Artifical Exograft

An artificial exograft, or 'exograft' for short, is a plant which has been engineered such that its cuttings can breed true in specific artificial conditions.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Exograftation is distinct from the usual cloning of a whole plant or cultivation of a cutting from an existing plant in these sense that an exograft is, and was since conception, only ever the size of a cutting.

Genetics and Reproduction

While artificial exografts produce some of the same structures (and most or all of the useful bits) of the original species, they are very heavily genetically modified to survive in enclosed environments.

Ecology and Habitats

Artificial exografts are typically held in enclosed life support pods or hydroponics arrays due to their often very specific growing requirements.

Dietary Needs and Habits

One common tactic for preventing the accidental propagation of an invasive exograft is to 'code in' certain unique requirements for reproduction. For example, in the case of cocoa pod exografts, the plant requires a certain degree of direct heat to propagate - a degree of heat, in fact, that it would never encounter in its common growing grounds on Planet Evermorn and aboard space infrastructure. Similarly, a common fertilizer additive across all exograft pods in an array might mean that none of the cultivars will propagate outside of the creator's lab or commisioning crew's spacecraft unless explicitly desired.
Sometimes, another alteration will be imposed where exposure to another chemical will 'unlock' the ability for a given plant to produce 'true' seeds genetically identical to the exograft's plant of origin. This final measure will often be found in exografts held aboard colony ships, where soft terraforming of the destination planet may be required. Among the ESCI Revelation's exograft population, which is largely held in a Life Sciences space on the first level of the Administrative Ring, this is the case with the Evermornans' favorite species of giant apple.

Biological Cycle

In general, scientists creating exografts seek to alter their specimens such that seasonal variations are reduced or eliminated. This is to ensure a consistent supply of product as well as to reduce the number of different environments the exografts' containment pods must emulate. For example, an exograft designed to produce t'lokear berries for liquor production ideally won't have the same fly/bloom/land/die cycle of native t'lokear plants; for the exograft of the t'lokear, it is always fruiting season.

Additional Information

Uses, Products & Exploitation

This means that, to be economically feasible, an artificial exograft generally has to provide some sort of natural product which is at least as desirable as the food and air produced by spirulina or the clean water (in the form of juice) produced by other genetically-augmented fruit plants. Otherwise - at least aboard spacecraft, where space and mass are at a premium - artificial exografts will only rarely be found in comparison to other cultivars. Common exograft products include relatively rare foodstuffs (i.e. cocoa products), chemical reagents, medical biologics, and custom textiles (i.e. cotton with the strength of spider silk).