Cytokinin

Lots of research seems to have been done on cytokinins and corn.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/6347
My take from what I've read is that it is contained in the roots perhaps with greater concentration in the sprouts.
Is there a way of sprouting corn or whatever and using the shoots for the cytokinin content?
Between Wadmart and home deport tomato spray is not available. On the internet they have a powder form on Ebay or of course the spray?

I'm sure you could get cytokinin from baby corn shoots and, hell, from pleanty of other things. The trouble with cytokinin is it is a natural hormone, it already appears in cannabis with no help from us. It can be taken from lots of natural sources but it must be concentrated many many times to reach the effectiveness of tomato spray.

I'm sure you could do this, what I'm not sure is that you could do it more cheaply and easily than just ordering a good supply from the internets. Incidentally, you wanna hit me with a link to that powdered stuff you saw? I've been looking for a better, more concentrated source of cytokinin than my beloved tomato spray. Going through 3-4 32 ounce bottles per grow is a bit ridiculous. I've also been looking at Nitrozyme that I've heard good things about here on the forums.

I imagine corn was used in the tests mostly because they wanted to grow more corn not because it contained vast amounts of cy. It did bring forth the thought of a possible benefit of using sprouts perhaps in tea as well as the thought of other sprouts containing a higher concentration of cy. Further reading tells me the growing tip might hold the most.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Cytokinin%3a-6-Benzylaminopurine-5-Grams-%28PGR%29_W0QQitemZ170328676660QQcmdZViewItem
6-Benzylaminopurine 5 Grams (PGR) $7.50 free shipping.

Do you know anything about IBA (Schultz Take Root)indole-3-butyric acid as a growth hormone?
I know. Newbie looking for the magic bullet that everyone else somehow missed...Nah, just an old timer with limited grows, limited money, legally growing for the first time ever with plenty of time to play.


Another interesting link...
http://www.tutorvista.com/content/biology/biology-iv/plant-growth-movements/growth-regulators.php

LadyLargely said:

I'm sure you could get cytokinin from baby corn shoots and, hell, from pleanty of other things. The trouble with cytokinin is it is a natural hormone, it already appears in cannabis with no help from us. It can be taken from lots of natural sources but it must be concentrated many many times to reach the effectiveness of tomato spray.

I'm sure you could do this, what I'm not sure is that you could do it more cheaply and easily than just ordering a good supply from the internets. Incidentally, you wanna hit me with a link to that powdered stuff you saw? I've been looking for a better, more concentrated source of cytokinin than my beloved tomato spray. Going through 3-4 32 ounce bottles per grow is a bit ridiculous. I've also been looking at Nitrozyme that I've heard good things about here on the forums.

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i highly reccomend nitrozyme,plants love it

Seems that you're already getting the benefits of nitrozyme from the kelp in your last batch of tea. It's described as a "concentrated extract" which makes me think" boiled down tea".

Is the idea that by applying cytokinins to your plants you'll get higher yield during flowering? Wasn't the research done on pollinated corn?

I wonder if applying cytokinins to pollinated cannabis would result in seeds with two embryos like the researchers discovered with corn. Mutant seeds FTW!

cashmunny said:

Is the idea that by applying cytokinins to your plants you'll get higher yield during flowering? Wasn't the research done on pollinated corn?

I wonder if applying cytokinins to pollinated cannabis would result in seeds with two embryos like the researchers discovered with corn. Mutant seeds FTW!

Click to expand...

Hehe, another mutant lover! I love a good freak show, just look at my plants!

Usage of cytokinin on cannabis can be done in many different ways and for many different proposes.

It might have sprouted up because its usage is the crutch of my own grow method about which I've been flinging around the sentiment that I will easily and predictably flower out 5 out of 5 females from random mixed seed of various backgrounds (bagseed 'mutweed' to dutch-import mystery seed).

"Eekgads! Such frippery!"

you may be thinking.

