Agreed with all the suggested testing methods but in the end you need GC/LC-MS to publish.
It’s the gold standard.
It would be simple to set up large scale collections across the planet and ship to a central site as fresh as possible.
All extractions could be done in a lab followed by LC-MS on the extracts.
You could do 20-30 samples per day with dynamic range over 4 orders of magnitude from the extract with SRMs. It’s not a question of how to do it, its how to do it with permission.
You cannot publish a paper without releasing your identity.
But if one were to have a tenured professor in a more liberal country that could sponsor the research in ones lab then this becomes more straight forward.
I know lots of people give me time

do your thing Reborn...we are waiting...well those of us that arent kick ass chemist folk:-P

i favor LC-MS over GC-MS, the latter is just old. i know it's standard (particularly for volatiles), but i just favor non-destructive means of determining alkaloids, if that makes any sense.

some guy in the shroomery claimed he had a 'gas chromatographer' that could determine lsd in a sample.

This isn't an easy way, but there's a modified Ehrlich's Reagent that can be used.

A little more specific than Marquis from what I remember about it, but I'm sure there are a slew of other things that could give false positives. How would gramine react with this reagent? That would be something to find out. Gramine is stupid expensive as a research chemical which is understandable, so this would still be difficult SWIM imagines.

Well we will wait a while, there is no way in my current position,
I will have to look for outside help.
Saying it can be done doesn't make it easy.

LC-MS is great but solvent costs would add up. GC-MS dmt is clearly visible in buuuuut crude plant extracts aren't always the best thing to put into such an instrument without some cleaning up. Buts its still quite straight forward.

The main problem with doing such a study is not the legality but rather time and funding. Its not illegal to take a plant with an unknown chemical composition and test it for a compound even if that compound is illegal.

Well and of course the facilities to do such work is a limit for most people.

But if people do have some plants that have a reason to test it is possible. Just large scale screening is not so practical unless people decided dmt was a compound needed in high demand but thats wouldn't happen even if it was legal its so easy to make and there are enough plant sources already known.

Well, that is possibly why development of a crude field test (that does not give too many false positives/negatives) is essential; It has to be available to everyone, so everyone can go around and assess their flora. Should one has a qualitative indication that dmt or similar is present in some plant, it can then be easily sent to some "lab" where alkaloids can be extracted and mass specked.

As for publication, this is a no-no. One needs real world names, real world affiliations ("hyperspace" does not qualify as such) etc etc and well... my best guess would be that the major part of such a work would be clandestine...

TLC would be the best crude field test. a crude extract a mobile phase selective for spice (although overlap will always be an issue with crude extracts its ok) and a specific spray reagent.

But where can laymen get their TLC plates? can they prepare the spray reagent themselves? These are the problems that baffle me...

TLC supplies can easily be obtained. Sure you could find them on Ebay. Its very very simple to learn.

As far as the study I was suggesting I never meant it would be illegal, I just would lose my job over it but I wouldn't go to jail.

Someday if I am in a position where I have more freedom I would certainly publish the work with my name on it.

^yea its not worth losing job over hehe.

but yes TLC supplies are easy to get. you can buy the plates somewhere and just use basic equipment and solvents to run them.

spray reagents are usually fairly simple recipes but some of the chemicals in them are tough to come by.