January 25.
With the New Year approaching, the weather had finally changed from the endless rain of the past few days. Today, there was a rare stretch of warm sunshine.
Jiang Miao gathered all the out-of-town employees preparing to return home and took out a thick stack of red envelopes.
"Come on! Keep up the good work!"
He handed each of them an 888-yuan red envelope.
Zhang Xinyi hurriedly accepted it with both hands. "Thank you, boss! Happy New Year, boss!"
"Happy New Year!"
Before long, more than twenty out-of-town employees had received their 888-yuan New Year red envelopes. Then, pulling their suitcases behind them, they took the company's five pickup trucks to the high-speed rail station or bus station.
Beside him, Lin Shuya looked over the much quieter company. She breathed into her hands and rubbed her slightly reddened palms, then asked with a smile, "You'll probably be staying at the company these next few days, right?"
"Yeah. The company needs management on duty."
"I don't have much going on. Collecting samples from southern Yunnan will take time. We've currently obtained around five kilograms of truffle samples. Termitomyces won't be available until July or August, and matsutake will be the same."
Jiang Miao crouched down and stroked Da Huang, whom he had brought from his hometown. This fellow had been the one to discover him after he had been knocked unconscious by lightning. Jiang Miao rubbed the dog's head and fed him a piece of eel meat.
"How's the truffle research going?"
Lin Shuya gave him a rundown. "A lot of places have researched cultivation techniques for Black Truffles and White Truffles. Among them, the Pan City Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute completed a cultivation technique simulating wild conditions in 2023."
"The yield per mu must be pretty underwhelming, right?"
"Exactly." As she answered, Lin Shuya crouched down and watched Da Huang eat the eel meat.
Jiang Miao had guessed that White Truffle yields per mu were disappointing because market prices reflected actual production conditions.
If the Pan City Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute could achieve large-scale mass production of White Truffles, their market price would definitely fall.
But through the Purchasing Department's reports, Jiang Miao knew that White Truffle prices had remained at around 400 to 1,000 yuan per kilogram over the past few years, averaging roughly 580 yuan per kilogram.
Since the market price had not collapsed, it meant the Pan City Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute's technology could not achieve large-scale mass production. It could only cultivate them on a small scale under simulated wild conditions.
"Da Huang, let's go!" Jiang Miao took hold of the leash.
On the country road leading to South Lake Farm.
The morning sun was bright. Though the north wind still refused to take a holiday, the sunlight gave passersby a touch of warmth.
The two of them led Da Huang on a walk toward the Temporary Laboratory of the Edible Mushroom Laboratory at South Lake Farm.
Twenty minutes later.
At the foot of the hillside on the farm's northern side stood the Temporary Laboratory, built from container units.
After changing into protective gear, Jiang Miao saw the more than one hundred substrate bags Lin Shuya had made from sawdust, soil, quicklime, and gypsum.
These substrate bags used different ratios. Every ten bags formed one group, making a total of fourteen control groups.
Through the Appraisal Panel, Jiang Miao examined the condition of the White Truffles inside those substrate bags.
Three groups were growing relatively well. Jiang Miao glanced at their labels, and a look of confirmation appeared in his eyes.
One of those groups used forest soil from Pan City's White Truffle production area, while the other two used artificial soil formulated to imitate the composition of Pan City's forest soil.
Sure enough, the trace elements in the soil have a major impact on White Truffle growth. Among them, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, and selenium are crucial to White Truffles.
And it isn't as simple as adding those elements. White Truffles have different absorption and utilization rates for different compounds of those elements.
For example, among the phosphates in soil, White Truffles can effectively utilize occluded phosphorus, but only when the soil's pH is suitable. They do not utilize other phosphates.
That makes it extremely difficult to provide White Truffles with nutrients through chemical fertilizers, because they do not like artificial fertilizers. More precisely, they lack the genes needed to absorb artificial fertilizers.
It's like lactose intolerance in humans. White Truffles cannot absorb and utilize just any trace-element compound.
