Chapter 20: Swallowing Calabaza

  Impact new book list, please support more fellow villagers! After entangling with Tang Lier in school for a while and having a drink with roommates, Duan Lei disappeared again in school and returned to the laboratory of Cai Village.

  The success of the culture medium is just a beginning, and to cultivate the swallow grass successfully, there are still many procedures to follow. Duan Lei is a very rational person who knows that enjoying life must be after achieving fame and fortune. Only by enduring the current loneliness can we welcome a bright future!

  Back in the lab, Duan Lei quickly put everything at school behind him and devoted himself wholeheartedly to researching the materials left by Dingding.

  According to records, 'swallowing grass' is just a name, and both herbaceous plants and woody plants can be used as the cultivation prototype of swallowing grass.

  On the planet of Makka, people mostly use a desert plant called "Man Root Grass" to cultivate Swallowing Grass. This desert plant has a well-developed root system that can expand its range of absorbing pollutants, making it a very practical cultivation object.

  On the earth, there are also many plants with well-developed root systems, such as calabaza, banyan tree, sea buckthorn, cactus and so on. Considering practicality and Haicheng's climate, Duan Lei chose calabaza as the first object to cultivate.

  Duan Yue chose loofah for two reasons: one is that the root system of loofah is well-developed, which can effectively increase the range and ability to absorb pollutants; another reason is that the growth cycle of loofah is short and occupies a small space, very suitable for Duan Yue's current situation.

  After obtaining the information about Dingdang, Duan Lei immediately thought of a good way to make money, which was to use the special ability of Swallowing Grass to absorb and crystallize certain heavy metals in waste liquids and garbage, and then sell the heavy metals for income. As for promoting Swallowing Grass to the market and benefiting society, it was still a rather distant topic for Duan Lei.

  Before gaining a certain amount of power, Duan Yu was unlikely to leak any technology from the planet Makka, as that would only bring him disaster. After all, the saying "an innocent man is guilty if he holds a jade" is not spoken lightly.

  After much consideration, Duan Yue could only use the technology of Maca planet to make a fortune in silence and accumulate his first bucket of gold quietly.

  After the preparation of the nutrient solution was successful, Duan Lei began to soak the loofah seeds purchased from the seed store. After returning to the laboratory from school, Duan Lei started planting the loofah seeds in the nutrient troughs in the laboratory.

  When decorating the house, Duan Yue designed a laboratory for preparing solutions and another laboratory for cultivating various carnivorous plants. For this purpose, Duan Yue even had Huang Jingzhong dismantle most of the walls in this easternmost room and install large pieces of glass, turning it into a kind of glass conservatory.

  With the modification of nutrient solution, originally soil-requiring calabaza can be cultivated without soil and will not be restricted by season or temperature. Otherwise, cultivating calabaza starting from October is a huge challenge for traditional agriculture.

  To say the least, the culture solution of swallow grass is indeed a magical biotechnology product. After soaking in water, the seeds of calabaza grow at an extremely fast speed, which also scared Duan Lin to death!

  When the calabaza seeds began to sprout and grow, Duan Lei's work did not become much easier. He had to constantly observe the growth trend of the calabaza, then adjust the nutrient composition in the nutrient solution and the amount of culture medium at any time to ensure that the calabaza could grow smoothly.

  If the previous preparation of the culture medium is considered to be a rush, now learning is very hard. Planting plants is what this undergraduate student in horticulture is best at, so he does it with ease!

  The loofah seedlings in the nutrient tank grew wildly like they had been injected with stimulants, and within just a few days, the cultivation lab was filled with lush greenery.

  Compared with the common calabaza, the root system of the calabaza cultivated in nutrient solution is more developed, the stem nodes are very thick but not long, and the space of the cultivation test room is saved invisibly.

  Time flew by quickly as Duan Lei was busy recording and operating, after a week, the melons cultivated in the laboratory had already begun to bloom, this speed is not something that ordinary cultivation methods can achieve.

  After the calabaza flowers, the next very important step is to add a liquid containing heavy metals to the water tank.

  In everyday life, there are two precious metals that have a very high value and are most understood and recognized by people, namely gold and silver.

  From the moment he got the technology for cultivating Swallowing Grass, Duan Lei set his sights on collecting heavy metals worth more than silver, this was the best route for him to get his first bucket of gold as soon as possible.

  When buying experimental equipment, Duan Yue had already collected a large amount of silver-containing waste liquid from various laboratories and the imaging department of the medical school, which was prepared for today. Generally speaking, hospitals or photographic studios' fixing waste liquid, developing waste liquid, electroplating factories' electroplating waste liquid and printing plate-making waste liquid all contain a large amount of silver complexes. Now Duan Yue is just getting some waste liquid from school, if the experiment is successful, he will have to go to various factories to purchase it.

  When the waste liquid containing a large amount of silver ions was injected into the nutrient tank, even though Duan Lei had considerable confidence in the technology of the Macaw civilization, his heart still hung involuntarily, tense to no end.

  To know, this wastewater is equivalent to the harm of arsenic to the human body for general plants, with a lethal effect. Don't you see that the river near Cai Village has been polluted, and there are no fish or shrimp, and the water grass is gone, just like a dead land!

  In the following days, Duan Yue also couldn't sleep well, from time to time getting out of bed and running to the cultivation laboratory to observe the growth status of the calabaza, and making detailed records.

  It's okay, the miracle of the nutrient solution hasn't let the Maca civilization down. The loofahs in the nutrient tank are growing well, and those small flowers that bloomed beautifully soon withered, producing one by one thin, chopstick-like loofahs.

  Watching the melon grow bigger and stronger every day, Duan Lei's hanging heart finally put down a bit.

  At the same time, the amount of waste liquid in the tank was also rapidly decreasing, and Duan Lei had to keep adding the waste liquid he had brought back to the tank to ensure the absorption of the calabaza. These waste liquids that were quite well-known for ordinary plants were like growth hormones for the mutant calabaza, stimulating their growth.

  Very soon, from the seed sprouting to counting, in just fifteen days, the calabaza on the melon vine has grown to the size of a cola bottle. According to Duan Lei's estimate, the growth cycle of these calabazas is only one-fifth that of ordinary calabazas, which is an astonishing speed.

  After consuming a large amount of silver-containing waste liquid, the phagocytic grass variety cultivated by Duan Lei finally completed a growth cycle and reached the moment of maturity.

  Duan Yue picked a calabaza named 'Swallowing Calabaza' from the vine, ready to cut it open and see if there was indeed pure silver metal inside as described in the data.

  Victory or defeat hangs in the balance!