Everyday before I go to my work I have a look at the pots I have set for the Plantbreeding@home experiment. Everyday I look at them and every day I get dissapointed because all I see is the same boring soil and some occasional weeds. But today was a different day :D
Today, after 17 days that seemed like an eon the first seedling started to push out of the ground. It was barely visible but it was there!
I don't know if I have told you, but everytime I see a seedling struggling to come out I remember this scene:
Come on little one! Push!
And here's how the seedling looked at 11:00 pm, about 16 hours later:
I guess by tomorrow the cotyledons (the embryonic leaves) will be out of the ground and soon more pepper plants will soon follow. I will keep you updated :D
In the meantime, here are the my two previous Plantbreeding@home posts:
And here's some more info about the plantbreeding@home project:
What Is PlantBreeding@home?
PlantBreeding@home is a community project run on Steemit to enable everyone willing to participate in the creation of a new plant variety. @dysprosium is the one who came up with the idea, inspired by Gridcoin which awards people cryptocoins (gridcoins) for running BOINC on their computers. After some thinking, it was decided that for the first round of Plantbreeding@home the participants will grow (or at least try) a new pepper variety, one that is small and sweet. @dysprosium is also kind enough to offer steem and gridcoins to the people participating in the project if they successfully follow all his instruction :D
Here's the first parent, a super small pepper with a flavor that is more intense than a typical Jalapeno. The fruits are barely 1 cm long. The chilliness is something we hope to remove:
And here's the second parent, a sweet variety producing small bell peppers:
Hopefully, we will end up with a variety that is small and sweet. Will we succeed? Time will tell :)And that's pretty much the summary for the plantbreeding@home. For even more info, just read the official updates by @dysprosium:
- Plant breeding with the Gridcoin-Community: Project "plantbreeding@home"
- plantbreeding@home #1 - The Beginning
- plantbreeding@home #2 - We will breed peppers!
- plantbreeding@home #3 - it is decided!
- plantbreeding@home #4 - Meet the parents!
- plantbreeding@home #5 - Small setbacks
- plantbreeding@home #6 - Let's grow!
- plantbreeding@home #7 Spring is here, spring is heeeeere!
Feel free to contact @dysprosium if you want to participate in the experiment!