Appleseed bred the plants for some time.
Phalaris sp. 'Big medicine' was a result
Ronpha grass is worth looking into, it is a hybrid between two species, it is sterile if I am not mistaken.
Appleseed reported not being able to breed undesirable alkaloids out of plants. He also reported shifting chemical variation over generations where grass that had fairly pure DMT ended up having other alkaloids after a few generations.
His solution was to experiment with preparation methods and he found that simmering the grass by dropping it into boiling water for 10-15 minutes only seemed to grab most of the DMT and very little of whatever alkaloid causes the negative effects. The mystery alkaloid could be hordenine or gramine or variations on those themes, but to my knowledge is not presently identified.
I have been collecting seeds from genetically diverse stands of
Phalaris arundinacea for selection
Different organizations bred the plants and tested for alkaloids, while looking for low alkaloid varieties for farm animals and grazing. Some of their data is interesting.
Trouts online Aya book has good collation of data like that
http://www.erowid.org/li...ec3_part2_phalaris.shtmlCheck out this page showing alkaloid variation in
P arundinaceahttp://www.erowid.org/li...aris_reports_arund.shtml
The clone numbers are USDA clones, some of them can be found to this day
Here is an example:
Clone number (108-3)
was harvested (21 July 1970)
in/from (Indiana)
was the (First regrowth) age (42 days)
has (D+M)
at a dry weight of: (1.19%) (note that D+M plants can have DMT and NMT and their 5Meo variations, no differentiation among these was made)
So that clone tested as having 1.19% alkaloid content rich in tryptamines!
Then there is this page:
http://www.erowid.org/li...aloid_distribution.shtml (Marten et al. 1973)
0.29% in upper half of leaf blades
0.23% in lower half of leaf blades
0.07% in leaf sheaths
0.04% in stems
0.05% in inflorescences.
and when above ground parts was 0.19% the rhizomes was 0.01%.Notice that the leaves are where the alkaloids are, also in other studies the tender new leaves had the highest levels of alkaloids and lower leaves had low levels.
Sadly the page on breeding obserations for this genus is short:
http://www.erowid.org/li..._phalaris_breeding.shtml
Marum et al. 1979 mentioned that gramine genes are known to be recessive to all other indole genes.
Oram 1970 found that tryptamine production capabilities were highly inheritable. [Tryptamine producing genes have been determined to be dominant.]
Østrem notes that Phalaris arundinacea is highly self sterile.
Production of high alkaloid types through deliberate breeding effort will be a much simpler, productive venture and far less costly than the ongoing programs to the contrary.
the right cross could be amazing, I'd bet Ronpha grass is worth looking into making from high DMT strains of
P tuberosa and
P arundinacea