Vintage Mexican, Seed germination and Micro propagation techniques.

obione · Jun 12, 2018

OK here is my story. Some years ago Sam was dropping loads of free thai haze skunks that I managed to grow 7 beautiful males of (no girls, nice right) so the best one pollinated couple phenols of RQS Northern lights(I know It does not sound as much, but I can tell you to date this is some of the most penetrating indica stoned to the bone effect iv had from such a commercial_dont expect much strain, I guess that batch of seeds was outstanding)
Let me tell you that, it's maby because it's my own cross but I tested it against shanties afghan haze 3 times in the same indoor setup, and my cross wins in all the significant aspects except bud density, affect flavor and potency were all greater with a good margin, so I assume I have something special of my own. The only problem is these seeds have been stored for around 8 years by now in the worst conditions u can get(car glove box for 12 months, and more

and recently I managed to sprout a very badly looking mutant from 25 or so seeds. I don't have more than 50 left and I wanted to go for the f2 until I have a chance. So here I am at post 148 and I feel like you should highlight it and move it to page 1.
Thank you for the writings.

ahortator · Jul 3, 2018

Hi, What about the germination bomb and other methods and recipes. Have you got good results?

I have found this from other site:

Nov 4, 2014 #1
Ambre

Germinating old seeds is of great interest to me. I have a pretty good collection of seeds dating back to around 2003-2007 plus bag seeds that I saved from around 1996-98. All the seeds I saved from back in the 70's are long gone, sigh. I am using some of the old bag seeds for these experiments. They were stored initially in film canisters (with dessicant) at room temp until around 2000, when they went into the fridge.

Here is the original inspiration - I saved this post from the original Cannabis World forums years ago:

Through the university, I have been exposed to a 'germination bomb' that coincidentally was the same university Steve Tuck attended and learned the same technique (contrary to what he would tell you). Here's what he stated about it @ OG during his stint and simply, it is as follows:

"Also here's a free bone for all you old schoolers, while in collage me and a buddy developed a pressure bomb to open/germinate really old seeds. I have taught this trick to a few friends who were amazed at how well it works but neccesity is the mother of invention, here's how it works at home.

Take an old mayonaise jar and punch a hole in the top a little bit bigger than an aquarium bubbler hose, and run one through it, silicone all around hose on both sides and allow to dry overnight. Now put a little bubbler air blower in it with a stone on end. Now fill with water and 10 drops of superthrive or similar concentrated b1 solution. Next use 10 drops of DMSO per 8 oz.'s of water, float old seeds on top and screw lid on tight, run motor [aquarium air pump] for 24-48 hours to build a little pressure to imbibe fluid in seeds then place on 90 degree F wet dirt and they will usually get a good percentage of those with a spark left in them, let stay at that temp for 3-4 weeks in dirt as some may be slow to respond. You should be able to get DMSO from a pharmacy. And personally I like to add a little sugar water as old seed loses it's carbohydrates over time. If you cannot find B1, a kelp based mixture will work as well."

The nutrient solution he stated can, obviously, be replaced by the natural banquet of hormones in kelp (like 3LB & VC stated). This 'germination bomb' essentially covers each mode of seed scarification in heat, pressure, and water. The air pump provides constant agitation which in turns creates oxygen which is the most abundant element needing in root formation. I have improved my germination by easily 80% since using this technique. I grow solely landrace and heirloom cultivars so needless to say most seeds I posses are old and require special attention.

What's great about it is, that if the seeds sink - they're viable. And as I stated, this germination bomb covers all forms of scarification. In my mind, it is the ONLY way to germinate seeds.

And oh yea, DONT USE PAPER TOWELS! Yes, they may work and get the job done(for freshly produced hybrids). But it is an artifical medium and devoid of the microbes necessary to break down (tough, old) seed coats.

For a germination medium I use worm castings and mychorrizal innoculated perlite.

GERMINATION BOMB EXPERIMENTS

Initially, I was primarily interested in whether the seeds would germinate. Since the long-term goal is to pop some of the elite seeds in my collection, I will be germinating the seeds in medium. I will keep track of how many seeds actually grow as well as how many germinate.

I use pint size mason jars with metal lids. Since the air pump I am using has 4 ports, I run 4 jars in each experiment. One jar is a control, the other three jars have different strengths of whatever additive I am testing.

