I think the debate about old part of the plant vs green tip misses the point. I've participated in that discussion elsewhere on the internet, and at the time I was in the "old part of the plant" camp. But what I now see is that its not that important what part of the cactus is used. If its a good sized, potent plant then both mid and tip cuts will be potent. And some older sections of a cactus can have corking, which is not good for potency (since the green, outer flesh is no longer present). It should be a green, healthy piece from anywhere on a big, mature plant. I think thats what will give the best results.

I wish you all the best with growing your cacti Pete. Thanks for taking the time to share your results with us.

Thank you, Grey Fox. I think we both understand how valuable this medicine is, so sharing any findings is just a small price for all the information here on Nexus that allowed me to use it.

Hey guys, there definitely is an important mescaline gradient along the lenghth of columnar cacti. I tested bridgesii and pachanoi by doing TLC on standardized biopts. See the results in the sticky thread elsewhere: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=76926

The specimens were each about 1 meter tall.

An1cca, it is already some time I have read this. I didn't remember you've had taken samples from different parts of the cactus. I am really glad this info is available.

Please correct me if I am wrong...
I suppose we are talking about the picture attached to this post.
1. This is not telling us anything about the correlation between the age and M content.
2. It seems that for the bottom parts of the cactus the concentration is lower than for the upper parts.
3. It seems that this difference is increasing with the size of the cactus.
4. We don't know whether the increase of M content in the upper part is due to the increased production in that part, decomposition or outflow of M in bottom part or transport of M from the bottom to the upper parts of the body of the cactus throughout the lifetime of the plant.
5. We don't know whether previous findings are valid, because the results were done for different specimens and not for the same specimen of different age/size
6. We don't know whether seeming gradient is present both for cactus grown from seed and cactus grown from clone taken from mature plant.

That's all correct, Pete. I hope to find the time to answer some of these questions. Perhaps you will beat me to it?

Are you trying to imply you would get back to the psychedelic research?

Just like our cacti, my dormancy period will end in next spring

My cacti are not dormant, in fact the winter is their main season

Pete are you really able to support those trichs with just plain T5's? Everywhere I read always swears up and down that etiolation is a foregone conclusion with them and that you need crazy wattages to avoid it that make it heat/cost prohibitive.

Yes, it is possible. But we are not talking about fully sized trichos, they are harvested at about 20-30cm length. There is not any etiolation as far as their tops are kept close enough to the tubes (5-10cm). Check the whole thread, there are lighting specs, growing rates and other information.

I'm growing trichs under a Migro 100 that is about 30cm away from the highest tops (plants 40cm). No etiolation whatsoever. Pete, this way it may be possible to grow them larger. My growing space is 90x80cm. At the sides I grow lophs because they need less light.

You see HuarxScop, HuarxLumb, HuarxPsych0, SS02xKimGia, KimGiaxSS02 ans lophs from different regions. Some small cuttings are still forming roots (shriveled look). Substrate is Seramis which they seem to love, topped with small pebbles for different reasons. I plan on switching to lava for the lophs for aesthetical reasons and faster evaporation.

Growth rate depends upon hybrid, but is about 0,5-1mm/day. They get 16 hours light/day since a few weeks, before it was 18. I feed them 1/4 strength low-nitrogen cactus-fertilizer every 10 days and on occasion regular plant-fertilizer for the trichs.

This grow light looks cool, 80x80 seems to be perfect space for one such unit.
These lights have different characteristics and can keep the intensity of light much farther than with T5's, so you can grow taller specimens.
My growbox is limited both in horizontal and vertical direction. I can't have larger cacti, because of such limits. But that doesn't seem to be problem, as I simply cut the scion, leaving few areoles and there is again plenty of space for next round of growth.

Nonetheles the idea about having lophs in the parts of lower light intensity is good, I have one side where is less light and the trichos are growing considerably slower. And though I've never grafted loph, I am considering that.

I've found in some posts of endlessness ... CACTUS ALKALOIDS. LI. LACK OF MESCALINE
TRANSLOCATION IN GRAFTED TRICHOCEREUS. Seems to provide some information for points 4 and 6.

Thanks Pete-- and everyone else in this thread!!-- very good reading and so many great questions thoughtfully explained.

You are welcome coAsTal!

Hello,
Allow me to introduce myself, I have a background in microbiology and chemistry and I have been growing and analyzing Trichocereus cacti for over 20 years. Congratulations on your grafting setup, it's very impressive!

I have been reading through this thread from start to finish. There is one significant flaw in your procedure and that is this: There is ZERO correlation between bitter taste and M content in these cacti. A bitter tasting cactus could have none at all and one that is perceived to be tasteless could be potent. This is why my heart sank when you said that you discarded 83% of your samples.

Let me elaborate: The idea that potency can be determined by taste is an urban myth. This would be equivalent to claiming that one could determine the caffeine content of various coffee beans just by licking them. Someone probably read somewhere that alkaloids are bitter and made this false assumption. The reality is much more complex.

