investing so much, having to switch crops after just a few years meant there was no way to recoup the costs.
Therefore, the farmers who picked their fruit early were either stupid or malicious, while the e-commerce companies that tempted them to do so were rotten to the core.
From a certain perspective, the existence of industry associations was actually quite necessary.
Although the Japan Agricultural Cooperative Association and the South Korea Agricultural Cooperative Association were often denigrated as complete garbage by various experts and scholars on the Chinese internet, the existence of such agricultural associations, as long as their systems were reasonably designed and government oversight was relatively strict, could still protect the interests of some farmers.
The key was how they were managed.
In fact, China also had some simpler, local agricultural associations, such as the Xiqin Province Kiwifruit Association and the Liao Province Dandong Strawberry Association.
Therefore, Hailufeng Company would also gradually establish some private, regional agricultural product associations in the future. On one hand, this would help promote its new crop varieties; on the other, it would allow them to regulate the scale of cultivation through the associations and prevent a stampede of production.
In reality, agricultural product industry associations were an area that agricultural seed companies should be focusing on. Burying their heads in R&D to cultivate superior varieties without getting involved in other fundamental aspects of the industry was a common ailment among domestic agricultural breeding companies.
It was pure wishful thinking to believe that simply launching a superior crop variety would make farmers rich, who would then continuously buy your seedlings.
The consequence of not deeply controlling the seedling supply was allowing farmers, each fighting on their own and egged on by unscrupulous e-commerce platforms, to completely ruin the variety’s reputation.
It was understandable for many seedling companies to have a lackadaisical attitude toward varieties not originally developed in China.
But to have the same attitude toward new varieties they had painstakingly developed themselves was a classic case of lacking ambition.
For domestically developed varieties like the Cui Xiang kiwifruit and Dandong Strawberry, local authorities and breeding companies should have taken the initiative to protect their brand value.
Instead, they all played dead, allowing farmers to become a disorganized mess, which in turn led to the new varieties being ruined. They had only themselves to blame.
After all, as seedling R&D companies with registered patents, they could have cracked down hard on farmers who planted unauthorized or stolen seedlings, using legal means to curb rampant, uncontrolled cultivation.
Jiang Miao couldn’t understand the mindset of these breeding companies. They clearly had legal means to protect their interests, yet they chose to stand by and do nothing.
The lessons learned from these experiences were simply too brutal.