hitthedumpster
New member
While trying to decide on research for graduate school, there was some interesting information on triacontanol that was uncovered that should be shared with everyone. Hopefully this will help keep someone from wasting their time on this bogus "plant growth regulator."
The first suggestion that there was a novel PGR to be discovered in the cuticle waxes of plants is Ries' paper entitled Triacontanol: a new naturally occurring plant growth regulator, published in the prestigious journal Science by Stanley Ries, a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University. Prior to his death in 2012, Dr. Ries spent 40 years in the horticulture department there.
It was during this time that he "discovered" that alfalfa meal and its solvent extracts were able to enhance the growth of food crops such as rice, corn, and barley.
After a spate of activity by industry, interest in triacontanol waned, although it has a certain following in India. A number of threads here and elsewhere suggest it has a popular following, and it is easy to find triacontanol sold on eBay and through hydroponics suppliers.
So it was with some interest that I found someone with an established history with Dr. Ries and his work; that individual wishes to remain anonymous, and there's nothing I can do to change that so skepticism on the part of you, dear reader, is more than welcome. In that I had no desire to waste several years chasing after some mythical ghost, I thought I would do my due diligence and I am thankful I did.
Frankly, Ries was a domineering professor who demanded results. Whether done to please him or to produce results for their own gratitude, technician(s) would fudge the data. This was simply done by taking plants that were randomized for treatment, and then later- subtly- sorted by size, putting the smaller plants in the "control" group, and the larger plants in the treated group. Being the 1970s, it was easier to do this than it would be now, and the positive results were published. Ries convinced himself- and his family- that he was in line for the Nobel Prize.
Such a powerful growth regulator would never escape the attention of agribusiness, and they swept in with their own questions and tests. Having built his house of cards, Ries had to defend his ideas in the absence of data supporting his ideas by publishing this paper.
"Specificity of 1-triacontanol as a plant growth stimulator and inhibition of its effect by other long-chain compounds" is a fascinating paper, noting that "Octacosanol inhibited the response of rice seedlings to 2.3 x 10(-8) M TRIA at concentrations as low as 2.4 x 10(-12) M."
While triacontanol is C30, octacosanol is C28. What Ries is trying to say here is that triacontanol that is contaminated with as little as 0.1% octacosanol doesn't work. He did this to buy some time, as heavy-duty chemists with the agribusiness companies were starting to see the cracks in his reasoning. This sent them back to the drawing board, having to re-run experiments with high purity triacontanol.
Since Ries' original work, patents were filed. They stopped not long after his second paper because nobody could reproduce his results.
Since then, triacontanol has become a bit of a legend. If they get negative results, then they must not be using it right- too dilute, too concentrated, wrong solvent, applied to the wrong part of the leaf, applied during the wrong phase of the moon, sacrificed the wrong breed of goat in the name of the wrong diety, whatever. All signs that triacontanol is weapons-grade hokum, and I'm certain my words here will not change the minds of many of you. That's fine. I'm not selling anything, and this is a throwaway account because I'm not looking for opprobrium nor a drawn-out discussion on how this is all obviously wrong and stupid because your experimental wishes and dreams show otherwise. My own experiments showed absolutely no difference, but there was the good fortune in finding someone with firsthand experience under Ries who was kind enough to provide me with the details that helped me fit puzzle pieces into place.
Perhaps there are questions I can answer, but otherwise- my source is anonymous, and my paltry grad school salary doesn't include me defending my statements from skeptics so I don't really know what else to include here. The take-away message would be not to spend your time or money on triacontanol; it's a total dud, its use as a PGR a total falsehood, produced from bad science. It's just a wax, nothing more. So let your attacks come; I don't care.
The first suggestion that there was a novel PGR to be discovered in the cuticle waxes of plants is Ries' paper entitled Triacontanol: a new naturally occurring plant growth regulator, published in the prestigious journal Science by Stanley Ries, a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University. Prior to his death in 2012, Dr. Ries spent 40 years in the horticulture department there.
It was during this time that he "discovered" that alfalfa meal and its solvent extracts were able to enhance the growth of food crops such as rice, corn, and barley.
After a spate of activity by industry, interest in triacontanol waned, although it has a certain following in India. A number of threads here and elsewhere suggest it has a popular following, and it is easy to find triacontanol sold on eBay and through hydroponics suppliers.
So it was with some interest that I found someone with an established history with Dr. Ries and his work; that individual wishes to remain anonymous, and there's nothing I can do to change that so skepticism on the part of you, dear reader, is more than welcome. In that I had no desire to waste several years chasing after some mythical ghost, I thought I would do my due diligence and I am thankful I did.
Frankly, Ries was a domineering professor who demanded results. Whether done to please him or to produce results for their own gratitude, technician(s) would fudge the data. This was simply done by taking plants that were randomized for treatment, and then later- subtly- sorted by size, putting the smaller plants in the "control" group, and the larger plants in the treated group. Being the 1970s, it was easier to do this than it would be now, and the positive results were published. Ries convinced himself- and his family- that he was in line for the Nobel Prize.
Such a powerful growth regulator would never escape the attention of agribusiness, and they swept in with their own questions and tests. Having built his house of cards, Ries had to defend his ideas in the absence of data supporting his ideas by publishing this paper.
"Specificity of 1-triacontanol as a plant growth stimulator and inhibition of its effect by other long-chain compounds" is a fascinating paper, noting that "Octacosanol inhibited the response of rice seedlings to 2.3 x 10(-8) M TRIA at concentrations as low as 2.4 x 10(-12) M."
While triacontanol is C30, octacosanol is C28. What Ries is trying to say here is that triacontanol that is contaminated with as little as 0.1% octacosanol doesn't work. He did this to buy some time, as heavy-duty chemists with the agribusiness companies were starting to see the cracks in his reasoning. This sent them back to the drawing board, having to re-run experiments with high purity triacontanol.
Since Ries' original work, patents were filed. They stopped not long after his second paper because nobody could reproduce his results.
Since then, triacontanol has become a bit of a legend. If they get negative results, then they must not be using it right- too dilute, too concentrated, wrong solvent, applied to the wrong part of the leaf, applied during the wrong phase of the moon, sacrificed the wrong breed of goat in the name of the wrong diety, whatever. All signs that triacontanol is weapons-grade hokum, and I'm certain my words here will not change the minds of many of you. That's fine. I'm not selling anything, and this is a throwaway account because I'm not looking for opprobrium nor a drawn-out discussion on how this is all obviously wrong and stupid because your experimental wishes and dreams show otherwise. My own experiments showed absolutely no difference, but there was the good fortune in finding someone with firsthand experience under Ries who was kind enough to provide me with the details that helped me fit puzzle pieces into place.
Perhaps there are questions I can answer, but otherwise- my source is anonymous, and my paltry grad school salary doesn't include me defending my statements from skeptics so I don't really know what else to include here. The take-away message would be not to spend your time or money on triacontanol; it's a total dud, its use as a PGR a total falsehood, produced from bad science. It's just a wax, nothing more. So let your attacks come; I don't care.
.
