Life of Being a Crown Prince in France-Chapter 667 576 Mr. Mendel, Sorry

"20 years?!"

Joseph's face immediately fell. In 20 years, France and England would have long since determined the winner. What use then would your sugar beets be?

He immediately stretched out three fingers.

Achard waved his hand, seriously saying, "Your Highness, I have confidence, it really won't take 30 years to..."

"No, it's three years," Joseph said sternly, fixing his gaze on him. "I give you three years, and all the support you need, to give me a new variety of sugar beet!"

"This," Achard's face showed difficulty, "Your Highness, perhaps you are not very familiar with breeding technology. This requires a lot of experiments, and it takes a very long time. Even if you give me 50 acres of experimental ground and sufficient funds, three years would definitely not be enough."

He looked to the biology master Brison for help.

The latter nodded, coughed lightly, and said, "Your Highness, even if Mr. Achard is very lucky and the high-yielding sugar beet seedlings appear in the first year, stabilizing their superior characteristics would require at least 8 to 10 generations of breeding, perhaps even more. During this period, there might be loss of traits, and then we must start over.

"So, I think 20 years is a quite reasonable estimate."

"Wait a minute," Joseph said, somewhat surprised, "Are you saying it takes 10 generations of breeding to stabilize traits?"

"Indeed, Your Highness."

"No, you segregate the seedlings with different traits, work out the genetic characteristics of the male and female parents after crossbreeding, estimate the genetic factors groups the offspring might obtain, then breed them separately, observe traits, and continue crossbreeding. Even taking recessive genes into account, within two or three generations at most, it should be clear whether the needed genetic traits have been obtained..."

Joseph spoke and felt that the expressions of the biologists around him were off, as if they had just been struck by a rock.

His heart tightened, trouble, Mendel seemed not yet to be born, and the theory of hybrid genetics wasn't even in existence, no wonder their cultivation of new varieties was so difficult.

Seeing that he had stopped, Brison hurriedly probed, "Your Highness, what you just mentioned about 'genetics', what is that?"

Achard listened more carefully, with more questions, "And 'genetic factors,' 'recessive genes,' what do these mean?"

Joseph took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and made the sign of the cross over his chest, beginning "to perform": "Thank the revelations from Jesus, these are inspirations bestowed by the Lord."

When Achard and the others also made the sign of the cross, he continued: "The so-called 'genetics' means that parents blend their traits to pass them to their offspring. Conversely, every trait possessed by the offspring must come from their parents."

Achard bowed his head to digest this for a while, then immediately raised an objection: "Your Highness, but white beet plants and yellow beet plants can produce red beet offspring..."

"Correct, so this involves the issue of 'recessive genes.'"

Joseph simply took up a pen and paper, asked the three biologists to sit around, started recalling his high school biology courses, and in his mind silently apologized to Mr. Mendel.

"This represents a genetic factor, which actually should be called a chromosome. But that's even more complicated to explain, so let's just talk about genetic factors.

"All organisms' genetic factors come half from each parent, and any traits that the organisms display are determined by these genetic factors.

"And some genetic traits contradict each other. For example..."

He pointed to Eman standing by, "A person having double or single eyelids; they cannot have both simultaneously.

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"When parents each give half of their single eyelid factor, it certainly results in single eyelids. Conversely, it's double eyelids.

"But if the parents give half single and half double, then it depends on which is the dominant gene and which is the recessive gene.

"I'll just give you the answer straight, double eyelids are dominant genes. Hence in the above situation, the child would definitely have double eyelids. Dominant genes show the traits; recessive genes do not show."

He looked around at the puzzled and skeptical faces, persevered, and started introducing from the basics of biological genetics until nightfall, finally getting back to the topic of dominant and recessive genes.

The youngest, Achard, was more receptive to new things suddenly clapped his hands, excitedly saying, "I understand now, Your Highness! So red is a recessive gene in sugar beets, overridden by white or yellow genes.

"And when white or yellow beets carry half red genes, and by chance pass the red gene to their offspring during crossbreeding, that's when red sugar beets will grow! This also explains why the occurrence rate of red sugar beets is the lowest!"

"You have understood perfectly."

Now, both Brison and Bossk pulled back their doubts, applying the Crown Prince's theories to past encountered difficulties in their minds, discovering many were now explained.

Possibly, this knowledge of "genes," "recessive," and similar terms were all correct!

Achard continued to transfer from one part to another: "So, when I need the yellow trait, I shouldn't just crossbreed two yellow beet plants because they might carry recessive genes. According to probability, I need to segregate the offspring into...wait, I need to calculate..."

He grabbed paper and pen and started scribbling, muttering, "No wonder stabilizing traits was so difficult before, turns out recessive genes were mixed in..."

He quickly calculated the result, looked up at Joseph, his eyes filled with excitement and anticipation, "Your Highness, with your theory to assist, perhaps, within three years, we truly can cultivate a sugar beet variety with 12% sugar content!"

Joseph nodded in satisfaction, "It's late, let's go have dinner. Tomorrow, I'll talk to you about 'the law of segregation' and 'the law of independent assortment,' which may help you even more in cultivating new varieties."

...

One week later.

After a whole day of enriching study in genetics, Achard left Tuileries Palace tired but thrilled.

Equally exciting for him was that morning, Dean Le Roy had personally come to inform him that, according to the reassessment by the Talent Committee, he would officially receive an invitation, his talent grade being Grade D.

To know, among the introduced talents who had never made any academic contributions, Grade D was essentially the highest level.

He was about to board the carriage assigned to him by the Talent Committee when he saw his fellowcountryman Auguste G. K. Baki running towards him, waving.

"How are you here?" He bent slightly in greeting, "Do you want to ride in my carriage back?"

Baki hesitated for a long while, finally saying with a pained expression, "I think, perhaps you should switch to another hotel."

"What happened?"

"Actually, Miss Marian's brother left an invitation for you at the hotel. His sister is getting engaged the day after tomorrow..."