Tutorial:Crops and Cross-Breeding

## Introduction

This tutorial will give you an in-depth look into IndustrialCraft 2 crops, the cross-breeding of plants, and the extensive agriculture system.

Before we get started, you will need all the stuff you would normally for a farm: a flat area of land, a hoe, water, and some seeds.

## Crops

First, we'll make some Crops. The Crop block allows for seeds to be placed inside to grow, or another crop block can be placed on it to cross-breed 2 adjacent plants.

## Weeds

Weeds are a destructive and invasive plant that will grow on open crop blocks. When weeds fully mature, they can spread to other crop blocks, destroying other plants.

There are currently 2 ways to deal with weeds:

## Weeding Trowel

A  Weeding Trowel can be used to remove weeds from a crop block without needing to break the crop. The weeds will be dropped, and can be used to make  Bio Chaff.

**Recipe**

## Weed-Ex

Weed-EX prevents weeds from growing on open crop blocks. However, **Weed-EX will cap the stats of the crop** inside the crop block it was used on at 10.

### Recipe

**Grin Powder**

**Weed-EX**

### Usage

While holding Weed-Ex, *right-click* on a Crop to apply it. It can also be placed in a  Crop-Matron to automatically apply it to your crops. **Overuse will reduce crop quality**, capping their stats at 10.

## Fertilizer

Fertilizer is advanced bone-meal created by crafting bone-meal with scrap in a shapeless recipe. It can be used with Crop Blocks to speed up the growth process.

Every Crop keeps track its own nutrients. Fertilizer adds 100 to this value, if it is currently <= 100. Maintaining a higher nutrient value may be required for some more advanced plants to grow and it also likely affects growth of plants. The nutrient value decreases over time if there is a crop planted in the crop block. Some biomes also affect crop nutrition.

Bonemeal can also be used to fertilize plants, however is unknown how much it increases the nutrient value.

The nutrient value of a Crop can be found by *right-clicking* on it with the  Cropnalyzer.

## Seed Bag

**Seed Bags** are a type of seed that is sometimes dropped by plants grown on a Crop block. These can be analyzed in the  Cropnalyzer to reveal the Crops growth, gain, and resistance stats. They are only dropped by plants in Crop blocks and are used in cross breeding to breed better plants. Planting two hybrid seed bags in Crop blocks with a cross-breeder Crop block between them will combine the two plants characteristics.

## Cropnalyzer

The Cropnalyzer is used to analyze Seed Bags.

**Recipe**

## Cross-Breeding

Cross breeding is accomplished by placing a second crop block onto an empty crop block between two crops.

### Coffee

Crossbreeding coffee beans is done in three steps:

1. Crossbreed two sugarcane into Stick Reed
2. Crossbreed two Stick Reed into Ferru
3. Crossbreed two Ferru into Coffee Beans
	* **Note:** Ferru needs an iron ore block underneath it to fully mature.

Look for more about coffee and its effects here

### Hops

Hops are one of the more difficult crops to breed. They can be cross bred using these combinations:

* Nether Wart x Nether Wart
* Nether Wart x Stickreed
* Stickreed x Stickreed

## Crop-Matron

The Crop-Matron will automatically fertilize, hydrate, and spray Weed-EX on crops in a 9x9 area (with the Crop-Matron in the center).

## Crop Harvester

Once you have bred enough of a plant that you want to start farming it, you can build a Crop Harvester. The Crop Harvester does just what the name implies, it will harvest crops in an 11x11x3 area, and eject them into the first available adjacent inventory.

The Crop Harvester harvests all types of crops (provided that they are planted in Crops, not directly on farmland) in an 9x9x3 area (4 blocks from each side horizontally, 1 block vertically). It has a small internal inventory and can eject items into an adjacent inventory with a  Ejector Upgrade. Some crops require a Cropnalyzer to harvest correctly. For instance potatoes if grown too much will turn into poisonous potatoes. Provided a Cropnalyzer the Crop Harvester will ensure the potatoes being harvested in time.