Colchicine

[Mt Toaker]

I'm currently reading Methods of Plant Breeding By Herbert Kendall Hayes and he has some discussion of Polyploids and being able to create them through a solution of Colchicine at 1% or less. I haven't heard of anyone using this in cannabis but through some reading in the book it seems as though inducing polyploidy would be beneficial to cannabis cultivators through allowing more vigorous growth and larger yields.

Has anyone used this? What were the results like? I didn't know where to put this and figured the Strains and Hybrids section would reach out to those members who know what I'm talking about.

I think the hardest part about using it would be sourcing the colchicine, but from the reading it sounds like you can soak seeds in a solution and it will induce polyploidy.

 

[metadoneth]

I believe Matt Riot claims his Clockwork Orange strain was developed from a plant that was part of a colchicine experiment..... I personally don't know anything about it but you may want to do some looking into that...

 

[D.S. Toker. MD]

I used it in the mid 70's Mt Toaker. I went to the doctor, got a perscription for 10 yellow tablets and then followed the instructions provided by Mel franks.

I soaked the seeds in a solution and about 1/3 of the plants growing from those seeds demonstrated varied qualties. Varigation, trifolation and most common is unorthadox production of branches and leaves. Very similar to what you would see with a reveg - stems and leaves going in every direction.

I had a test group of 4 plants that were not treated with the cochicine for comparison and i saw no observable difference in potency between the 2. Its highly unadvisable to smoke that first generation becasuse the chochicine is present in the plant. I did and my shit turned neon green for a week.

Its my view their is no advantage to a polyploid plant. There are several on the market: Sour Bubble is clearly a polyploid and is a disasterous specimen of a plant for outdoor growers like myself. Thick, double vegetation en masse which harbors every disease known to cannabis. Yeild is increased in many instances. Polys should always be grown indoors.

Its not for me, but who knows,maybe others had a differnt experience.

 

[Jeff Johnson]

In 1974, I learned in my junior high biology class that this would double the chromosones of a plant.
We stole some from Mr Meyers at Anoka Senior high, and grew nice plants. Then he told us that the first generation would be toxic.
Someone ripped our grow in August. I often think of those thieves, and wonder if they are ok.

 

[guest121295]

You can usually find colchicine in your father in laws medicine cabinet.I did.I thought it was used for sex reversal to induce a female to produce male pollen?

 

[roach]

Colchicine is not used anymore, its very ineffective and higly poisonous, today Oryzaline ( the main ingredient in the herbicide Surflan) is used, its much safer and much more effective

i use it alot for breeding Lilium, and its very easy to use, but getting the doze and exposure time right is a bit tricky, too little and nothing happens or only part of the plants cells will be polyploid giving you mutated plants, and too much and the plants all die.
Using seeds to treat is also very ineffective since 1 seeds contains alot of cells and they all have to be affected equaly by Oryzaline or you will end up with a mix of different ploidity, and normal cells divide faster than the polyploid cells so you will end up with a weird looking plant that eventualy reverts back to normal ploidity. Its far more effective to treat single cells in vitro, but ofcourse also requires a bit more equipment, another option is to treat the growtips and then take cuttings, but you realy want to treat as few dividing cells as possible as that will increase your chances of getting a full tetraploid (as you need all the cells treated to be converted and not just half of them, so fewer = bigger chance they all get converted), but it might only be 1 in 1000 that will actualy be a true tetraploid, and the only way to be sure it worked is to dye the chromosomes and count them under a microscope, alternativly you can also messure the stomata size on the underside of the leaves but its not as foolproof as counting chromosomes

D.S. Toker. MD: the plants you made yourself where clearly not tetraploids, they might have been mixoploids at best (a mix of cells with different ploidity), and your description of Sour Bubble sounds nothing like its a polyploid, but sounds more like poor breeding, and where do you get the idea that poly´s should only be grown indoors?

Do a little research, chromosome doubling is used with great succes in most plant breeding

this should give you s little idea of how to use Oryzalin http://members.tripod.com/~h_syriacus/tetraploidy.htm

i might post more later, just woke up and my brain is not working yet

 

[roach]

oh and about the danger of smoking treated plants, well since you only treat a few cells with a VERY diluted solution, and that then gets diluted even further as the plants grow, the amount of either colchicine or oryzalin that would be present in the buds you smoke is so little i doubt you could even messure it, but you should always make seeds, its the only way to make sure your plants stay tetraploid, in most cases the normal non poly cells will take over again in a treated plant, but crossing 2 tetraploid plants will give you 100% tetraploid plants that stay that way, crossing a tetraploid with a diploid (normal non treated plant) will give mostly triploids (3 sets of chromosomes) and they a mostly sterile, but useualy also the most vigorous

 

[guest121295]

So Roach, what does this treatment do to the plants?What actually happens and why is it beneficial? I'll look into it but you seem to have a grasp on the subject and I wouldn't mind listening to the potential scenario.Thanks.

 

[roach]

explained realy simple it prevents the cells from completing mitosis, mitosis is when the cell divides into 2 exact copies, but instead of ending up with 2 normal cells, you get 1 big cell with the double amount of chromosomes (if everything goes as planned)

there is a simple animation here that shows you what mitosis is, and colchicine and oryzalin is pretty much just preventing the last step from happening http://www.cellsalive.com/mitosis.htm (for the stoned ones, remember to press play on it )

and yes colchicine is very dangerous for humans, and all skin contact should be avoided, it naturaly comes from Colchicium autumnale, but Oryzalin is much safer and easier to get

i am realy bad at explaining things like this, english is not my first language, but please ask if there is something you dont understand

 

[Bobby Stainless]

There is a section on it in the book Marijuana Botany.