SUPPLIES NEEDED

Glass jars with tight screw-on lids. I use wide-mouth 1 pint Mason jars since replacement lids & rings are easy to get (the lids are going to rust, probably sooner rather than later)

Aquarium air pump
Small airstone for each jar
Air tubing
Silicone sealer
Drill
Drill bit the same size as the air hose
Wood block (scrap)

Parts.jpg

BASIC SETUP

To prepare the mason jar:
Set the lid on top of the piece of scrap wood to drill the hole in the lid. This greatly reduces the chances of getting sharp shards around the edge of the hole as you drill it. The hole in the lid needs to be just large enough to pass the air hose through. Put a small air stone on the end of the hose coming out the bottom of the lid. Set the lid on top of the jar & adjust the length of the hose inside the jar so that the airstone just touches the bottom of the jar. Seal around the hose on the top & bottom of the lid with silicone; allow to cure.

LidHoseStoneAssembled.jpg

The jars are filled halfway with water (8 oz). In general, I use reverse osmosis filtered water. The experiment with GA3 was done with distilled water because the instructions specified distilled.

Put in each jar (this amount to 8 oz water):

10 drops Superthrive
1cc food-grade molasses (from the grocery store, a previous experiment using horticultural molasses resulted in a problem with mold)
1 tsp 3% hydrogen peroxide

JarAssembled-Side.jpg

JarAssembled-Top.jpg

The jars are set on top of a seedling heat mat to keep them warm with a towel draped over the top to block light. Attach the air line to the air pump and plug the pump in/turn it on. .

2JarsBubblingCloseup.jpg

EXPERIMENT 1 - DMSO STRENGTH

A word of warning - DMSO is not something to handle casually. It can be dangerous. Before opening the bottle, wash your hands and any exposed skin thoroughly & put on rubber or surgical gloves; long sleeves are also a good idea. Be VERY careful not to get any on your skin. DMSO will take anything it comes in contact with (including anything that is on your skin) and help it to penetrate into your cells - this includes oil, gasoline, and everything else. The system below works reasonably well without the DMSO (unless your seeds are really old or were not stored well), but I suggest scuffing the seeds before putting them in the mix if you don't use it.

The first experiment I did was to see how various strengths of DMSO affected germination. DMSO can be found easily at Tractor Supply Co or most feed stores. DMSO facilitates penetration of the nutrients & amendments through cell walls/membranes into the seed - no scuffing required. This experiment was done using reverse osmosis (RO) filtered water.

Each mason jar has a different amount of DMSO per 8 oz of water:

Jar 1 - 5 drops DMSO
Jar 2 - 8 drops DMSO
Jar 3 - 10 drops DMSO
Jar 4 - 13 drops DMSO

The jar with 13 drops of DMSO had the best rate of root development. Of course, since the seeds are 18 years old & weren't stored well at the start, most of the seeds didn't develop beyond popping roots. Here are the results:

Jar 1 - 16 of 20 seeds cracked. 14 developed visible roots about 1/16 - 1/8" long
Jar 2 - 17 seeds cracked & all developed roots average 1/8" long
Jar 3 - 19 seeds cracked & developed roots average 3/16" long
Jar 4 - all 20 seeds cracked & developed roots average 1/4" long

Once the seeds had roots at about 1/4" long, I transferred them to seed starting trays with purchased sterile seed starting medium. I watered the seedlings with a dilute mix of nutes, Superthrive, & a bit of molasses. Most of them died, but 1 seedling from the jar with 10 drops DMSO grew & 2 seedlings from the jar with 13 drops DMSO grew. They were not the strongest seedlings, of course.

After running this experiment, I decided I wanted to test other mixes, so I will not be using as many seeds for future experiments. I want to use the same seeds for all experiments to eliminate that potential variable. If I keep using 20 seeds in each jar, I won't have enough seeds to complete all of my experiments. I am also going to germinate using my normal mix of perlite with a bit of vermiculite rather than using a purchased seed starting mix. I grow in an Ebb & Flow system, so it's easier for me to start the seeds in the same medium I will use for growing. I put the seeds into cups of perlite with a pinch of vermiculite around the seed.

