https://www.frontiersin....9/fpls.2023.1066595/full

Repeats some of what has been discussed but also some interesting info that the top 'head' around 6inches has lower concentration then following region.

Higher content in the ribs than the groves... How does this affect "4 wind" since it is equal parts rib and grove? Doesn't matter much since we use entire volume.

The center of the crown is near the apex but not the actual apex since there is no flesh there for maybe a cm around.

Awesome paper, thank you for sharing modern, much love my brother. Miss ya

Thanks for sharing this Modern!

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing!

If the distribution pattern for the columnar cactus is typical for the group as a whole, it's really quite remarkable that the upper midsection is where the action is at. With that knowledge we can see it makes sense to keep the growing tip and the base for regeneration - whether using a 'cut and shut ' method or not - and gain maximum benefit from the amount of material that goes on to be consumed, not only in terms of material efficiency but also in the knowledge that this is a respectful and sustainable approach.

It tempts me to suggest that could be viewed as intentional behavior on the part of the cactus. At the very least, as many people as possible need to know this in order to support the regeneration of the sacred species as opposed to consuming cuts in their entirety.



Spring greetings to one and all!

That is cool news. I thought I will completely use up my first San Pedro, while the others are growing meanwhile. But it seems to make quite sense chipping off his head and also continue growing this cutie.

Its interesting that the growth nearest the tip contains less mescaline than the area just beneath it on the Pachanoi column. My first reaction to this is that the area nearest the tip on this particular Pachanoi is newer growth that will fill in with more mescaline as the tissue matures. But its hard to say since these results are literally from the testing of one single Pachanoi plant. It just goes to show how much more research is still needed on these cacti. There is still so much that we don't understand and much more research is needed to fill in all the gaps.

Well if the grow tip is damage; it does actually increase the plants biomass longer term.

I'd imagine that the new growth would have higher alkaloids when it is closer to flowering due to the hormonal changes and slower growth.

Indeed there is still a lot that can be researched on these plants.

Yeah, that should be made clear as a very big 'if' in my post.

There's a part of the paper which sounds like speculative ramblings of the drug-naive, though:

Can anyone make any sense of this? To me it seems literally insane to claim such a thing, or maybe they're confusing mescaline with LSD or the NBOMEs.

In some cases (and countries) it's very convenient for the scientists to claim that "this work will help to prevent organized crime to flood our beloved homeland with dangerous drugs". It helps with funds for the research.

This is great info to have. I'll definitely end up with more propagates by callousing and rooting the top 15-20% and the bottom 20%. Take the 60% mass between them. It'd be interesting to find out if the same percentile ratios carry over to any size of cacti.

I've definitely seen enhanced trichocereus skin for sale from quite a few South American and Dutch botanical vendors. It's just crude cacti extract soaked into more skin so the end result is someone using like 10g of skin chips to make a super potent brew in a package that's easily sent through customs, especially with an import license.

Not many people have access to freeze drying but we can try and replicate this study with normal drying.

It is a lot of work to do research of this kind but if anyone is willing to cut up a couple of different specimens in the way described in this research and dry the different parts, label them and send me, I could test this and we see if this is generalizable or not.

I didn't read attentively the whole study , but they used as a grand total, 1 single tricho cut, right? maybe let's be cautious here !

Also,
In a previous study, they reached the exact opposite conclusion (see attachment)

"3.3.1 Mescaline concentration gradient in E. peruviana and E. pachanoi
Figure 39 shows the mescaline concentration in paired top and bottom biopsies in E.
peruviana (blue) and E. pachanoi (green) specimens
Biopsies taken near the top contained significantly more mescaline. To date, only a decreasing
concentration gradient from outside to inside was reported, but surprisingly no other
mescaline gradients had been investigated so far. The discovery of this other gradient by
application of the MESQ-procedure immediately raised some questions that were
subsequently investigated in the following experiments."
(page44)