Chapter 159 Experimental Base
Seeing the prosperous experimental base in front of him being built at a speed visible to the naked eye, Anton Peruzzi was quite satisfied.
Anton Peruzzi and his party are those strange strangers in the eyes of the residents of the Second Town.
After all, compared to the immigrants, Anton Peruzzi and his team were all in suits and ties, and they were also followed by people sent by the East African colonial government. They looked like extraordinary figures at first glance.
The Second Town was also notified to cooperate with the work of Anton Peruzzi and others. In order to build the experimental base of the East African Tropical Agriculture Research Institute, the Second Town used both people and land.
In fact, Anton Peruz was shocked when he first arrived in the second town. From the moment he passed through the urban area of the first town, Anton Peruz doubted whether this was an overseas branch of the Kingdom of Prussia.
The uniform Prussian military uniform shocked every scientific researcher in Anton Peruzzi's team.
Fortunately, there were accompanying East African colonial government personnel who acted as guides and solved many doubts of Anton Perouse and others.
However, Anton Peruzzi and his scientific research team were still shocked by Ernst's generosity in the East African colonies.
Just clothing for one million people must have cost a lot of money, which is absolutely an astronomical figure for ordinary people in this era.
This is indeed true. In addition to Ernst's early purchase of a large number of second-hand Prussian military uniforms from the Prussian government, he later purchased a factory to produce "monkey version" Prussian military uniforms for supply to East Africa.
After all, the Prussian army only had a few hundred thousand people. How could there be so many second-hand military uniforms for Ernst to prostitute for free? In addition, he was not close to the Austrian royal family at the time, so Ernst did not expect to buy some second-hand goods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Save some costs, and the white Austrian military uniforms are not resistant to stains. Can immigrants still look good wearing those when they go to work in the fields?
The "monkey version" Prussian military uniform has also made many modifications for the East African region. The weather in East Africa is like summer all year round, so there is no need for so much fabric, so save it; let's not say whether it is useful or not for the weird pointed helmet of Prussia. , Ernst didn’t like it just from the aesthetic aspect and stopped producing it; what’s the use of so many buttons? Deletion; belt? What kind of belt do you want, a unified hair rope...
The modified "monkey version" of the Prussian military uniform is beyond recognition, but it is still very conservative. After all, the strong ultraviolet rays in East Africa prevented it from becoming short-sleeved. Ernst did not save any of these fabrics.
Therefore, the "monkey version" of the Prussian military uniform still has three parts that can be seen in the overall appearance of the Prussian military uniform. In addition, the second-hand Prussian military uniforms of early immigrants were mixed in. Anton Peruzzi and others still saw the East African colonies for the first time. Almost all people are dressed in Prussian military uniforms.
Over the past month, Anton Peruzzi and others have gradually become accustomed to the dressing of East African residents.
Anton Peruzzi's experimental base was built on the east bank of the Little Rhine River, directly occupying a lot of cultivated land developed in the Second Town. Including undeveloped land, the fertile land alone covers an area of more than 700 acres.
Covering the southern hills and northern plains as well as the depressions along the Little Rhine, the natural conditions and topography are very superior.
The Little Rhine ensures water supply, and hills, plains, and depressions provide a variety of terrain materials.
There are windmills built on the shore to lift water, which can continuously supply water to the fields. According to Anton Perouse's requirements, the fields are built with stones and soil to retain water. At the same time, they are divided into plots of different sizes for convenience. Observe the growth characteristics of crops under different planting scales.
Water discharge gates are also built in the fields to control the amount of water in the fields and to switch between paddy fields and dry fields at any time.
Laboratories, archives, warehouses and staff dormitories were also built around the base. All equipment in the laboratory was imported from Europe, including microscopes, petri dishes, calipers...all available.
There are attached botanical gardens, vegetable plots and gardens, and a part of the land is also planned for tree planting.
This is the main place for Anton Peruzzi’s future work and research. In fact, throughout East Africa, Anton Peruzzi’s team can take the initiative to conduct field research.
Although Anton Perouse has superior hardware facilities in Germany, East Africa is the paradise for Anton Perouse, a tropical botanist.
Plants that could only be seen through materials and specimens in the past can now be seen locally, and East Africa covers a vast area, with rainforests, grasslands, mountains, deserts... tropical climate types are diverse.
…
Anton Peruzzi's experimental base has not yet opened, but it does not prevent him from teaching students first.
“The local conditions in East Africa are very favorable for agricultural development. Of course, what determines the agricultural potential of a region is its shortcomings.
Agriculture and plant growth are inseparable from four factors: land, heat, water, and light.
Take East Africa as an example. The shortcoming that determines the agricultural potential of East Africa is the land in East Africa. Of course, the terrain in East Africa is fairly flat, and the main problem is the soil. "
The students followed Anton Peruzzi and tried hard to record Anton Peruzzi's words.
“The energy output of land in the tropics is actually much higher than that in mid- and high-latitude areas, but this energy cannot be effectively absorbed by the soil, but is stored in the plants and animals in the tropics.
This is why tropical areas have dense vegetation, but soil fertility is not as good as that of temperate and cold zones.
Tropical land is not barren, but these nutrients do not penetrate into the soil, which our crops require. "Anton Peruzzi said his own opinion.
"Professor, since you said that tropical soil cannot store nutrients, isn't this land still barren?" a student questioned.
"This is what I want to tell you next, what is soil? In my understanding, it is 'sand' with impurities, but these 'sands' are more delicate than the sand in the desert and can be connected in At the same time, there are nutrients in the soil that we cannot observe with the naked eye, and the amount of these nutrients determines the fertility of the soil."
As he spoke, Anton Peruzzi grabbed a handful of soil from the ground and put it in his hand and said: "Look, the soil here is dark red. Many places in low latitudes have red soil, while mid-latitudes have white soil. At high altitudes, the soil is white." Latitude becomes black soil again.
So as latitude changes, soil color changes, and soil fertility also changes, but we know that the vegetation at high latitudes is actually not as good as that in the tropics.
This in turn involves the factors of sunlight and precipitation. Plants need sunlight and water to grow. Without these two, most plants will die.
The existence of tropical rainforests just shows that the nutrients produced in the tropics are much higher than those in the cold zone, but once we use the red soil in the tropics to grow food crops, the effect is not as good as the black soil in mid-to-high latitudes.
This shows that a large number of nutrients have been taken away from the soil in the tropics. This is definitely not the fault of vegetation, because there are still large areas of vegetation at high latitudes, and because of the low temperature at high latitudes, many plants cannot grow. The temperature factor should not be the reason. The main culprit can only be considered from the perspective of water.
Early civilizations were born in areas where rivers silted up. Agriculture in ancient Egypt, for example, relied on the flooding of the Nile to thrive.
Tropical rainforest rivers are denser and have greater water volume, but why don't they have these effects?
Because rivers in tropical rainforests hardly deposit soil, they take away nutrients from the soil along the banks.
Although East Africa is also tropical, the precipitation is average, so this situation does not exist. Therefore, the relationship between soil and water is less studied than soil fertility.
Of course, this is just my guess, and subsequent experiments will still have to be conducted to verify its authenticity.
Only by mastering the rules can we better prescribe the right medicine to improve soil fertility in East Africa. "