Since the jar with 13 drops DMSO worked best, that will be included in my standard mix. The new mix is (this amount per 8 oz of water):

10 drops Superthrive
1cc molasses (from the grocery store, a previous experiment using horticultural molasses resulted in a problem with mold)
1 tsp 3% hydrogen peroxide
13 drops DMSO

EXPERIMENT 2 - GA3 STRENGTH

Using 90% GA3 powder, I created a 150ppm batch of GA3 by dissolving 1 scoop (1/32 tsp, 0.8 gram) GA3 in 0.5cc 91% rubbing alcohol in a shot glass. The alcohol evaporated as I was working on dissolving the powder, so I added more alcohol as needed (I used close to 1cc total). I then added the dissolved powder/alcohol mix to 16 oz distilled water. I used distilled water (purchased) for this entire experiment since the GA3 instructions specified it.

In addition to the base mix shown previously, I used the following:

Jar 1 - control, no GA3 (8 oz distilled water)
Jar 2 - 50ppm GA3 (5.333 oz distilled water & 2.666 oz of the 150ppm base mix GA3)
Jar 3 - 100ppm GA3 (2.666 oz distilled water & 5.333 oz of the 150ppm base mix GA3)
Jar 4 - 150ppm GA3 (8 oz 150ppm base mix GA3)

I put the seeds in a 1:20 mix of H2O2 & water (1/4 tsp H2O2, 5 tsp RO water) for 1/2 hour to kill pathogens on the shell before putting them in the pressure jars.

After 36 hours in the pressure jar, I put the seeds into cups to germinate:

Jar 1 - 4 of 5 seeds popped open, one not popped. One seed the shell was completely off and the cotelydon leaves were opening. The one that did not pop is in position 4 (bottom left); the one with leaves is in position 3 (center)
Jar 2 - All 5 seeds popped open with roots growing. One seed the shell was completely off and the cotelydon leaves were opening. The one with leaves is in position 3 (center)
Jar 3 - 4 of 5 seeds popped open, one not popped. One seed the shell was completely off and the cotelydon leaves were opening. The one that did not pop is in position 4 (bottom left); the one with leaves is in position 3 (center)
Jar 4 - All 5 seeds popped open, one just barely. One seed the shell was completely off and the cotelydon leaves were opening. The one that did not pop well is in position 4 (bottom left); the one with leaves is in position 3 (center)

Long term survival:

Jar 1 - 2 seedlings grew successfully. The seed that hadn't popped open never grew.
Jar 2 - 1 seedling grew beyond 1st set of leaves; very stretched - survived a couple of weeks but died. The other 4 grew but did not survive to grow 2nd set of leaves. All somewhat stretched.
Jar 3 - The others made it above ground, but stretched & ended up dying - from the center out, oddly. These died out second quickest. The seed that hadn't popped open never grew.
Jar 4 - The others made it above ground, but stretched a lot & ended up dying - from the center out. These died out quickest.

The GA3 did not seem to make a significant difference in the number of seeds that developed at least a root tip. The more GA3 in the mix, the shorter the eventual life of the seedling & the more stretch it experienced. The germination bomb without the GA3 seems to be the best long-term germination method.

Future Experiments:

I want to do another experiment with DMSO using 15, 18, and 20 drops per 8 oz of water. Since the strongest mix I tested at the beginning was the best, I want to find out if a stronger mix is better.

I want to try an experiment using IBA in the mix.

I would also like to test using different sources of nutrient for the older seed - molasses, sugar, kelp, mild mix of standard hydro nutrients

Last edited: Nov 4, 2014

bestothebest · Jul 3, 2018

Has anyone tried Woodshed13's (Instagram) seed cracker? it screws slowly down until the seed cracks, so that part of germination is already solved. I have heard good things about it as well.

beta · Jul 8, 2018

bestothebest said:
Has anyone tried Woodshed13's (Instagram) seed cracker? it screws slowly down until the seed cracks, so that part of germination is already solved. I have heard good things about it as well.

I used a small pair of needle-nosed vice grips to do the same thing. Just close the handles and use the adjustment screw to tighten the jaws down on the edge of the seed, it's slow and perfect.

ahortator · Jul 9, 2018

I have seeds from a landrace sativa from Indonesia but they have a problem that they don't germinate even fresh. I have seen the new seeds which fall from the plant to the floor in the winter rains, they germinated very well. But the mature seeds you collect and wait to grow them a few weeks later, as like any other strain, those seeds fail to sporut. You get germination % about 5-10% in seeds that were harvested and properly dried, like any other strain, only a few months before.

