enhancement of growth and alkaloid production in tissue cultures of peyote

[teonanacatl]

Yay it arrived today I had a decent read and flick through and the work he has done is great. I will summerise the relavent findings, people can ask further questions if they like.

Growth and alkaloid conc in the media rivaled growth of whole plant. The plants with the greatest relative growth contained the greatest total alkaloids 3% and mescaline 0.76% dry weight.

Changing day lengths

At a light intensity of 450uEs-1M-1, 24 celcius and 50% humidity. Zero hours of light per day gave lowest growth and lowest total alkaloids but greatest quantity mescaline/total alkaloids (3.17% total, 2.97% mescaline), 8 hour days gave better growth with greatly increased total alkaloid (7.26%) with 3.25% mescaline. 16 hour day gave comparable growth to 24 hour days, total alkaloid however was much greater (7.66 vs 4.95) with mescaline concs of 3.17 and 1.96 respectively.

Effect of monochromatic light

light intensity 0.35uEs-1M-2, 24 celcius and 50% humidity. Photoperiod 16/8.

Blue light had greatest dry growth index, second greatest fresh growth index, 3rd highest mescaline conc (1.12%) and total alkaloids (1.99%)

Green light had second highest dry growth index, 3rd fresh growth, lowest mescaline (0.78%) but second totalkaloid conc(2.10%).

Red had lowest fresh and dry growth index, highest mescaline and total alkaloid (2.20 and 2.78).

Far red had highest fresh growth index, 3rd dry, 2nd mescaline (1.27) and lowest total alkaloid (1.79)

growth index = (final wt- initial wt)/initial wt.

There is also mentioned how growth and alkaloid conc varies with media and precursor addition to media but I wont go into that.

Edited August 23, 2007 by teonanacatl

[teonanacatl]

So what does this mean? Looks like there is a photodependance for the production of some alkaloids, appears mescaline requires darkness to be synthesised, and the majority of the other alkaloids need light. Healthy growing plants have not only more biomass but proportionally more alkaloids. For growth under lights 16-24 hours per day would provide best growth, around 16/8 would provide most alkaloids, but 0 hours means all alkaloids is mescaline. Blue light best for growth, red for alkaloids and far red for both. Ideally full spectrum

Also as only stem cells were cultured it shows that N-methylated metabolites are capable of being synthesised in the stem rather then only the roots with subsiquent translocation to stem.

Conclusions, its tempting to draw some outside of the context of the study but these were tissue cultured plants. Such conclusions may include proof that keeping a cutting in darkness is good way of increasing mescaline relative to other alkaloids. Also the dark requirement of mescaline synthesis adds proof to the shade grown are best. Nothing can be drawn from stress related stuff, it would be tempting to say look fastest growers produced most mescaline but water stress was not tested so conclusions cannot be made in that regard.

[nothinghead]

Hmm, any ideas on how dark "darkness" is? Would shade mean a small amount of mescaline is synthesized but total darkness produces more? Or does only a "nighttime" level of darkness kick the synthesis into action?

[teonanacatl]

As you can see going from zero hours of light (complete darkness) to 8 hours produced a significant increase in total alkaloids but not much increase in mescaline. You can sort out the answer to your question.

Also should mention as these are tissue cultures they are do not require light for food, rather get that from the medium, but they can utilise the light, hwoever no analysis of chlorophyll contents was done.

[Osprey]

I don't know much at all about tissue culture, but it sounds almost like science fiction.

peyote growing in a dish in total darkness and being highest in mescaline growing without light.

Sounds kind of like mushroom cultivation.

A brave new world.

[Evil Genius]

Hi Teo, what kind of study is this? Is it a book or just a small paper? Where did you get it and is it still available? :-) bye Eg

[teonanacatl]

Its Obermeyers dissertation. $44 USD I think from UMI Dissertation services, catalog number 8922955.

Its about 185 pages long.

Lol Osprey indeed it is odd but think of the implications, grow lophs on peres or trichs but cover the loph part with something to block the light. As I said before perhaps the most obvious reprocussion is the leaving of trich cuttings in the dark for a month before use. However this study was on Lophs not trichs.

[Monk]

Nice! My mind is also wondering, if grown first in full sun for max growth/alk content, then left in shade/dark for a period of time..... hmmm. I wonder if the ration of mesc:alks is able to be changed like this without losing the overall higher alk content of sun grown.....

EDIT: Also, this could mean that plants receiving late afternoon sun (more red light) would be more potent than ones in morning sun, right? (hurrying to put plants on west side of house...)

Edited August 23, 2007 by FeloniousMonk

[nothinghead]

So it needs to be complete darkness, in which case Felonious your suggestion seems to be the best idea - grow for max size then leave in complete darkness for synthesis to occur. I wonder how well this all translates to non-tissue cultures.

[teonanacatl]

I dont believe there is a conversion of mesc to total alkaloids. The studies used plants grown completely in dark therefore all biomass was grown in dark, im not sure what would happen if you grew the plant then placed it there. It would be interesting to see if processors decreased the content in tissue, or if the new growth was just lower.

Unfortunatly the results under white light vs monochromatic light cannot be compared as they have the different intensities, therefore its impossible to know how the different wavelengths affect a plant with full spectrum.

Edited August 24, 2007 by teonanacatl

[nothinghead]

So is it certain whether mescaline levels can fluctuate? Tried to do a search on this but couldn't turn up anything that confirmed/denied that mescaline levels can decrease.

[teonanacatl]

Noone has looked at whether it can decrease, it cannot be translocated.

[gusto]

The short daylength / higher mesc correlation supports the native tradition of harvesting peyote during the short-day winter months.

[whiterasta]

I am not up for it but were someone to take a known variety and place two cuttings of the same mass one in bright light and one in complete darkness and bioassay it could at least be subjectively examined in Trichos.

You folks in OZ have some good varieties to experiment with in this fashion .

Good info and a peak into the process

WR

[trucha]

Just putting them on a 16/8 daylight cycle would be worth trying. It might be nice to try with them on their own roots?

Its not really a hard thing to do. Indoor cannabis cultivators do this sort of stuff all the time.

I finally got a copy of this the other day.

Its an interesting paper but one of the most interesting things I noticed was how much trouble they had studying the metabolism of alkaloid production due to the choice of culture approach interfering with alkaloid sequestering.

The stuff they tried to prevent happening (formation of new plants) seems a really valuable path for species propagation? I know some other people have taken that farther of course.