No, I can't see it would be a good crop at all, at least with the kind of improvement you might make in a few generations. It looks like obsessive folly to me.

Observe that every tree-crop we currently have, the object harvested is quite economically valuable, much more valuable than the object harvested off grasses, and other easily mechanically harvested crops with high yield/area (eg, grapes for conversion to juice/wine, beans, etc). To be worth cropping as a tree crop, you need to improve it so much that each cone is as economically valuable as an olive, almond, cherry, pine-nut, etc. If the cone is only as economically valuable as a grain of wheat, it won't be worth harvesting. Though the value at which it can be economically harvested falls if, as for example with the olive, you can just spread a sheet and shake the tree.

Chestnuts were formerly cultivated to be converted to flour as a staple in Corsica and some other places of that climate. But this became uneconomic in comparison to grain crops, and chestnuts are now only cultivated as chestnuts, with the high value/small volume associated with a high price nut crop.

Likewise monkey puzzle was originally cultivated as a staple in the Araucania region of Chile and adjacent areas of Argentina. The monkey puzzle nut is far larger than most other coniferous nuts, in fact each nut is the size of a chestnut, and the cones are massive with plenty of nuts per cone. Despite this fortunately huge bounty of huge cones with huge nuts, despite it being a wonderful timber tree, despite it happily growing in cooler areas unsuited for the economic eucalyptus/radiata forestry of Chile, despite the desirability of restoring the much depleted monkey puzzle forests of Chile, the monkey puzzle nut has been reduced to a rare curiosity in Chilean markets.

Another issue is getting the stuff to be desirable enough. Nile perch were introduced to Lake Victoria to be an economic fishery. They have bred splendidly. Now I think the Nile perch is very tasty, but the locals don't, they consider it low grade fish which has sadly outcompeted the fish they consider really tasty, and so it has underperformed as an economic fishery.

Growing rice in Madagascar is a pretty mad thing to do, because of teh environmental damage required to succeed with it in most areas of the island, some favoured areas of teh wet eastern coastal strip excepted perhaps. But rice is considered such a desirable food by the population that the attempt to persuade them to grow less environmentally damaging wheat, etc, has had limited success. Likewise, Ethiopians love their teff.

Now if you succeed in converting the alder cone into something like an ear of maize, you might just be onto something. But I think it took a very long time for the ear of maize to be bred from something the size of an alder cone. Then there can be other issues: one essential change in the evolution of commercial wheat was the loss of a gene that made the stem shatter the moment the ear was ripe, causing the ear immediately to fall to the ground before you had time to harvest it. With that gene gone, you could now practically harvest it. Even if you do breed something of high economic value, you will have your work cut out persuading people that this is a desirable thing to eat, so that they will pay you enough to justify its cultivation. Do you know the PFAF (plants for a future) database. It is studded with wonderful plants of good food value that for some reason or other just don't get cultivated on any scale.