kscans

Chapter 161 - Tissue Culture (Part 1)

As Yuri prepared to go to Laurenzen in the spring, there was one thing that worried him.

"Hmm… the callus I’m cultivating is just starting to differentiate… I don’t think it’ll grow to a stage where it can be planted in the ground by the time I go to Laurenzen. I mean, the snow will have just started to melt, so transplanting is out of the question."

Yuri’s concern was what to do with the callus, an undifferentiated, amorphous mass of cells, that he was growing through tissue culture.

He was experimenting with obtaining seedlings by taking cuttings from Sugar Beets and other turnips he had acquired when he went to Laurenzen last year and tissue culturing them. He had also tried meristem culture, but since it was difficult to obtain a large amount of meristematic tissue, tissue culture, which involves de-differentiating differentiated tissue, was his main focus. He had even made glass petri dishes and a clean box just for that purpose. As for the culture medium, he was somehow able to figure out its composition by following links in the description of Appraisal as if surfing the net. It could be called an added bonus that his Appraisal level went up due to his efforts in searching for materials containing the necessary components. …He was surprised when, while concocting a suspicious culture medium-like substance, a recipe for something called a "Plant Potion" was registered.

He had been taking notes on where the links to what were in the description, so his research had recently become more efficient.

After that, he imitated tissue culture relying on his past life’s memories and wood magic, and with reference to the description in Appraisal, he somehow managed to de-differentiate the tissue and obtain callus last November. It seemed that his solid image of tissue culture from his past life’s knowledge and the somewhat detailed explanation in Appraisal had been effective. With the tissue culture practiced on Earth in his past life, at this stage, he could have induced the differentiation of roots and shoots by administering appropriate plant hormones, auxins or cytokinins. However, since there were no such things here, he had to substitute that part with wood magic. He did not know the timing of administration and was trying various things when more than half of them failed, but some of the survivors had undergone a mutation.

"I was surprised at that time… when I used Appraisal on the Sugar Beet callus, it was displayed as tetraploid…"

Tetraploids, which have twice the amount of chromosomes compared to normal organisms (diploids), often have a larger body size. That meant that a large amount of sugar could be obtained from a single plant, so Yuri welcomed it. However, the reason for that mutation was, of all things, recovery-type light magic.

When the callus did not re-differentiate well with wood magic alone, he gave it a little recovery-type light magic, and a part of it began to differentiate. Incidentally, when de-differentiating, dark magic was effective. He succeeded in inducing differentiation, which was good, but he was concerned about the effect of recovery magic. Was it okay to carelessly apply recovery magic to wounds and such? He wondered if, when a novice magician like himself did it, a hand or a foot might grow out of the wound. Yuri was filled with anxiety, but it seemed that as long as the cells were differentiated, it was fine. However, it seemed that fetuses and newborns were not included in this example, and it was known from experience that it was not good to carelessly apply recovery magic to them. Incidentally, this was also one of the reasons for the high infant mortality rate in this world.

It seemed that undifferentiated cells had a high sensitivity to light magic… or rather, too high, and the cells had mutated. But even so, why did the entire callus suddenly become tetraploid? Wouldn’t it be more natural for it to become a chimera where tetraploid cells and normal diploid cells were mixed? He decided to ignore such questions. The magic of this world was probably just like that.

"Well… I did have an inkling…"

In his third year since coming to this world, some of the Suzuna he was growing to collect seeds had been damaged by strong winds, and the flower stalks that had been growing smoothly had broken. He had used magic on the off chance that it would work, and they had successfully taken root, so he had left them as they were, but it seemed that some of the tissue had mutated at that time. When he sowed the resulting seeds in the field and grew them, there were some that were clearly larger. He had thought that they were just growing well by chance, but the ones that grew from those seeds were also large in size, and when he used Appraisal, thinking that it might be the case, they were displayed as tetraploid.

"I think… I used wood magic and recovery magic at that time too. I carelessly forgot to take a memo, so I don’t have any proof, though."

The tetraploid Suzuna are large and taste good, so most of them have now been replaced by tetraploids. He does cultivate the original Suzuna, but that is mainly for the purpose of preserving the lineage in case of an emergency.

Yuri, who had mastered the trick of inducing mutations by mixing light or dark magic with wood magic, was enthusiastically pursuing his experiments when he obtained a skill called [Plant Breeding]. It is a story for a little later that he was stunned and collapsed when it was immediately corrected to [Demonic Modification].