Plume Squash

Plume Squash is a crop food item produced by Plume Squash Plants. A domesticated plant produces 4,000 kcal every 9 cycles, or 444 kcal/cycle on average, while a wild plant produces 111 kcal/cycle. This makes it a relatively dense plant food, especially when compared to other fully automated food sources.

Duplicants can eat Plume Squash directly to restore calories, but it has Food Quality 0 and is therefore a Terrible meal on its own. Its main advantage is efficiency: Plume Squash is one of the most calorie-dense foods that can be produced fully automatically, with no duplicant labor required once the farm is set up. That makes it particularly useful for long-term food systems and for setups that prioritize labor savings over meal quality.

Plume Squash also has a cooking use. 4,000 kcal of Plume Squash plus 1,000 g of Tallow can be processed in the Deep Fryer into 5,400 kcal of Squash Fries, increasing the food’s calorie total by 1,400 kcal and its Food Quality by 3. This turns a low-quality crop into a much better meal, while still keeping the ingredients relatively simple.

It is not only for duplicants. Several critters can eat Plume Squash as well:

• Hatches consume 700 kcal/cycle of Plume Squash and convert it into 131.3 g/cycle of Coal.
• Sage Hatches consume 700 kcal/cycle and convert it into 175 g/cycle of Coal.
• Bammoths consume 1,778 kcal/cycle and convert it into 30 kg/cycle of Bammoth Patty.

Because both the plant and the harvested food are usable by critters, Plume Squash can serve as a flexible intermediate food in ranching systems as well as in colonies that rely on automated agriculture. In practice, one average duplicant requires about 2.25 Plume Squash Plants if eating the crop directly, or about 1.66 Plume Squash Plants if the harvest is converted into Squash Fries.

In the game files, Plume Squash is referred to as “Carrot.”