Let's start with the m molecule itself. Most people are familiar with this compound as its HCl salt. Hydrochloric acid is an extremely harsh tasting mineral acid and M-HCl does have a bitter taste. But M is not present in the cactus as the HCl salt. In fact it is present as the salt of MALIC acid. Malic acid is an organic acid with a pleasantly sour taste. Malic acid is what makes apples taste tart.

M-malate, the salt form present in the cactus, does not even have a particularly bitter taste. Pure m-malate is rare, and few people have tasted it in its pure form. I have, and the taste is mild and complex with predominantly sour and salty notes. But the important thing to know is that the immediate taste that comes across is not bitterness.

Now let's talk about taste threshold. A strong cactus would be one approaching 1% M content by dry weight. But cactus is 95% water so this equates to only about 0.05% in the fresh cactus. This is below most people's taste threshold, which studies have shown to be about 0.1% for most compounds. By licking the cut end of a cactus, you are only exposing your tongue to a drop of cactus juice and at best it would only contain about 0.03mg of m-salts. In order to taste the m-malate at all, you would probably need at least 1mg of the substance on your tongue, and more than that to get the real character of its flavor.

Then there are the bitter compounds in cactus that will overwhelm the taste buds and mask anything else. There are numerous plant compounds in cactus such as tannins, polyphenols, flavonoids, isoflavones, and glucosinolates that overwhelm the flavor. One of the main ones is cactus slime, or mucilage. Mucilage is composed of pectin, which is very bitter, and is responsible for much of the well-known disgusting taste of cactus brew, along with the aforementioned compounds. With the presence of all these compounds masking the flavor of cactus, there is no way that the minute quantity and subtle taste of m-malate would ever be able to come through.

Finally there are the salts. Cactus contains a number of mineral salts drawn from the earth such as NaCl (table salt) and Calcium Carbonate. Even if we were to filter away all the aforementioned bitter plant compounds what we would be left with would be the m-malate plus the remaining plant salts. The taste of this mixture is dominated by the NaCl and thus the taste is salty, and not bitter.

So you can see that the taste method is completely worthless as an arbiter of potency. I'm sorry I wasn't able to chime in here before you threw out 83% of your samples, many of which no doubt had potential. You will need to find a real, reliable way to determine potency in your remaining samples. Since you don't have access to lab HPLC or GC equipment, the next best thing would be an extraction and purification.

Save for an extraction, the next best thing would be a bioassay, a fancy word for drinking a brew. A good starting point might be 5 grams dried (about 100 grams fresh cactus). I have found that for me 5g is a large enough microdose to elicit a threshold response if the cactus is decently potent.

To make a brew, you just need to dry, pulverize and extract thoroughly with hot distilled water only. You don't need to add lemon or vinegar or anything else, as the M as the malic acid salt is already very water soluble.

Good luck with your endeavor!

Hi drnocturne, thank you for such informative post! This was a shock for me. Not the conclusions, but the fact that they are known and not publicly available. I have searched everywhere, asked people and finaly decided some correlation should be there so I can give it a try. The result indicated what you wrote.

As you've read in this post (and maybe the other one) this method of pre-selection was an integral part of the strategy. I can hardly imagine growing 500 specimens a year and analyzing them all through mini-extraction. One such extraction lasts about 25-30min of an effort. And costs money, of course.
Bioassay is not an option.

Currently I have 48 new tricho varietes and hybrids germinating and waiting for grafting. But I am not sure I should go that way and invest so much effort(and resources) to grow them when there is not a real way of analyzing them all.

I would love to continue with this endeavour, but it is demanding too much time with uncertain result. I have a full-time job and a family, so there is no way how to invest even more time in that hobby. Damn it!

Nonetheless once more time, thank you for that info. It helped me to see what was obvious but what I was willing to ignore and try again. Saved me a lot of time&money!

Great post, drnocturne, lot of useful insights.
But you mentioned that cactus mucilage has bitter taste. I think that this is not correct as mucilage separated from the cactus brew is not bitter.
Actually, it has no strong taste.

What a great development to learn this---I, too, would value some source material for the community to deepen our knowledge drnocturne-- and pete, perhaps you can still continue to help us all by sending samples to our forum lab experts for formal analysis-- that alone would be a huge service! We as a community could orchestrate a group donation/fund to take on the cost to make it happen? Your hard work is so deeply appreciated!! I don't believe for a moment that it is in vain

We would need some quantitative analysis technique. I am not aware of anyone offering this here.
My extractiton with titration is enough for that when done correctly. There is another possibility I am aware of - An1cca's Mescaline quantification in live cacti using TLC. Both techniques seem to have similar effort per specimen, though TLC may be a bit more pricey.

I can imagine cooperation with someone or more people willing to analyze the cactuses, but the community here seems to be too small to organize such project :/

But yes, I will send some samples for qualitative analysis to endlessness when I find something interesting.