Theres one time I has been talking about agriculture venture to my friends(you know, first the frustration of working as an employee and then wanted to work for self thingy), they became so enthusiastic and feel so eager to start as soon as possible, and they are interested in whatever I told them and wanted to do whatever I told them.

I brought books, magazines, articles for them, and talk about crops, organic farming, earthworm, etc etc. They wanted to all of them! And even trying to start a farm at a backyard garden(which is very far away at someone's hometown), something like start small, expand later. Thou I did told them about scale of economic and can get some monthly RM200 per acre land reasonably nearer, it was like unacceptable to them, too expensive or something.

Some discussions occur, conclusion like dun involve too many people will spoil the soup, dun involve women they will quarrel (i would want an extra pair of hands:/), must work out cleary on the money issue(now we are getting close to the point), etc etc.

Theres still one thing, I cant see how will this little project be done with all the guys are staying 100km+ away from the site(which is smaller then my apartment) and with a full time job that require 90% of their awake time. But well, since they are so interested, I am willing to provide the technical info, contacts, and so on.

Until one day, this friend told me:"When I got the money, I will invest to you, since I see you so wanted to do it, while i will go 'diversify' into other things."

It was like a punch in my heart and I realised, they are not interested to nature or organic farm or how to counter chili diesease or set up their own farm whatever shit, they are just interested in numbers printed on dollar notes. I was unhappy hearing that comment, hell, half the point is to get rid of boss and be your own boss, and now you want to be my boss??? I didnt say anything, just oh ok.

I dont talk alot about my ambition since then. If there is one person I am willing to work for, that would only be my soon-to-be-wife

100 degrees Celsius is not enough to kill spores... In lab, usually we use an autoclave at 131 degrees. Do note that spores are meant to survive to very worst of environmental conditions. Doing subsequent heating may kill any sprouted spores, but it could cause degradation of your media since you're using potato extract media, and not enriched agarose media. Still can work.

I'm not saying the mycelium you saw were sproting from spores, and I'm not saying it is not either. It may be fresh sprouts from your mushroom inner tissue. But in cloning, we never use differentiated cells (aka tissue from specialized body components), as differentiated cells rarely revert to the totipotent state (for instance Embryonic Stem Cells) without the input of hormones, restriction chemicals etc. Tissue from newly emerged sproutings will have a high density of undifferentiated cells, which can be coaxed to differentiate into the specialized cells and tissue under optimum growth conditions, and so these are used instead.

Yes, many mushroom producers are using the tedious method, as at the end of the day, you do want a uniform harvest of high performance crop and a low fluctuation in quality. And quality does pay off handsomely despite the difficulties faced. After all, that is the main purpose of cloning: To obtain planting materials of high quality, high uniformity and top performance with minimal fluctuation in standards from individual to individual.

Oil palm seeds take anywhere from 42 to 80 days to germinate under controlled conditions. In the wild, they may take up to 160 days even. Breaking the dormancy of oil palm seeds is a step wise process. Moisture is important, but so is the heat supplied. SIRIM standards are that after depulping, OP seeds must go through 42-80 days of heat treatment (HT) at a constant 40 degrees Celsius, with an internal moisture of 17-19%. After the HT, the internal moisture content should be raised to above 22%, and the seeds allowed to germinate at ambient temperature. Usually, germination takes place over a succession of weeks.

As for hybrid seeds, I'm assuming you mean cross species hybrid (from 2 or more different species), and not intervarietal breeds (same species, different variants). Eg of hybrids are the MAWA and MATAG coconut, eg of intervarietal breeds is the Tenera OP.

For uniform hybrid seeds, be it for any crop or plant species, the importance here is the selection of the parentals. At a glance, you take the top performing parents of either species, cross them, and carry out a Best Combining Ability analysis to determine which crosses produces the best progeny. Once identified, the parentals can then be traced back, and mass planted in seed gardens, thereby producing mass quantities of top performing progenies. However, uniformity here is still somewhat unbalanced due to minor varioations in genotypic makeup. But in breeding work, you would want some variation, as that is the only way to improve the material, short of genetic engineering.

Uniformity is a real challenge in the seed industry. Some seed producers actually clone the identified parentals and plant them out en masse, hence resulting in massive seed gardens which will all produce progeny that are of similar likeness amd performance, but still with some variations among them (you've got to know some college level genetics to understand this).

With annuals, seed production is not so much a challenge as the crop cycle is short; but with perennials, it is a huge challange, as the crops only yield their seeds after a really really long crop cycle. For instance, it takes only a couple months for chillies to yield its seeds (from emergence of inflorescence bud, till flowering, to pollination, to fruiting, to seed setting, and harvesting), whereas for coconut for instance, it takes about 1-1.5 years before seednuts can be harvested and germinated.

There is nothing wrong with oil palm seeds you collected, but then again, you wouldn't want to get those from the roadside as you wouldn't know which variant they are even though the palm is Tenera (again, you need to know some genetics to appreciate this). Same thing with the castor seeds; you need to give them the right conditions to allow for germination to take place. Do note that some species of plants have very specialized dormancy breaks, just as OP needs high heat and a cooling period to germinate, some seeds like castor (if not mistaken) need to be burned to break the dormancy. The heating breaks down the inhibitory enzymes causing the dormancy, and for certain hardshell seeds, the fire/heat cracks the seed coat to allow moisture entry.

Do read up more about the plant species that interests you. Not all crops are as simple to grow as sugarcane, bananas and papayas. A good source would be from FAO.



If you find it useful to others, then by all means please.. Haha...

Ya... Cactus species will become an agressive invader under such fertile environments. Just look at what the Prickly Pear Cactus did to Australia. And Australian land isn't really very fertile either.

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Note: Prickly Pear Cactus was brought into australia to plant around a farm as a living fence. However the Australia weather condition is so suitable to the cactus and soon it grown out of control and form an outbreak, covering significant area of farm lands and rendering they unusable therefore badly affecting food production.

Later they brought in a Moth species from where the cactus came from, and the Moth's caterpillar basically ate all the cactus and fixed the problem.

1. Harvest

The pods are harvested while green and immature. At this stage, they are odourless.

2. Killing

The vegetative tissue of the vanilla pod is killed to prevent further growing. The method of killing varies, but may be accomplished by sun killing, oven killing, hot water killing, killing by scratching, or killing by freezing.

3. Sweating

The pods are held for 7 to 10 days under hot (45º-65ºC or 115º-150ºF) and humid conditions; pods are often placed into fabric covered boxes immediately after boiling. This allows enzymes to process the compounds in the pods into vanillin and other compounds important to the final vanilla flavour.

4. Drying

To prevent rotting and to lock the aroma in the pods, the pods are dried. Often, pods are laid out in the sun during the mornings and returned to their boxes in the afternoons. When 25-30% of the pods' weight is moisture (as opposed to the 60-70% they began drying with) they have completed the curing process and will exhibit their fullest aromatic qualities.

5. Grading

Once fully cured, the vanilla is sorted by quality and graded.