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here. If you conduct research, please update the findings page.
Information on Crossbreeding
The Skills
Crossbreeding is the art of combining traits of 2 parents into a new individual. Crossbreeding can be used for Flowers, Flax seeds and Vine cuttings.
The crossbreeding skill is taught by scientist of the University of Worship. It allows you to build a Toxin Kitchen, that can be used to make the agents that are needed to crossbreed. The agent to do normal crossbreeding is called Nut's Essence. To make it, you first need to learn Botanical Identification level 1. The actual crossbreeding is done in a Greenhouse.
Another agent is Revelation Solvent. Revelation Solvents allow precise identification of DNA sequences.
Making Nut's Essence
Ingredients: 3 Nefertari's Crown mushrooms, 5-10 charcoal, 3-10 cactus sap, 2-10 cabbage juice, 10 water in jugs.
Click the Toxin Kitchen, pin down the window and select "Start a Batch of Nut's Essence". Tip: scroll down the window a bit until the option Ingredient: Nefertari's Crown Mushroom is also visible.
Step 1: Heat up the mixture by adding charcoal until you have reached 600 degrees. This takes 5-7 charcoal. Make sure temperature doesn't go over 800, in that case wait a bit until the temperature has dropped below 800 degrees. Add a NC mushroom; and also add water 6 times.
Step 2: Reach an acidity between 3.4 and 3.8. To do that, add 3 cactus sap to the mixture. Check acidity by using cabbage juice. If acidity is still too low, add another cactus sap and check acidity again. If the acidity goes over 3.8, wait a tick until it has dropped and check again with cabbage juice. If the acidity is right, add another NC mushroom.
Step 3: Let the temperature drop below 400, but no lower than 200. When the temperature is right, add another NC mushroom.
Step 4: Wait until Precipitation reaches 1.00, then take out your Nut's Essence.
Making Nut's Essence uses a Constitution timer, with Con 0 you will have to wait 30 minutes until you can make another one.
Making a Crossbreed
When you have 2 Flax seeds, 2 Flowers bulbs, or 2 Vine cuttings in your inventory and click a greenhouse, a special "Crossbreeding" option will appear.
Using that option lets you set the Left splint and the Right splint for your crossbreed. You need to place one of your parents on the left, and the other parent on the right. It means, that the left side of parent1's genome will be used and the right side of parent2's genome. More about genomes later.
Make sure you have a Nut's Essence in your inventory and use the Crossbreed-option again to Initiate the Crossbreed. After 15 minutes your new baby will be ready.
N.B.: It is not possible to cross a Flax seed with a Flower, for instance.
A bit about genomes
Genetics in ATITD are a bit like real life genetics. Like in real life, the genome of for instance Flax consist of a string of bases. However, Flax and Vines only have a single strand of bases (we're not sure about Sea Lilies).
So, one could represent a flax genome with a string like "ESFSFLFLFLEEFEESLLFSELEESS" where E, F, L and S are the bases.
A gene consist of a sequence of 2, 3, 4, or 5 bases, depending on what trait it codes for. Let's suppose the gene for "1 seed yield" is "SE". Checking the example genome, you can see that this hypothetical flax will give 1 seed per round. The seed gene is located on the right side of the genome, so if you are crossbreeding to increase the number of seeds a flax strain gives it could be wise to use this one on the right splint.
Useful genes can also overlap. Let's also suppose "FLFL" codes for "1 flax yield". In the example genome, this gene occurs 2 times in the sequence "FLFLFL" and that means this flax will give a 2 flax yield. The FLFLFL-sequence is on the left of the genome, so if you're aiming to increase the flax production it's a good idea to use this flax strain on the left splint.
When the parents' genomes combine during crossbreeding, it may happen that exactly half of each genome ends up in the child. But that is not always the case. It can also happen that for instance only the rightmost 4 bases of the right-side parent end up in the child, and 22 leftmost bases of the left-side parent. All other divisions are possible too, to the extreme case that the child gets the exact same genome as one of the parents. However, the chance of that happening is quite low. The more even splits have a much higher probability.
You might say "Hey, crossbreeding is easy if you know what the genomes are! Please tell me what the genomes of all plants look like!". Well, that's a bit of a problem. We will need a lot more research to find out about that. If you're interested in helping in this research, please make sure you keep careful notes on which parents you used, on what splint, and what the traits of the new crossbreed were. At least that will give you some insight in which genes are located on the left side and which on the right side of your parents. And that is already very helpful too.
Please note Egypt can now use Revelation Solvent to identify DNA sequences.