Xenobotanist

The Department
Arguably one of the most dangerous places, Xenobotany deals with the growth, maintenance, study and splicing of plants.

The Machines
Inside your laboratory are several machines that you will need to learn to use in order to get anywhere.

Flora Data Disk
One of the primary tools you will use. Alone, it is not very useful - however, when used with the two below machines, it becomes the tool with which you will splice plants together to create the final target result of your choice. Should the disk hold data you do not find valuable, you can activate it to clear out it's content - and it will be good as new. Note that any gene data stored on a disk is perfectly preserved and never decays, regardless of how many time it is spliced into a plant.

Lysis-isolation Centrifuge
This machine, when a disk is inserted, is capable of completely extracting and sequencing the genetic code present in a plant's seed (or a mushroom's spore). Once that is done, you may load one specific gene onto the disk - after which it will automatically eject. Note, however, that a genetic sample is not stable - the more you extract from it, the more integrity it will lose, to the point where it will not be viable. Most plant genomes can usually survive two to three extractions before requiring a fresh sample.

Bioballistic Delivery System
One of the more useful machines, it allows you to inject a gene sequence directly into a viable plant seed, which will result in whichever traits the sample held to be transferred over. For instance - should you find the genetic enzyme that allows berries to grow in bushes, and inject it into a wheat seed, that seed will then be capable of growing bushes that are capable of growing wheat repeatedly.

However, a single seed can only take so much alteration - too much modification would render it sterile, dead. The machine will prevent this from happening, however - and will prevent you from altering a seed this far. Fresh seeds, extracted from fresh fruit, however, are fully stable regardless of how modified the parent seed was - and so it is possible to completely change a plant through an iterative process of modification and growth.

Seed Dispenser
Dispenses the base seeds needed for your job. Beware, however - it has limited stores, and so if you want to avoid running out of them, you should generate new ones out of existing fruit.

NutriMax
Contains the chemicals that you need/want to help manage your plants. Essentially identical to Hydroponics.

SmartFridge
Store your fruit here. Your seeds too, if you're lazy and don't care about seeing seed stats.

Biogenerator
A very useful machine. By feeding it your useless plant matter, you can generate all manners of items - from more nutriment to leather items to synthetic meat (for whichever purpose you could need it).

Seed Extractor
Self-explanatory. Give it a harvested plant and it will give you a few packets of seeds.

The Tools
There are several tools you may want to use.

Getting Started
First, follow Guide to Hydroponics to get your plants growing.

Once that's done, there are three paths you may follow:

Splicing
Difficulty: Easy Potential: Low

The simplest. Using the plants available to you, you carefully craft the ultimate plant of your desire. The process is simple: grow a plant, get it's seeds, extract a gene using the Centrifuge mentioned above. Grow another different plant, take it's seeds and splice the first plant's gene in using the injection machine. Use the plant analyzer to know what you have changed.

Mutate
Difficulty:Medium Potential: Medium

A basic initiation to exotic plants. Using some mutagen (Radium is the most common, and most readily available as Glowshrooms produce it) in the plant's mixture, note the changes that they go through. Two things to take note of however: most mutagens will QUICKLY kill your plants, and you may require some protection (gasmask/botanist's gloves, most notably) to work with certain plants that will appear.

There ARE other mutagens than Radium, obviously. Someone with experience in chemistry may know more.

The biggest challenge

Design
Difficulty:High Potential:Extreme

A mixture of the two above. You design a plant by splicing genes in... but now you have the full repertoire of what a plant can achieve, and thus the hardest part becomes breeding your plants to have the genes you desire.

Kudzu
Kudzu will spread out of their tray and onto the ground. Normal ones aren't so bad - just a pain to get rid of. But beware of modifications - they have spines, and they will inject you with whatever chemical they hold - be it the dylovene a normal plant holds, or some cyanide you made it produce. Try to splice it with a plant that doesn't grow so much.

Atmospherics
During some of your mutations, you may encounter plants that create gasses. Most of which you can't breathe. Making sure that you are protected (such as with a gas mask and a labcoat) and flipping the lid immediately to ensure you are not locked in.

Spines/juiciness/instability
Some fruits you will mutate will have one of these properties. All three of them have the potential to be very bad - much like the kudzu, these can apply any chemical they hold onto you (and, when thrown, the latter two explode, spreading their contents everywhere). Always wear a pair of botanists' gloves before handling such fruit.