It isn't as simple as "sprey this on ur plants and tehy'll all be girlz!"

Its a big part of an even bigger program to control the conditions that the plant grows in to such a degree that the vast majority (90%+) of mixed seed will flower as a magnificent female.

In this program, cytokinin does a lot of stuff. It is applied in the form of Bonide Tomato Blossom and Set spray to the plants from a very young (think 4 days from seed) age. This makes the plants shorter and more complex. They bush more readily and get covered in offshoots. Keep the main stem short, a good nutrient program under decent lights and you can get an unmolested, un-topped plant to produce triple-digit quantities of 'top' colas. Along with a confidence that said plant will much more than likely be female.

If all of this sounds cool, keep in mind its a fairly different and possibly more high-maintenance way of growing. Tight control of the plants' environment is needed. This includes correct color temperature of the lighting, the correct ratio of nutrients, a lack of 'wind' on the plants that makes them move constantly, a lack of topping and general heavy foliage removal and possibly some other shit as well.

Techniques for making 'feminized' seeds on your own without the aid of advanced female-turn-hermie breeding (basically pre-soaking seeds) are starting to get reliable. Ethylene-based preperations (AKA 'the banana method) are based on some good science and done right are surprisingly reliable. With the assistance of these kinds of techniques the need for super-tightness in the environmental control goes down. Just keep a loose line on the female requirements and you'll get lady plants.

It may sound crazy but its based on processes we've known of for years. Its super-basic ganja gardening knowlege that you need a dark night and a 'low-stress' environment to keep from getting unwanted males/hermies. This same ability for cannabis to express its sex differently depending on environmental factors can be used to coax plants of a wide genetic background to all be female.

Err, eh,

Cytokinin can be used in a more basic way too. You get a little bit of it (among lots of other beneficial hormones) in a basic kelp tea.

h.h.

This means you are partially correct! Some of the benefits of tomato spray can be gotten from a good kelp source. That said, Tomato Spray is mega-concentrated! The quantity of the hormone in a given amount of it is extremely high. You could concievably get the same thing from 'boiling down' your own tea, but you'd have to match the scale of a massive industrial process. Hormones are very tricky to isolate. If you straight-up concentrated the contents of kelp as much as tomato spray you would wind up with toxic levels of potassium sources! Scraping away the hormone content, isolating it into a bottle of liquid is much easier said than done.

This is why I've long-searched for a concentrate of the stuff! Tomato spray is good stuff but Bonide knows they are one of few good reliable sources for it isolated in a bottle. Induvidual 32 ounce spray bottles at 6 bucks a piece (if you get a good deal) are the best I have found.

That's why I'm looking at nitrozyme, but I always liked tomato spray because its cytokinin and not much else. It contains no secret sauce like most other stuff I've seen. I'd really just like a nice predictable cytokinin-only concentrate that I can water down and mix with my own secret sauce!

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog...m_guid=1-_-100000000000000017462-_-3602346020
http://cgi.ebay.com/Cytokinin:-6-Benzylaminopurine-5-Grams-(PGR)_W0QQitemZ170328676660QQcmdZViewItem
http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=cytokinin&sa=N&start=0
This thread did originate from the OBBT thread.
Cytokinins seem to be a group of different hormones. Not all safe, Dioxin is in the group. It kills by causing the plant to spaz out. Perhaps some watered down dioxin sprayed on your best girls. Get Mikey to try it. It's also a carcinogen.

The ratio of auxin to cytokinin is crucial during cell division and the differentiation of plant tissues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokinin
Auxins have an essential role in coordination of many growth and behavioral processes in the plant life cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxin

~@~
Both are influenced through the process known as light-bending.
Try tipping your plant on it's side and you will notice it begin to grow upwards toward the light. This is due to these hormones being sped along to the growing tips.
This process is also useful when attempting to keep a host of top cola's the same height.
The uppermost shoot will attempt to overtake all others as the main cola. If you twist or turn the plant so that the lower stalk is above the taller one, you can manipulate the growth progress and equalize the length of each.

