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Old 11-02-2017, 10:58 AM
.45cultist .45cultist is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicfish View Post
This and other examples miss a few important points:

1) Every species has its own period of viability. Some seeds are viable for centuries, some for decades, some for a few years. 150 years after sealing, most of the varieties will be long past their sell-by date, even if a few are still within range.

2) Not all seeds within a given species expire at the same time. If the mean survival of seed X under conditions Y is 15 years, then a few will likely still be viable at 30 or 50 years, but most will be long dead.

3) A lot of the news stories about ancient seeds being recovered miss that growing them required exceptional techniques and/or a lot of seeds per growing plant. The "Methuselah Tree" that was grown from a 2,000 year old seed was the work of a single dedicated grad student subjecting the seed to a number of techniques and materials that were not part of standard agricultural practice. The squash mentioned above does not indicate how many seeds it took or what the grower did to cultivate them, but I would be willing to bet that it wasn't "plant one seed, water and fertilize, yield one plant".

So my point is that if the viable period of the seeds is 10 years, then 150 years later there may be a small fraction of one or two varietals that will still grow with what the typical Team can do, but if the Project is going to grow from their seeds then they will likely need a better seed vault where the Project uses special techniques and facilities and personnel to preserve a variety of breeds long past their viable dates.

And there is one other point, I guess: Who is going to use this in a game? As has been noted by many on here, it is hard to get most players to get past shooting, I can't imagine a situation where an actual group of players is going to turn to an actual GM and ask about seed details so they can start the agricultural development stage of the Project. In every game I've ever played, these seeds are going to see two possibilities: being ignored, or being discarded. I don't see a player group doing any actual agriculture... ever.
AG-1? A central seed vault, farm animal freeze tubes.
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