I have stopped to grow them because they fail. Now they are not specially old, and they have been kept in the fridge with rice as dessicant in a ziplock bag which I made vacuum with a straw. Past year summer I got two seeds germinating of 30, from a previous batch of seeds, one stopped to grow, the other begins to grow healthy but a bloody slug ate the seedling at night.

I have wasted perhaps hundreds of seeds trying to germinate them. I have given them to many people if they have better luck. And I have tried everything to germinate them, even dowsing, black magic and necromancy

I have tried germinate them:

- Directly in soil, perlite, vermiculite, rockwool, coco coir, between wet kitchen paper sheets, floating in water,...
- Inside Aloe leaf gel, because I have read it contains auxins and gibberelins.
- With germinated and ground canary grass seeds. The same but with chickpeas, beans, lentils, barley,... With garlic bulbs, onion bulbs,...
- In milk, in black tea, in diluted black tea. Supossedly black tea contains gibberellins which help seeds germination.
- I have tried with rooting mint branches, if the roots have some hormones which helps germination.
- With willow leaves tea, with willow branches tea, made in cold and boiled, as it is used a rooting hormones.
- With many vines species shoots tea. If perhps one of then contains hormones or compounds which helps germination.
- I have tried with worm castings but I have no worms so I got bags in the store which are not fresh and it doesn't work.
- In water with a bit of brown sugar, in water with a bit of honey.
- With water with H2O2. In water with H2O2 + brown sugar. In water with H2O2 + brown sugar + crushed charcoal (karrikins)
- In water with horsetails as they develope quickly many shoots and roots.
- I have scuffed the seeds. I have cracked the seeds. I have nicked the seeds. I have extracted the embryos, I have done embryo rescue peeling them carefully from the embryo sheath.

http://rosebreeders.org/embryoculture.pdf

- I have exposed them to red light as I have read it can stimulate germination. Also to white light in order to see if the cotyledons turn green and begin to photosynthesize.
- I have tried to choose the seeds with dowsing, I have singed to them. I have prayed to them. I have tried to convince them telepathically to sprout

- I have tried to ask to the Universal Akashic records. But I am not very good in such things :biggrin:

I have realized with other seeds they germinate far better 3 or 4 days before full moon. I have also been told it happens the same in the 3 following days after fool moon.

I am sure if old seeds don't sprout it is not because the seed husk is too hard and it doesn't allow water to penetrate. Because I have removed the husk. Also I have read the problem is that the liquid between the embryo and the embryo case or sheath dries, so it stuck and smothers the embryo. But I have extracted embryos cleanly and they don't sprout.

I have found some seeds which begin to sprout. They open the husk and show the root tip. But they stop and never grow anymore.

I have tried to get gibberellic acid but here they sell it for farmers in a big container which it is too expensive.

We have nothing like Superthrive, humic or fulvic acid, or sea weed extract sold here. At least I cannot find it at a decent price.

I think I can't do more. It is pity to get a good pure sativa landrace with seeds that refuse to sprout.

I am so bored I am going to stop growing marijuana, as I am bored of wide leaf hybrids even in what it is supossed to be landraces, or thin leafed plants which stink like skunk, and I am going to begin to smoke jimson weed. Or perhaps yopo, whose psychoactivity is more similar to one of those long gone sativas than to the new couchlocking hyped garbage.

OldCoolSativa · Jul 9, 2018

Wow, sounds like you've given it the best possible effort. A+ for perseverance at least. And I hear you on the modern hybrids, but you at least have have some alternatives.

If I have success with my American Sativa Resurrection project I'll do open pollinations and make seeds available.

I have struck out on my second batch of 15 old hippy landrace seeds that were stored unrefrigerated dating to the 1960s. I've updated my technique a bit by adding a dilute H2O2 solution and keeping everything sterile to minimize the chances of damping off. I've also concluded that manual cracking and opening of these old seeds is required to have a chance of germination. I probably have close to 1,000 seeds to try to crack and I'll be happy if I can get a 1-2% germ rate. The more I try the more I'll learn and eventually I'll succeed.