Most seeds don't survive the soaking process.

 

[Mt Toaker]

Thanks for all the great information. There has been no information about cannabis in the book I'm reading, its mostly for the breeding aspect. Only information of cannabis is that it has 10 chromosomes. . . Roach, for English not being your first language you did a pretty good job I believe. Thanks for the info again.

 

[D.S. Toker. MD]

D.S. Toker. MD: the plants you made yourself where clearly not tetraploids, they might have been mixoploids at best (a mix of cells with different ploidity), and your description of Sour Bubble sounds nothing like its a polyploid, but sounds more like poor breeding, and where do you get the idea that poly´s should only be grown indoors?

Do a little research, chromosome doubling is used with great succes in most plant breeding

roach, the a large portion of the treated plants demonstrated growth similar to that of reveg with dense, abnormal growth. Any attempt to grow anything like that around here is called a failed crop.
My days are 95 degrees with 70% humidity during the day and 90% at night. Any efffort to grow a cannabis plant with dense vegetation here is a fools effort.

The only thing i wanted doubled was potency and its my view that splitting chromosomes wont ever accomplish tht.

Ps. I have peony's, roses and other garden cultivars that are beautiful, but cannabis is a differnt animal

 

[roach]

roach, the a large portion of the treated plants demonstrated growth similar to that of reveg with dense, abnormal growth.

i still think thats because your plants wasnt 100% tetraploid, some cells will have 2 pairs of chromosomes, some 4 and some 3½ etc, and they all grow at different rates and have different sizes, giving you mutated plants, its very comon when you try to convert seeds rather than meristems or single cells

Any attempt to grow anything like that around here is called a failed crop.
My days are 95 degrees with 70% humidity during the day and 90% at night. Any efffort to grow a cannabis plant with dense vegetation here is a fools effort.

polyploid plants are often much larger than diploid, having more and denser foliage, and often also more "brittle" foliage, im guessing its because the cells are twice as big and therefor making it a less durable structure (alot of small brick are more flexible than a few large ones), and i can see why thats not ideal in a warm humid climate

The only thing i wanted doubled was potency and its my view that splitting chromosomes wont ever accomplish that.

doubling the chromosomes will not double the potency, only the size, sadly

im not realy sure there is any benefit to polyploid cannabis, they generaly are more vigorous, larger, looks more healthy, but, you might end up with bigger buds, but the plant will also be alot bigger, and i dont need bigger plants indoor, they are large enough as it is, and without having tested it i think a 1m high diploid plant will yield as much a 1m high tetraploid plant, its only if you have the option to just let them grow into trees outdoors i can see the benefit, you will also get alot more leafs and stalks with the tetraploids, might have to do the experiment at some point, but without fancy (or fancier than i have) lab equipment converting cannabis is alot harder than Liliums (in lilium you just use a bulb scale, new bulbs grow from single cells along the broken edge, so you only need to convert one cell that then grows into a full plant, but in a seed you need to get many cells converted(all of the cells inside the seed))

only advantage i could see was for the seed companies, if they crossed a tetraploid with a diploid they would get triploids, and they are sterile, so you cant make your own seeds with them, and would have to buy new each year (think sterile autos )

end of stoned rant, off to bed

 

[Mt Toaker]

Interesting. I'm glad this sparked some good conversation. . . My thoughts behind this would be further down the road but I'm thinking it could be useful at some point. Right now the projects I have in the back of my head would be in isolating CBD rich traits in strains, not sure if this could be used in that at all but who knows. I'm not nearly educated enough to be doing it quite yet.

 

[Backwoods Bud]

I remember an old Dragnet episode that was about a guy who stole gout medication "colchicine" for his cannabis growing.

 

[roach]

Hey Mt Toaker, about breeding with polyploids there are some possible advantagesl, you have the double amount of chromosomes and therefor also alot more combination possibilities, in a diploid cross between 2 homozygote plants (AA x BB) you will get all AB plants, and in the next generation (AB x AB) you will see that mendel was right and you get AA, BB and AB plants.

now chromosome double the 2 original parents above and you get AAAA and BBBB, crossing those together should give you all AABB plants, but in the next generation the fun starts, as you can get AAAA, AAAB, AABB, ABBB etc etc, now imagine if your tetraploid parents where ABCD and EFGH, crossing those 2 together and making F2´s would give you endless recombination possiblities, and you might be able to see different traits that would normaly never show up together, but if there is any advantages to it i dont know

my only experience with tetraploids is with Liliums, and i have seen color combination and shades of color in my tetraploid lilies that i have never seen in the diploid ones, so you might be able to break up some of the "locked" traits with tetraploids, but this is just based on my limited experiences and stoned thinking, and not from any scientific book

 

[Mt Toaker]

Exactly roach, thats what my interest in this process. More chromosomes = more variety, which I figure would give new insight to the properties available in the plant. My thought would be to take 2 strong strains cross them then do the process to the first generation of the cross, then begin breeding to exploit the traits. The reason for the cross is hoping hybrid viggor would help make them stronger to up the success rate. This is all far down the road with me though, I have a lot to learn about breeding before I am going to even attempt to work with these products. I figure if I start asking good questions early I'll learn more in the long run.

 

[roach]

I have this article from The North American Lily Society (quarterly bulletin Vol. 62 No. 1 Dec 1. 2008) about tetraploid liles, its realy interresting and gives some ideas about breeding with tetraploids, i know its not about cannabis but it doesnt realy matter

I dont have a scanner and im stoned, so instead of writing it all i just took some pictures with my phone, so i apologise for the bad quality but i hope its still readable, and if not i will try and find a scanner

There is a glosary at the end explaining alot of the things where i useualy just go mhmm and look like i know what they mean