"They indeed are growing faster than they should be."
I muttered as I was looking at my fields.
After finishing my first harvest, I kept tending to the fields.
And, I was convinced of something.
Crops that were grown in my fields were growing faster than normal.
It was surprising and rather scary to be able to grow hatsuka, which normally would be harvested in about twenty days, to just about five days until they could be eaten.
Still, there wasn't any particular changes in my body after eating hatsuka that I had grown.
I assumed that maybe, the side effect wouldn't show immediately.
Since it didn't mean that there was no chance for side effects to occur later. Still, I came to a decision that there was nothing I could do about it.
After all, it was tough to be hungry.
"But there has been a surplus lately. Should I try to experiment now?"
Those difficult days were gradually turning better.
So I had been coming up with a couple of ideas.
If I were a normal 3-year-old child, I wouldn't even have thought about it.
However, I attended school in my previous life.
Although I didn't learn agriculture professionally, I had some knowledge about it.
What came to my mind this time was 'selective breeding'.
Food that I ate in my previous life were tasty.
Even the ones sold as bargains at supermarkets were clean, fresh and had a solid taste.
However, I only ate those with stronger seasoning without really thinking about it. Thus, I often didn't have my fill of the original taste of vegetables.
When I saw the vegetables grown in this world, it extremely bothered me.
Every single one of them was low in quality.
It was just now that I truly realized how good the vegetables I used to eat were.
Due to farmers and researchers in the past, who I didn't know the names, I could have high quality products at a low price as they kept researching performing selective breeding.
Although, I didn't think that the result would be as good if someone tried to do selective breeding by themselves.
If I devoted my life to it, I might reach an accomplishment to at least had a single prideful thing left for my descendants.
However, there existed something that could break such common sense.
Magic.
I didn't know what the reason was, but those crops were growing rapidly in the fields that I cultivated with magic.
If so, there was no choice but to utilize it.
With that, I immediately started to prepare for selective breeding.
While also hoping that the taste would improve for a bit.
***
Well, it was nice and all that I came up with selective breeding, but how should I do it?
Though I helped my grandma who lived in the countryside with her fields, I usually used bought seeds and seedlings.
As it came to this, I tried to remember the lessons I learned at school, looking for them in the pit of my memories.
I was certain I had learned about genetic inheritance in biology class.
About some old man who was experimenting with peas in a field.
He found out the laws of inheritance by collecting data and checking the wrinkles on thousands of peas with his naked eye.
When I heard that, I thought that he must have too much time to possibly do that.
But, there was a hint in that story.
Although it was called selective breeding, there weren't enough varieties to cross-breed hatsuka currently.
If there were different types of the same crops, like Koshihikari rice and Akitakomachi rice [1], it would be possible to do cross-breeding. But, it wasn't the case.
In other words, I had to start by investigating the characteristics of hatsuka themselves.
I closely observed the harvested hatsuka one by one.
The roots below the stem were edible, but of course, there were also small differences in their stems and flowers.
I looked at them one by one and classified them.
Most of them had black roots, but there were also the ones with purplish-red color.
Some had a lot more roots, while others only had a few but slightly larger in size.
Some flowers were somewhat white and some were completely yellow.
I checked them one by one to tell every single differences.
Of course, I didn't forget to check the taste since I wasn't doing academic research.
And naturally, checking them wasn't the end of it.
After sorting them based on the characteristics, it was necessary to cross-breed them.
I decided to separate the fields that had extended to some extent into six categories.
Although, I wasn't able separate them finely, they were more or less divided so they would grow according to the characteristics that I aimed for.
Shortly after, this half experimenting and half securing food became my daily routine. And I came to realize one fact.
That 'vegetables also stored mana'.
T/N
[1] Just types of rice. Don't mind it, I can't even tell the difference of them and normal rice lol.
Sorry for the long wait. I will release new chapter every sunday. Once I have more free time, maybe I can release more than one per week. :)