Miraculous Meds · Aug 17, 2018

Heres a couple cherry bomb plants, thanks for sharing MF.

#1

#2

#4

Smoke_A_Lot · Aug 19, 2018

Very informative, thanks Mystic Funk for all the contributions in this thread!
Do you have pics of the vintage mexican finished product?

obione · Sep 6, 2018

Well guys, I want to do an update about what I did with my old seeds, that I'm trying to germinate(currently 1/25)
So what mystic did with the warm bins gave me a little inspiration and I tried some improvisation of it. So at the farm we have some kind of very high quality freshly packed warm castings that I grabbed a handful of and mixed with a glass of water and let sit over night. Then I strained it and added about 10 drops of super thrive to it(3 ounces) and dropped 5 seeds. 24 hours later 4 of them had tails. Tho I did not wait for the root to develop much I planted them in cups with soil in the nursery room where humidity and temperature is monitored strictly, but all the seeds failed to come up. I belive mold formed on top of them and they just died. So the next thing I'm doing and I'm rly confident I will have success is
My recipe :
Again a handful of fresh high grade castlings mixed with 3 ounces of water, let sit for 12_24 hours then add 10 drops of superthrive and drop the seeds
After tails shows up I will lightly dust them with mycos and plant in a oasis root cubes soaked in
Dyna grow KLN 3ml per gallon
ROOT execelurator gold 0.5 ml per gallon
Micro and grow (any brand) TO 0.2-0.3 EC
HYGROZYM 4ml per gallon
Quantum(microbial plant inoculant) 4-5 ml per gallon

The root cubes preparation recipie I use for the cuttings and is dialed in and tuned up for 90%+ succes rate of my trays 1000+ of them. And I get nice fat white hairy roots this way. I'm 99% confident this way the root environment will be populated with all the good bacteria an micro organisms so I will succeed

OldCoolSativa · Sep 6, 2018

I hope that works out for you. Please keep us updated.

voodoosdaddy · Sep 6, 2018

Great thread!

Mystic Funk · Sep 8, 2018

Smoke_A_Lot said:
Very informative, thanks Mystic Funk for all the contributions in this thread!
Do you have pics of the vintage mexican finished product?

hey man!
sorry for the late reply, i've been very busy with some other projects lately and one of them is a seed reproduction of a old Panama red line.

anyway, here are a few shots of the V-Mex a few runs back and i'll see if i can find some of the last batch.

peace!
-mystic

Smoke_A_Lot · Oct 11, 2018

Mystic Funk said:
hey man!
sorry for the late reply, i've been very busy with some other projects lately and one of them is a seed reproduction of a old Panama red line.

anyway, here are a few shots of the V-Mex a few runs back and i'll see if i can find some of the last batch.

It's all good Mystic, i bet you're a busy man working with some gems!
That vintage Mex looks mouth watering, i can only imagine how she smokes! It won't me give you any more rep, but keep up the good work.
& Panama Red?! That's freaking awesome, keep us updated on the progress!

Sqpeep · Oct 23, 2018

Mystic Funk said:
Micro propagation (aka tissue culture)
I’ve been screwing around with tissue culture for awhile now and I read somewhere that scientist were able to get 1000 year old seeds to grow that were found in ancient tombs and I thought why not use that for old cannabis seeds. So I started working on some recipes to pop old seeds.
What tissue culture is mostly used for is growing parts of plants like leaves, stems, flowers, or growing tips, technically you only need one living cell or a hand full of cells to grow plants through “in vitro” to grow a whole plant. If you’re good enough you can grow 1000’s of clones from one leaf it just takes time, pretty cool!
With these seeds I didn’t have to go crazy with the TC because I knew the cells within the seeds were still good from my other tests, they were just lacking the hormones, enzymes, auxins that kick start the germination process. So I developed some TC recipes that would aid in that process. So what does a seed need to germinate? They need grow regulators which are auxins, cytokinin, gibberellins and hormones like GA3 (gibberellic acid), benzylaminopurine (BAP), naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA). They also need sugars, nutrients, heat and moisture.
Things you’ll need to mix up a batch of TC medium:
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Air tight Containers that can handle a pressure cooker or autoclave.( I use canning jars).
Pressure cooker
Long tweezers
Latex gloves
Flow hood or homemade clean box
90% alcohol
3% Hydrogen peroxide
Heat mat
20grams of Sugar
4 to 6 grams of Agar (TC medium)
2.1 grams of Murashige & Skoog nutrient formula
1/2ml of Benzylaminopurine (BAP)
1/2ml of Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA)
1/2ml of Thiamine B1
1ml PPM (TC preservative)
Food coloring (optional)
PH pen or drops
PH up and down
Distilled water
Scale to weigh out ingredients
These are not that strong of a mix you might get better results with a stronger mix…

