kscans

Chapter 163 - Uses for Turnips

Of the crops Yuri brought back from Laurenzen, some of the Sugar Beet cuttings were used for tissue culture, but some were able to be revived with wood magic and were planted as they were. He succeeded in cultivating them in a constant temperature room and collecting seeds. In the spring, he plans to cultivate them from seeds in addition to the cloned seedlings. As for the other turnips, he basically used them for taste testing, but…

"Hmm… just as Eto said, there isn’t much that’s delicious. I guess they’re just livestock feed after all."

Starting with eating them raw, he tried various things like cutting them perpendicular to the fibers to soften the texture, boiling them, and steaming them, but the taste itself was not good. The turnips, or Suzuna as they are called here, that he found at the abandoned village site before were delicious enough, so it seems that was an improved variety for consumption. It was a taste that was comparable to what he had eaten in his past life in Japan. In contrast, most of the turnips he brought back this time had a strange grassy smell and bitterness, and he could not say they were delicious by any stretch of the imagination, but still, there were a few gems.

"This is… more like a daikon radish than a turnip, with this spiciness."

The first one he found was a spicy variety. Yuri did not know the difference between a turnip and a daikon radish, he probably could not tell by the shape since there are round daikon radishes like the Sakurajima daikon, but with its crunchier texture than the Suzuna and the strong spiciness he felt when he grated it, he felt it was a variety closer to the daikon radish of his past life.

"I could use this instead of grated daikon. It seems a little fibrous, but if I grate it, it’s not noticeable."

Although soy sauce was not yet complete, this turnip or daikon radish could probably be used to eliminate the smell of the fermented meat. He chuckled to himself, thinking he had found something good, but set that aside and decided to finish the rest of the taste test.

After finishing the taste test, he found that apart from the one he had chosen for grated daikon, there were no others with a particularly noteworthy taste. So next, he decided to expose the properties of each variety with Appraisal. As a result…

"Huh… this one has a spicy component in its seeds… is it like mustard greens?"

In his past life on Earth, mustard greens were also a crop of the Brassicaceae family, just like daikon and turnips, and it seemed that there was a lineage of that kind among the Suzuna in this world as well. If he continued selective breeding, it might be established as a variety eventually.

"But when I use Appraisal, they all just show up as ‘a type of Suzuna’… I guess that means they’re not recognized as distinct varieties… what a waste…"

At any rate, there was no need to use something that could be used as a spice as livestock feed. He decided to use this for tissue culture as well. The last one he found was a lineage whose roots did not grow particularly large, but whose above-ground growth was quite magnificent. In terms of his past life on Earth, it would be something similar to Chinese cabbage. That should have been in the Brassicaceae family as well. Although it had a slight spiciness, it seemed it could be used as a leafy vegetable as is. No, it might be rather perfect for pickling.

"They said it was livestock feed… but there were more usable things than I thought. ...Does this mean that selective breeding of crops hasn’t progressed much yet?"

Information about crops did not seem to spread as much as he thought, as was the case with the potatoes, or papas potatoes as they were called in this world, that were cultivated in the neighboring country but were unknown in this country. Did the concept of selective breeding or improvement not exist, or was it delayed?

"Well, there might be other circumstances regarding that… for now, I guess I should just focus on cultivating these three types in addition to the sugar beets."

This was in the middle of last November.

And then…