Beyond that, they also need the right temperature, humidity, and organic matter. All of these require specific conditions to ensure rapid White Truffle growth.
Wearing gloves, Jiang Miao picked up one of the substrate bags. "Shu Ya, look at this bag. Doesn't it already have some mycelium?"
"Let me see."
Lin Shuya quickly took out a magnifying glass and carefully examined the substrate bags, while Jiang Miao helped her record the relevant data.
"Huh, there really is?"
After inspecting all one hundred and forty substrate bags, Lin Shuya looked over the data Jiang Miao had compiled and muttered, "The soil brought back from Pan City really does affect White Truffles. The two groups of artificial soil imitating Pan City soil also showed results."
Jiang Miao smiled and reminded her, "You can set up a few more control groups. For example, try using chemical fertilizers, natural minerals, or artificially increasing the content of certain trace elements in the cultivation soil and see whether there are any differences."
"You have a point. Maybe White Truffles need some natural mineral nutrients that haven't been artificially synthesized, similar to the Eel Artificial Breeding Technology you developed." Lin Shuya had clearly caught on.
Jiang Miao continued, "Also, those few mu of greenhouses should be upgraded after the New Year. We need controllable temperature, humidity, and light levels inside. Only then can we test all the conditions White Truffles need during growth, perhaps even some dynamic conditions."
"Then there's soil pH. Among the fifty soil samples brought back from Pan City, the soil White Truffles prefer is alkaline calcareous soil, with a pH between 8.1 and 8.2. That is obviously another important factor. Many chemical fertilizers alter soil pH now. I suspect chemical fertilizers may have the opposite of the intended effect on cultivated White Truffles."
Lin Shuya wrote down his ideas.
"Also, the types of organic matter in the soil we brought back are worth studying. After all, as a symbiotic fungus, White Truffles can only grow by attaching themselves to the roots of certain trees. That means those trees provide them with specific nutrients."
Lin Shuya nodded in agreement. "Indeed. It looks like I need to expand the experiment and add more control groups before I can identify every condition White Truffles need to grow."
After all, to produce White Truffles on a large scale, it was necessary to shorten their growth cycle while ensuring they accumulated sufficient flavor compounds.
Only by understanding all the growth conditions of White Truffles could they prescribe the right solution, shortening the growth period without sacrificing flavor.
At present, White Truffles took as long as seven to eight years to grow in the natural environment. Clearly, that was far too long and did not meet the requirements of commercial production at all.
This was also one reason why the Pan City Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute's simulated wild cultivation technology was difficult to promote.
Their technology could only yield forty to sixty kilograms of White Truffles per mu. At current market prices, that would bring in roughly 24,000 to 36,000 yuan.
However, the planting cycle took seven or eight years. Even in harvest years, they could only be harvested for a few years, after which replanting was necessary, or the mountain had to be left fallow for natural reforestation so the organic matter in the soil could recover.
Obviously, the time cost was simply too high, and it came with enormous risks. No farmer was willing to gamble seven or eight years of their life on it.
It was like the Morel Mushrooms that many small mushroom spawn companies had been tricking farmers into planting in recent years.
Could this thing be grown?
Yes.
The prerequisite was technical support from a provincial agricultural and forestry institution, along with good luck. Otherwise, blindly planting Morel Mushrooms was highly likely to end in total financial ruin.
That was because Morel Mushrooms were extremely picky about temperature and humidity, and the temperature and humidity they required happened to conflict with one another. Ordinary greenhouses lacked temperature-control and humidity-control systems, so growers could only depend on the weather.
With good luck, they could reap a bumper harvest in the first year.
With bad luck, getting nothing for several years in a row was perfectly normal.
The reason Jiang Miao had not asked Lin Shuya to research Morel Mushrooms was that the technology for large-scale Morel Mushroom cultivation already existed: build greenhouses with full temperature and humidity control, then thoroughly sterilize the soil, and continuous bumper harvests could be guaranteed.
The problem was that doing so cost too much, while Morel Mushrooms were not priced particularly high. The value of the output would not cover production costs, causing investors to lose money.
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