Recipe #1: (red mix)
1 quart distilled water, 4 grams agar, 1/2ml BAP 1/2ml NAA, 1/2ml B1, 2.1 grams M&S, 20 grams sugar, 1ml ppm, a few drops of red food coloring.

Recipe #2: (blue mix)
1 quart distilled water, 4 grams agar, 1/2ml B1, 2.1 grams M&S, 20 grams sugar, 1ml ppm, a few drops of blue food coloring.

Ok start by mixing the ingredients then heating the mixture just until the agar dissolves, let cool down and then PH the mix to 5.6 to 5.8 and pour into your jars, put lids on loose and pressure cook for 30 minute at 15psi, let everything cool down and your lids should pop down and you’ll know they are sealed. Put in refrigerator overnight. Next day get everything you’re going to need tweezers, alcohol, paper towels, clean box, hydrogen peroxide, etc.
Start by mixing 50/50 sterile water and 3% hydrogen peroxide (when pressure cooking your mix, put a jar or two of distilled water in the cooker too, that’s your sterile water) this is what you’ll be cleaning and sterilizing your seeds in for one hour, when their soaking clean all of the tools, hands and surfaces you’ll be working with in 90% alcohol, Once the seeds are all clean place them in the jar and in medium about a quarter inch down as quickly as you can to limit the chance of contamination. Now seal them up and put them on a heat mate set to 75F. You should see them sprout in a couple weeks or so, but it could take months so be patient.
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I still have some time to kill on these; I just started them about 3 weeks ago but so far the red mix is popping more seeds I guess the added growth regulators helped out. I’m up to 20% germination rate and about 10% with the blue mix. Also two out of the five jars got contaminated so that messes up the numbers.

peace!
-mystic

i have a question about the Naphthaleneacetic acid and Benzylaminopurine, what is the concentration you used? as you write it in mL and it seems like i can only buy it as a powder

Mystic Funk · Oct 24, 2018

Sqpeep said:
i have a question about the Naphthaleneacetic acid and Benzylaminopurine, what is the concentration you used? as you write it in mL and it seems like i can only buy it as a powder

hey man!
i use tissue culture grade hormones in liquid form and that's why i listed it in ML.

what that equates out to is 1 Milligram per 1 milliliter.

the thing about TC is there isn't many known cannabis TC recipes and it can be hard to find one that will work every time because there are so many types or cultivars of cannabis and they all grow at different rates. it's like when growing out one type vs the other one does better in one growing medium and not the other so it's best if you just work small and make only enough TC medium to try a dozen or so jars and see how it works for that cultivar and tweak it a little at a time to see how it helps or not. also always take notes each step you do or you're working backwards....good luck!

peace!
-mystic :tiphat:

