Spindly Grubfruit Plant

Spindly Grubfruit Plant is the unboosted form of the Grubfruit plant family. When it grows without any Divergent critters in the farm, it produces Spindly Grubfruit instead of Grubfruit. With a Divergent critter present, the plant is cared for and becomes the normal Grubfruit Plant, which yields the higher-calorie crop.

A healthy Spindly Grubfruit Plant produces one Spindly Grubfruit worth 800 kcal every 4 cycles. That works out to 200 kcal per cycle on average, so it is a notably less efficient food source than the normal Grubfruit Plant. After harvest, the plant immediately reverts to its Spindly Grubfruit Plant state, and any care bonus it had remains on the plant; if it is cared for again, its growth progress carries over at half value into the normal Grubfruit Plant state.

Spindly Grubfruit itself is edible and can be cooked into Roast Grubfruit Nut with no extra ingredient. This improves the yield to 1200 kcal and gives it a shelf life of 32 cycles, but the resulting food quality is only Poor [+1]. By comparison, the normal Grubfruit can be turned into Grubfruit Preserve with Sucrose, yielding 2400 kcal and Good [+3] food quality, though that version depends on having a Divergent critter in the farm.

• Farming Spindly Grubfruit Plant must be done without Divergent critters in the farm.
• It is a lower-calorie variant of the Grubfruit crop, but it is easier to rely on because it does not require critter care.
• Each harvest gives 800 kcal every 4 cycles, which means roughly 5 plants per duplicant if eaten raw.
• Cooking it into Roast Grubfruit Nut raises its practical food value to 300 kcal per cycle on average, enough for about 3.33 plants per duplicant.
• Like Grubfruit, it is much more efficient to store after cooking than as a raw crop, since raw Grubfruit-family foods have poor shelf life and food storage in ration boxes and refrigerators is mass-based.

In practice, Spindly Grubfruit Plant is the fallback production method for this crop line. It is useful when a farm lacks Divergent critters or when the player wants a simple, self-contained food source without spending Sucrose on preserve production.