Professor Ren answered Li Kai's call and was just about to try to persuade him when Li Kai spoke first. "Professor Ren, I need your help with my research."
Hearing that, Professor Ren asked, "Little Li, what can I help you with?"
Li Kai explained, "Professor Ren, remember how I asked you for some Adonasi Herb Root seeds? I've been researching and cultivating them, and now I have quite a few seedlings ready for cut-and-graft transplantation. But I don't have any experience with that, so I'd like to ask for your help."
Professor Ren was visibly stunned by Li Kai's words.
What had he just heard?
Little Li said he'd cultivated quite a few Adonasi Herb Root seedlings?
Quite a few?
That couldn't be right, could it?
Professor Ren hurriedly asked, "Little Li, you mean Adonasi Herb Root?"
After the department had gone to great lengths to obtain those Adonasi Herb Root seeds, they'd conducted numerous research experiments, but the results hadn't been good.
They had once managed to cultivate five seedlings, but all of them died during cut-and-graft transplantation.
This medicinal plant was simply too unusual.
Without cut-and-graft transplantation, its nodules were like a man who'd been sterilized: they couldn't produce seeds. Only by cutting and transplanting the nodules, so that each became an independent plant, could they produce seeds.
In the wild, they could only wait for a plant to wither and its rhizome to rot naturally. Then the central nodule would be left behind, and after it sprouted and grew, it could produce seeds.
That, combined with the plant's exacting growing conditions, was why it had nearly gone extinct.
The few seedlings their department had cultivated had all failed at the cut-and-graft transplantation stage.
Since the seeds were in limited supply, research in this area had to