GRoot · Jan 10, 2019

Mystic Funk said:
So I see a lot of people on here that have old seeds and don’t know how to get them to germinate. So I thought I would shed some light on this and bring the topic up again. I’d also like to throw in some techniques I’ve learned along the way.
If you’re wondering what the vintage Mexican is all about I too have some very old Mexican seeds a good friend of mine gave me that I hope to bring new life back into. The buds that held the seeds were smuggled over the Mexican border into the US at the time when Mexican/Columbian and other import landrace cannabis was everywhere here. My friend would get large amounts of ‘’brick weed’’ smuggled up to him and he would then break it up and sell some and in the process of breaking it up he would find a lot of seed and if he liked the weed he would always save some seeds and put them in a jar. So over the years he ended up with a lot of seed. Even after the flood of sexy mexy bud dried up and went away he still hung on to those seeds. So I’m hoping to find some classic Mexican or Columbian in this jar of seed and hopefully not too many Dutch hybrids or wide leaf indicas. I know that Mexico is flooded with hybrids from all over the world now and it’s getting harder to find true Mexican landraces anymore.
When I first received the seeds I cleaned out the jar of any stems and badly damaged seeds or ones that were white and had no change of germinating, then I sorted all the seeds by size from small, medium, large, and extra large. Most of all the seeds are ether light or dark brown with very small vanes running across them with little to no tiger striping there are a few exceptions though. They are mostly round not long seeds and they have a sharp edge running up one side. In my eye these look to be classic Mexican seeds as I remember them.
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This thread will not only be about germinating seeds. If I do get some of these seeds to pop I will also be doing some open pollination to preserve these old lines and that will be documented here also.
I would also like to gather up other peoples seed germination techniques and put them in this thread to get them all in one place. So if you have a tried and true method to get old beans to pop please post your recipe or link here.
-Thank you

Many thanks for starting this thread

grayeyes · Jan 20, 2019

Thank you for your work. I know there are a lot of people who carelessly threw seeds into a jar and now wonder if the seeds will pop.

Your work gives them some hope. I would hope that this thread is preserved as a sticky because there is some great info here.

Enjoy your delayed hatch Mexican. Your smarts and tenacity brought you a great reward and hopefully others too.

Thanks!

Sachiel · Jan 27, 2019

Hey Mystic Funk,

I have been experimenting with tissue culture for some time now. I was just wondering what happened to the seedlings you sprouted In Vitro? Did you transplant them to regular soil afterwards?
Another thing I was wondering is, why you chose to use concentration of NAA and BAP 1:1? Did you rely on any Scientific sheet?
I found that if you use both NAA and BAP in cocentration of 1mg/L you geht a high frequency of callogenesis, wich isn`t really desirable with Plants you want to use for planting directly.

Did you observe any changes on the seedlings tissues while in culture?

Mystic Funk · Feb 14, 2019

grayeyes said:
Thank you for your work. I know there are a lot of people who carelessly threw seeds into a jar and now wonder if the seeds will pop.

Your work gives them some hope. I would hope that this thread is preserved as a sticky because there is some great info here.

Enjoy your delayed hatch Mexican. Your smarts and tenacity brought you a great reward and hopefully others too.

Thanks!

Thank you.
I can't take all the credit for all the methods used. What I wanted to do here was bring all the best germination methods possible and put them in one place so people could come here and find one that suits them best to pop those old beans left in a film container or something for years.

Sachiel said:
Hey Mystic Funk,

I have been experimenting with tissue culture for some time now. I was just wondering what happened to the seedlings you sprouted In Vitro? Did you transplant them to regular soil afterwards?
Another thing I was wondering is, why you chose to use concentration of NAA and BAP 1:1? Did you rely on any Scientific sheet?
I found that if you use both NAA and BAP in cocentration of 1mg/L you geht a high frequency of callogenesis, wich isn`t really desirable with Plants you want to use for planting directly.

Did you observe any changes on the seedlings tissues while in culture?

Hi
I did get some seeds to pop using TC and they did seem to grow normal but the germ rates were pretty low compared to other easier methods. I did try a couple other recipes and didn't get any noticeable increase in germ rates. I still have some to test so there might be a better one.
I have a fair knowledge of TC and was just testing a few recipes out with this post. I wanted to develop a TC recipe that was somewhat balanced with hormones so the seed would grow normally and not just grow only roots or shoots. So by using a classic TC recipe you are taking a clump of plant cells and growing them in a unnatural state by forcing them to only grow roots or shoots at one time which takes a long time and many steps and this is more for a lab setting and not an average Joe. So this would be no help for most people trying to pop seeds leftover from some weed they smoked in the 70's.

If you have a good TC recipe I will test it for you and post the results here if you'd like to see more?

Peace
Mystic

Sachiel · Feb 18, 2019

Hey Mystic Funk,

I observed that if you get rid of the seeds shell before trasplanting it onto TC media, germ rates increase significantly! Also, I have them grow callus tissue on purpose, because you can devide that and generate multiple plants from a single seed.

This is what Callus emerging from 30 year old seeds looks like:

Vintage Mexican, Seed germination and Micro propagation techniques.

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