Chapter 1366

1366 Develop Hybrid Seeds
“Elder Brother, it’s not that I want to criticize you, but do we have to speak to a little brat in such a humble manner? Look at him, he doesn’t have any respect for us elders at all. Back then, you brought him home because you pitied him. Now, he’s simply repaying kindness with ingratitude. What an ungrateful thing. We should have thrown him into the trash heap back then!” Wang Meng complained.

“Sister-in-law, let’s just bear with it for a while longer. Once the planting seeds are in our hands, won’t we be the ones to decide our own future?” Zhao Liu said smugly.

“Elder Brother is so smart! You’ve really thought of everything!” Zhao Ming said.

They could just keep a portion of the harvested seeds for themselves and then they would be able to use these seeds for planting the next year. After a while, they would have the final say in this business, would they not?

Qiao Mei would not be able to stay so smug for long. In the end, she might even have to cry and beg them to let her off! Just thinking about it made them feel excited.

Not only would they charge her the highest interest then, but they also wanted to monopolize the supply of seeds in the capital! They even thought that they could take over the Xia family’s position in the capital.

Little did they know that money alone was not enough to gain a foothold among the wealthy families in the capital. The most highly educated Zhao family member probably only finished the third grade of elementary school. People would only think of them as the nouveau riche. Who would even think highly of them?
In the past, when Qiao Mei was in Foshan Village, she told everyone there that she had sourced the seeds from the capital. Now that she was in the capital, she could not use the same story. Zhao Fei had sold seeds in the capital for so many years and he definitely knew all the varieties available here. If there were really such good quality seeds in the capital, he would have discovered them long ago.

Qiao Mei previously told him that she had brought her batch of seeds from the village. Given that Li Gui and Qiao Mei had come from elsewhere, it had sounded quite convincing then.

The previous batches of seeds were developed as a temporary solution to solve Qiao Mei’s urgent needs back then and the characteristics of the variety were not very stable. In view of this, Qiao Mei had locked herself in her room for the past few days to look into developing new types of seeds.

Qiao Mei had specially converted a room in the backyard into a small flower nursery. It was filled with many of her weird toys and trinkets, as well as the seeds she had obtained from other people.

In her other life, Qiao Mei did not even work so hard when she was in school. It seemed that money could indeed be a great motivator. She had already reached the point where she could even forget to eat and sleep.

Qiao Qiang had already sensed something strange with Qiao Mei a long time ago. After all, who could casually take out a 10,000-year-old ginseng and countless 100-year-old ginsengs within just a month?

Outsiders did not know the exact number of ginsengs that Qiao Mei had, but Qiao Qiang knew that all the ginseng juice that Qiao Mei extracted could not have only come from one ginseng.

He had never heard of any family who had an inexhaustible supply of 100-year-old ginsengs, as if they were just common radishes.

However, he believed that Qiao Mei had her own reasons for doing whatever she did. Since she did not tell him anything, he would not ask her about it. He even covered up for her. When anyone asked about what she was doing, he would always stop them from going in to disturb her.

In any case, Qiao Mei’s ability to tend to flowers and plants was really quite outstanding. Everyone knew that Qiao Mei was skillful in this, so they found it quite normal for her to be addicted to the care of flowers and plants. They all gradually got used to it.

A few years ago, the authorities had developed a batch of hybrid seeds and had already started to distribute them to the various county cities. As the cost of research was quite high, in the beginning, the price was much higher than the original normal seeds. In recent years though, the price had dropped and everyone was more willing to use hybrid seeds.

Qiao Mei wanted to try and see if she could develop her version of the hybrid seeds. After a few days of tireless efforts, Qiao Mei finally succeeded. The batch she had was the sixth generation hybrid seeds.

Not only did this batch of seeds inherit the second generation seeds’ characteristics of high yield and a short cycle, but the yield had also increased by a lot. However, the cycle was one to two weeks longer than the second generation seeds. If the cycle was too short, it would attract too much attention. It was better to keep a lower profile.

As long as the output could increase at least proportionately, it would not be an issue if it took more time.

However, the sixth generation hybrid seeds also had a particularly interesting feature. They could only be planted once and could only be produced by planting fifth generation seeds.

If anyone wanted to use the harvested seeds from the sixth generation seeds for replanting, they would only get a pile of seeds with empty shells. This was Qiao Mei’s trump card in this entire exercise.

She already knew that it was very risky to sell the seeds in large quantities. Even if she knew the amount of seeds that could be produced from the amount she sold, it was only an estimate after all. She could not accurately estimate the actual amount of seeds harvested. As long as she left even one seed in someone else’s hands, it would be a risk for her.