There is also a little known process that is promoted through the use of magnets as well as high frequency emitters such as those electronic rodent repellent devices. These two processes are only useful for increased root production while establishing a plant. Once it becomes mature, this process is no longer valid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitropism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototropism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_auxin_transport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropism

Thanks for chirping in and thanks for the links. I'm far from knowledgeable on this subject,though I'm pretty good at Google.
What I thought interesting was from the link in my second post. Unlike most of what I've turned up they've dummied it down to my level...

Boysen Jensen (1910 - 1913) of Denmark found that the phototropic response lost by decapitation of the tip could be recovered if the tip was replaced on the stump. He further demonstrated that if a transverse slit was caused in the coleoptile on the dark side and a piece of mica inserted into the slit, no phototropic response took place. On the other hand there was a phototropic response if the slit and the piece of mica were on the illuminated side. He concluded that a substance migrates down the dark side promoting growth curvature towards light.

boysen jensen experiment
Discovery of Auxins Experiments of Boysen-Jensen Went (1928) from Holland demonstrated the existence of a substance in the tip of Oat (Avena) seedling which diffused downwards and promoted growth. He demonstrated that when the tip of Oat coleoptile was removed, growth stopped. When the freshly cut coleoptile tip was placed on an agar block, for a few hours so as to allow the growth substances to diffuse into, and the agar block was then placed on the cut end of the coleoptile, growth occurred.

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http://www.tutorvista.com/content/biology/biology-iv/plant-growth-movements/growth-regulators.php
...and it makes me wonder.

Tomato Mulch Method Changes Tomato's Gene Activity
http://www.ghorganics.com/Tomato Mulch Method Changes Tomato's Gene Activity.htm
Hairy vetch. Perhaps a replacement for "earth friendly" seaweed collecting. Grow your own.

I have used Bonide Tomato and Blossom Set Spray in the past and was pleased with it for the most part. I'm all organic now so I don't really use it. You can get it at Ace Hardware though for under 5 dollars usually.

I should also note that it has much more effect on sativas than indicas. Indicas naturally have a much higher level of cytokinin though relative to auxins. As mentioned above it is a hormone that works in balance, so there is definitely such a thing as too much.

If there was a local Ace hardware I probably would have just bought it and never started this thread...I'm also a cheap ass. I mostly use organics by default. I'm forced into environmentalism.
Whatever it takes. It feels good.
As far as I'm concerned hormones are organic. I've been reading on how they are isolated, but I have to look up some big words. The question to me however is if they are earth friendly. How are they harvested, isolated, and how far are they transported? If I can grow vetch or something similar to supply what I need it answers my questions as well as satisfies my cheap side.
The lady with her bombardment method makes me thing of sperm heading for an egg. So many happy boys and just one receiver. Obviously effective yet primitive. Or perhaps not primitive enough. There seems to be an answer not so much in concentration of ck, but how it's manipulated.

Indeed h.h.

You're really getting into this sciency stuff, that's wonderful!

I'll be the first to admit that mine is a fairly brute-force method. Lots of aggressive training to take advantage of the light-bending effect that Owl_Mirror mentioned and super-high doses of cytokinin through the tomato spray.

As MagicCannibis suggested, I may be spoiling the hormonal balance somewhat. I think cocking it up a bit is vital to my all-females process, but there is surely a way to make it work without breaking up the harmony of the plant so much. Mine is a fairly well-practiced and reliable method, but as I have said before I haven't the foggiest idea how it works!

Having come here to this community I hope to greater understand the inner workings of the crazy process going on in my grows. I think the benefits of my techniques could be had without having to be so goddamn ham-fisted about it. Some refinement is in order and I think it will be much easier with people like you to help!

