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http://www.lapshin.org/cultivar/N18/exp-e.htm

EXPERIMENTS

By Konstantin Samis'ko

My name is Konstantin Samis'ko, I live in Beketovo village, Crimea, Ukraine. Cacti are my hobby for more than 10 years.

One year ago I decided to make a little experiment. I put seedlings germinated in the winter of 2001-2002 to the shocks of different nature.

As the subject for experiments I chose Astrophytum myriostigma, Setiechinopsis mirabilis and Mammillaria lanata. The most sensitive were Astrophytums (photo 3-8). To the contrary Mammillarias essentially didn't react.

exp3.jpgexp4.jpg

The shocks over seedlings were:

  • electrical discharge (piezoelectric lighter);
  • exposure to photo flashes from the distance of 1-2 cm;
  • low temperature (3-5 minutes in a freezer).
exp5.jpgexp6.jpg

exp7.jpg The first shock was made about 1 week after germination. First I joined one plate of the lighter to a wire and put the end of the wire into the soil. Then I placed other plate 2-3 mm over seedling, made 3-4 shots (discharges) and moved to other seedling. Consequently I treated all seedlings. Immediately after that I exposed the whole dish with seedlings to the impact photoflash 10 times. Finally I put seedlings into a freezer. Altogether there were four treatments one week apart.

Strangely there were almost no deaths neither slowing down in growth during the experiment. After 4th treatment the results showed up – many seedlings of Astrophytum looked very unusually.

It was unusual that there was no meristem. Ribs and areoles also were indistinguishable. After grafting on Pereiskiopsis they started to grow quickly. The most of them became normal, some (both grafted and on own roots) formed up to 4 heads (photo 3-5).

exp8.jpg Some grafted specimens were covered by small plantlets like cloning callous tissue (photo 6-7).

One plant formed big knobs on the ribs (photo 8).

Seedlings of Setiechinopsis reacted only after few months. The reaction was a polytomy – some of seedlings had up to 4 heads. Mammillarias just formed side shoots what is uncharacteristic for this species and age (5 specimens out of almost 200 seedlings).

Unfortunately I didn't make detailed notes and didn't divide seedlings into different groups per kinds of treatments plus control group. So the results of experiment should be considered preliminary.

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I would imagine these plants would have given their left nut to turn tables on this 'researcher' and see how he 'mutated' after being shocked, strobe flashed & frozen....

Just because humans fail so miserably at communicating with plants, does not mean they aren't sentient.

sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, which is held to entail certain rights.

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If you lean in close enough you'll hear them screaming "KILL MEEEEEEEE"

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has anyone tried irradiating cati seeds and growing them out for interesting mutations?

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Makes me want to try the mobile phone trick on a big bag of seeds :) Maybe expose them to a string quartet mix-up with short bursts of death-metal-punk

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Harr Harr Harr! :devil: And the voltraping takes over the cactusworld...

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Yes Evil,... the voltraping trends slowly but surely...,.... but WAIT.. it's a Ukranian guy...... maybe it's not the voltraping that does it,... maybe it's because his village borders on Tsjernobyl that his cacti grow deformities ;-)

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I wonder if hormone tricks might increase monster induction.

Auxin transport inhibitors (the hormones, not the bastards that wont let me thumb a ride) have been documented to promote fasciation in plants and adding 10,000 volts to that might be worth an attempt, as might including an anti-gibberellin like paclobutrazol in the mix.

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has anyone tried irradiating cati seeds and growing them out for interesting mutations?

Sydney Botanic Gardens sent a load of Clivia seeds to Japan (way before the Tsunami!) to be irradiated and they had limited success, but a few new clonal varieties were created. I'm not sure how public the experiment was made, or if you can access the scientific papers though. Might be worth doing a search.

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2,4-D has been used by some in tissue culture to induce mutations. Its relatively easy to get access to it as it's sold as a herbicide.

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I've been looking for some radiation, all i can get my hands on are Americum-241, found in smoke detectors. And this type of material only emits alpha radiation and a bit of gamma, so i will have to have it real close to it. Anyone know where to get radioactive material from?

Thanks for the post woof woof woof*

Edited by gr33ntea

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has anyone tried irradiating cati seeds and growing them out for interesting mutations?

http://www.lapshin.org/cultivar/list-e.htm

the link above gives a list of interesting articles and there are a number invovling radiation of seeds to get coloured mutations etc.

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That post may attract the wrong type of american attention, gr33n :P

One tactic may be to use one of those UVC sterilizing lamps to kill 95% of pre-soaked seeds. If large enough numbers are done there may be some interesting survivors.

Its also a method that wont get you sent to guantanamo bay for 67 years.

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convert on of the mozzie zap rackets to a cactus seedling zapper

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"where can I get my hands on radioactive material". LOL. fuckin SAB making me laugh

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check this one out! http://mieuxprevenir.blogspot.com/2013/05/denmark-9th-grade-class-experiments.html WIFI radiation...... you may guess where my bridgesii seedlings are standing now. .

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Anyone know where to get radioactive material from?

Must be time to call in the experts...

post-8867-0-83069400-1369791454_thumb.jp

qefqef.jpg

qefqef.jpg

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ok,...owww wait did you guys read about the watercress experiment in Denmark.... WIFI kills and mutates the seedlings,..... so I decided to put some 6 month old seedling bridgesii to the test,..... first I put them a few days near the wifi router,....... then I decided today,... maybe they need some microwave zapping.... so I did that,... then after that I thought,... maybe I should put them in the freezer for like 10 minutes,.... so I put them in the freezer and ......oops I forgot them there for about 7 hours....

let you guys know what happens to them............

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I've put thousands of trich seedlings in the freezer, it doesnt mutate 'em.

And some survive :)

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come on guys, we don't want out cacti to HATE us... do we?

Edited by Halcyon Daze
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I've put thousands of trich seedlings in the freezer, it doesnt mutate 'em.

And some survive :)

Yes Aux,... I am hoping they survive...... and I think my freezer is set to -4C so there is a chance........

was hoping that a combo of WiFi, microwave and freeze,... stressed them enough to perhaps cause a mutation. If they survive I might have to give them a heavy metal music treatment....... make some HATE BREED strains of trichocereus.

hmmm,..... a strong laser,.... or blast it with some short bursts of concentrated sunlight,..... hmmmm what to do next

Halcyon,.... the moment I get haunted by the cactus gods in my dreams,... I will stop. ;-)

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At one point I got me onea those UV-C sterilizer lamps and irradiated a bunch of 1-5 day old seedlings, 80% died and the remainder were scarred all over. None of the ones that continued to live and grow were mutants. I suspect it was just too late, too many cell divisions had occured. If the seed coats could be removed after a 1 hr soak that might have a better chance, better still would be to irradiate pollen with UV-C.

Perhaps some sort of mutagen. It might not be hard or particularly dangerous to form a non-volatile nitrosamine in solution and use it to presoak seeds. Something like N-nitrosophenylepherine would be easy to do but N-methyl-N-nitrosotryptamine would be funnier (and more mutagenic) though it may require a cosolvent.

Using (RS)-N-methyl-N-nitroso-3-phenyl-3-[4-(trifluoromethyl)phenoxy]propan-1-amine to make a monstrose bridgesii would just be ironic :P

...no prozac in my collection tho.

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