Crop Mutations (LoH)

Harvest Moon: Light of Hope has 17 varieties of crops that can mutate into new versions of themselves for a total of 172 crops: 81 crops and 81 great versions of the same crops. Some crops will trigger a mutation with very little effort on your part, but some others only mutate from already-mutated crops plus utilizing crop-specific fertilizer.

If the crop you're trying to mutate requires a special fertilizer, it must be applied at least once while the crop is growing. The mutation-triggering fertilizer doesn't need to be applied every day.

For crops that can be harvested multiple times (strawberry, corn, green pepper, hot pepper, squash, blueberry, watermelon, and asparagus), once the crop mutates into a new variety it will continue to produce the mutated crop. Regrowable crops have the chance to mutate each time they produce harvestable goods during the season they can mutate. For example, a Blueberry grown on swampy terrain during Winter (after using Berry Blend before the plant matures) might give Blueberry at first but then change to Cranberry the next time you harvest.

Crops that can be reharvested can also survive the season change if their health is high enough at the start of the new season. The Blueberry and Cranberry example from above can continue to produce well into Spring, though the Blueberry won't possibly mutate into Cranberry anymore.

Mutations
When the right conditions are met, crops can transform into new crops when they're ready to be picked. The plant's chances of mutating depends on the crop's health, the season, and the terrain. Crops that regrow (corn, green peppers, etc.) that do mutate will continue to produce the mutated crop, while one-time harvested crops (tomato, celery, etc.) will have to be planted after harvest for the mutation to possibly trigger again.

When a mutation triggers, the crop or flower will visibly be different than the crops around it. The farming friend thought bubble will display a "?" crop icon if you've never harvested that particular crop mutation before.

The parent crop that triggers the mutation might need to be planted in a season it doesn't like. For example, growing Strawberry during Winter can result in the crop changing into White Berry, but Strawberry is very unhappy when forced to grow during the harsh snowy weather. This is why daily use of Fertilizer is very important in this instance, so the Strawberry will survive long enough for harvest and possibly mutate into White Berry.

After you sell a specific number of mutations to the shipping bin, Sam (for crops), or Carol (for flowers), the seed vendors will being to sell the seeds for that mutation. Many of the second-generation crops can mutate into third-generation mutations. Mutating a mutated crop typically require more stringent criteria to trigger the mutation such as high crop health and specialty fertilizer.