Agriculture

Agriculture is the process of growing Photonate species in a controlled environment for use as food products. Many species have been engineered specifically for this purpose through artificial selection or direct gene editing.

Slimeweed Farming
The beginnings of agriculture occurred 597 million Earth-years ago when Protopyronates living on Reldiga experimented with planting Slimeweed sprouts on various rock types to discover which mineral composition resulted in the fastest growth. This research allowed the nomadic Protopyronates to select optimal migration paths and leave behind small plots of Slimeweed sprouts that they could later return to when the organisms had matured. The resulting consistency in food supply led to an increase in population, up to about 4000 individuals.

New Continents, New Crops
After the Great Migration, new Photonate species were discovered on the other continents, many of which had a much higher energy density than Slimeweed. The enormous variation between individuals of some of these species led to speculation that another factor besides nutrition was controlling their appearance. Protopyronates were familiar with the spawning process of Photonates, and noticed that individuals in close proximity to each other tended to have more in common, suggesting that the features of the parent organisms influenced the features of their sprouts, but with minor changes between generations. This revelation led to experiments in selective breeding. Photonates were initially bred for traits such as growth time, energy density, and adaptability to different weather conditions. Once these traits had been nearly optimized, the Protopyronate farmers began breeding for lower mutation rates, in order to reduce the percentage of the crop that had to be culled due to inferior traits.