I'm not knocking your technique. It is the front runner and the inspiration to explore further. Google further anyway.
Most of what I've found falls back on old methods. Hairy vetch has been used as green manure for years. Mycorrhizal fungi plays a role as well. Stuff you already do that works. There's just so many things to play with.

Hey man, I didn't think you where! You where merely pointing out the facts, describing things the way they are. It was a good description of my technique, you weren't knocking it in any way. Pointing out the flaws in established methods like mine is the only way we're ever gonna make any goddamn progress!

I know what you mean by falling back on old methods though. A lot of the elements that drive my technique haven't been popular since the 80's. The advent of hydro techniques and high-potency salt-based ferts and the mind-boggling performance that they can provide have been hogging the lime-light for years.

Carry on with the research! I know I am

Kinetin, which is the artificial cytokinin used in the Bonide spray, definitely drives plants toward female. I don't like doing it this way though because it does not genetically alter their tendencies, it just overrides them. Since I keep my strains going perpetually for a very long time, this could lead to nanners down the road on plants that are having their maleness suppressed. Mainly though I want my plants to stretch more. My current cabinet reduces stretch so much through side lighting that I hardly even get any. They don't fill my cabinet right if I use this spray. It all boils down to your needs...

......fuck!

Magiccannabus:

Your interjection here has caused me to spend a whole day reading. The results of my dive into the information super-highway have left me startled.

You're right! I was wondering about that for some time now. Even before you said this after doing my thing a few times I noticed it really seemed like sexual supperssion rather than spurred development. I always experienced super-long 3 week stretch cycles before seeing any signs of sex. Pistils appearing on the plants always seemed a bit like an after-thought to them.

I see now that I was not actually successfully 'convincing' 100% of plants from mixed seed to go female. What I was doing was overriding the genetic triggers of weak males. Weak and moderate males can have their sexual expression rail-roaded by the artificial kinetin.

This is deeply troubling and perhaps explains some of my recent issues. I'm gonna hafta seriously re-think my grow strategy, because this is just no good. I have not been breeding lately but with this new room of mine I definitely want to start. With my current program that will be a huge pain in the ass, sexual suppression will make breeding for favorable sex and traits far too difficult.

I'm gonna hafta have words with DrunkenMessiah. I never did the original research on tomato spray, he did. He just handed me a bottle one day and went "here, try some liquid awesome". Having read up on it myself now, he was very wrong about his conclusion that it was an all-natural substance.

After this grow, I will be dropping my usage of tomato spray and I'm gonna hafta do some serious thinking about how to change my grow style. Shit, and my grow philosophy

Because of my successes I became convinced that the correct tweaking of environmental factors is all you need to get 100% female from seed. Turns out that isn't true, it was the artificial Kinetin suppressing all the would-be males. Oh dear. I'm gonna have to go back and eat my words a bit......

Thanks magiccannabus, you bastard. You've inadvertantly opened my eyes to the error of my ways. I guess this is what being part of a community like this is all about. You'll always learn something new, even if you didn't want to......

One problem in my search has not realizing at first the many substances that are classified as ck. Their traits are not all the same except they all promote cell division. A reading of the Wiki definition is in order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokinin
And perhaps another trip back to the basics.

In 1943, Johannes van Overbeek discovered that coconut milk actively encourages plant growth. This was later discovered to be due to a number of factors, but predominantly the existence in the milk of a cytokinin known as zeatin.[5] The addition of 10% coconut milk to the substrate in which wheat is grown has shown substantial improvements in yield.[6]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_milk

The effects of single and combined growth regulator treatments of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), gibberellic acid (GA3) and coconut milk on plant height, yield, chlorophyll and vitamin contents of Abelmoschus esculetus L and Solanum gilo L were investigated...Growth regulator treatments of 100mg/L GA3 and 15% coconut milk were consistently the best out of the entire growth regulator treatments tried with the treated plants having the greatest plant height, yield, chlorophyll and vitamin C contents.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9404511