African Entrepreneurship Record

In the end, out of interest considerations, France had to give French Gabon to Germany under the power of Germany.

At this time, Germany was superior to France in all aspects, at least in terms of industrial data and military strength. Therefore, France was at a disadvantage in the negotiations from the beginning. However, France was not without gains from this Moroccan crisis.

Germany's aggressiveness also made the British further alert to Germany and further improved their attitude towards France.

…

August 2, 1911.

West Coast Province, Agricultural Research Institute of Luanda.

The Luanda Agricultural Research Institute is located northeast of Luanda. The institute has a large area of ​​experimental fields for introduced crops. It is one of the core agricultural research institutions in western Africa established in 1893 in East Africa.

Its important role is to introduce agricultural varieties from the South Atlantic region and add high-quality agricultural varieties from East Africa through research and demonstration.

Today is the day of rice harvest in Experimental Field No. 0273 of the Luanda Agricultural Research Institute. Many members of the institute have gathered at Experimental Field No. 0273 to prepare for the evaluation of agricultural varieties in the experimental field.

Director Andre and many researchers went into battle in person, harvesting bit by bit with sickles. Because the planting area was not large, everyone quickly completed the follow-up work.

After the threshing was completed, Andre said excitedly: "Get on the scale!"

After a while, the results came out.

"Professor Andre, the final calculation shows that the yield is about 75 kilograms per acre."

After hearing the result, Andre sighed: "Sure enough, it still did not meet our psychological expectations, but it is still qualified."

Kelder, an intern who had just entered the institute, asked: "Senior He Bo, this rice variety seems to be very different from the rice varieties we usually grow."

The researcher named He Bo nodded and said: "Yes, you have just arrived, so you don't know. This kind of rice is currently only studied by our research institute in East Africa. It is different from all varieties of rice widely grown in East Africa. "

Kelder asked: "Is it a newly introduced variety from the Far East?"

"No." He Bo shook his head, and then said seriously: "This kind of rice has a lot of history. The reason why Professor Andre pays so much attention to it is because of the biggest characteristics of this kind of rice, let's call it West African cultivated rice. That is, West African cultivated rice comes from West Africa, not Asia.”

As we all know, East Africa is a country dominated by rice cultivation. Rice planting area exceeds that of many crops and has become the largest staple food in East Africa. Almost all rice varieties grown in East Africa are imported from Asia.

When Andre heard the exchange between the two students, he said in a sincere way: "He Bo is right. We collected these rice from thirteen locations in West Africa, and it broke our previous understanding of rice types. Cognition.”

"In the past, all our country's rice varieties were imported from Asia, especially the Far Eastern Empire. At the same time, due to insufficient early research and understanding, as well as a lack of foreign exchanges, the mainstream of our country's agriculture at that time believed that there were no indigenous rice varieties in Africa."

"But in 1897, during a foreign agricultural species collection activity organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, our researchers first discovered this native African rice variety grown by local black people in the Niger River Basin of West Africa."

Most of these rice seeds collected from West Africa, except for the wild short-tongued wild rice, are fū rice, or African rice varieties, which correspond to Asian rice varieties that originated in the Far Eastern Empire.

Andre continued: "We have demonstrated through research that the light-tongued rice in West Africa may be derived from the wild short-tongued wild rice. The two have many similarities. The light-tongued rice retains many of the original ancestral characteristics of the short-tongued wild rice. "

"However, due to various reasons, the yield of this native African rice variety is difficult to compare with that of Asian rice, and the variety is far less extensive than that of Asian rice. For the time being, we have only found two types of Guangye whose differences are not obvious and may differentiate in the future. Rice varieties.”

The so-called various reasons are basically that the development of black agricultural technology is too backward. Take the field rice and Asian rice as examples. The Far Eastern Empire began to cultivate rice artificially as early as 10,000 years ago, while the history of the field rice may only be two or three thousand years.

Moreover, black Africans are not good at farming. This means that only a small amount of light rice is grown in the Niger River Basin, where the rice comes from, and the methods are very crude. In the absence of artificial selection, the yield of light rice is naturally difficult to compete with Asian rice.

Currently, the yield of Asian rice grown in East Africa is generally over 170 kilograms, and has even reached a record of 432 kilograms in experimental fields.

The yield of the Guangye rice experimental field is only 75 kilograms, and the gap between the two is very obvious. Without the various high-quality conditions and careful care of the Luanda Agricultural Research Institute, the yield would have been even lower.

So Kelder raised his own question: "Professor Andre, since the yield of this rice is much lower than the Asian rice currently grown in our country, what is the point of studying it?"

Professor Andre was not dissatisfied with the students' doubts. Instead, he said quite complacently: "For our Agricultural Research Institute, it is indeed important to increase species yields and select excellent varieties, but what is an excellent variety is complicated. More, take Guangye rice as an example. I knew before planting that this rice variety had low yield, so I was mentally prepared for it.”

"Then what do I look for? The answer is the other characteristics of the light field rice. As a local rice variety cultivated by black people in West Africa, the light field rice is most likely to have evolved from the short-tongued wild rice."

"So light rice is naturally suitable for the climate characteristics of West Africa. If you have good geographical knowledge, you should know that the climate in West Africa is similar to many areas in East Africa, which is a savanna climate type."

"And as a continent, West Africa is basically the same as my country in terms of species evolution and diversity. This involves the long-term cultivation of light rice on the African continent, and it has developed stronger resistance to local native pests, pests and climate. ”

He Bo continued to ask: "But how should the research on this variety be transformed into practical application results?"

Andre said: "The problem you are worried about does exist, but I can reveal a piece of knowledge that you cannot have access to in college, and that is rice hybrid technology. This technology is to obtain two kinds of rice by crossing two kinds of rice. "

"If there is a breakthrough in hybrid rice technology at the Mbeya Rice Research Center, then our light rice will no longer be useless. In the future, we can use hybrid technology to combine the advantages of light rice with other rice varieties. , transfer the advantages of Guangye rice to new rice varieties.”

"Some characteristics of light rice that are resistant to drought and local pests and diseases can be applied to my country's rice production in the future."

East Africa is actually the current center of the world's rice research field. Among the world's powerful countries, only two countries in East Africa and Japan use rice as their staple food.

Compared with East Africa, Japan is already relatively backward, and Japan has been expanding its military force crazily in recent years, making it unable to concentrate on other fields. Therefore, East Africa has become the most developed country in the world in research on rice planting technology.

Hybrid rice is one of the key agricultural research projects in East Africa at the current stage. However, hybrid rice research requires time, location, people and people, and it is difficult to produce results in a short period of time. Research on hybrid rice projects in East Africa began in the 1990s. It's only been more than ten years now.

This was carried out under the "insignificant" guidance of Ernst's scientific undertakings in East Africa based on the memories left over from high school biology in his previous life. However, the hard work paid off. After establishing the correct research direction, the Mbeya Rice Research Center in East Africa took the lead. Be successful.