If you test any part of the plant for comparative testing, what would you want to check out? THis is specifically for barks adn DMT, but oculd be used with anything.

Looking for brainstorming ideas. facing N/S/W/E, soil, water, light, heat elevation, leaves, side of tree, diameter of stem etc.

Here are some already put down on paper.

1. Tap root, large in rock
2. 5cm diameter root
3. <1cm diameter root
4. Tap root, in clay soil
5. 5cm diameter root
6. <1cm diameter root
7. Soil line –whole circumference of E,W,S,N
8. Trunk at 1m height form soil line facing NORTH
9. Trunk at 1m height form soil line facing EAST
10 Trunk at 1m height form soil line facing SOUTH
11. Trunk at 1m height form soil line facing WEST
12. 5mm bark dark color at 1m height
13 5mm bark light color at 1m height
14 50cm up tree.
15, 2m,up tree.
16 5m up tree.
17. 5cm trunk diameter at 1m facing north 20cm diameter
18. 20cm trunk diameter at 1m facing north 20cm diameter
19. 50cm trunk diameter at 1m facing north 20cm diameter
20. grown from rock at 1m height and 20cm diameter
21. grown from clay soil at 1m height and 20cm diameter
22. Forest tree grown from soil/rock at 1m height and 20cm diameter
23. standalone tree grown from soil/rock at 1m height and 20cm diameter
24. Sunrise collection facing north 20cm diameter at 1m high
25. Noon collection facing north 20cm diameter at 1m high
26. Midnight collection facing north 20cm diameter at 1m high
27. Infected with Ganoderma facing north 20cm diameter
28. Dead trunk bark at 1m facing north 20cm diameter
29. Plants previously (4 weeks) gouged repeatedly at 1m facing north 20cm diameter



looking for more ideas before collecting time comes around.

The topic name sounds like something I've been thinking about lately. After finding out about the Phalaris spp. I was wondering how many plants, stems, barks, seeds, flowers, and so on could contain an infinite variety of who-knows what within them.

Why test one sample from every square centimeter of the entire plant?

I think because you never know where the good stuff is hiding or where it is in higher quantities. Maybe more of the desired spice and less of the non wanted one?

I would like to know why all these plants and animals have this in them? Is it a byproduct of photosynthesis or a plants function?

Experimentation is good, but I think this might not be the most effective way to go at it.

To really be able to generalize, for example to say "the lower trunk turned north has more DMT", you'd have to test with many many plants (n >100 for example), to be able to have any statistical indication. And even then, you'd never know if this was just in your area or elsewhere. It sounds like a LOT of work to extract from all these different parts from these many plants. I would go as far as saying it's undoable unless you have absolutely nothing else to do for the next months.

This would be much more doable with simple TLC since you need a small amount of all parts and you can compare.

If you want to extract, I'd focus on three or so variables at most first, which will already give a good increase on the knowledge we have. The classic root, stem, leaves, flowers are very good variables to test, and already will pose a lot of work, but can be done.

Also different plants with little study that are available locally is great to test too (e.g. phalaris, acacias, etc).

thanks for the ideas guys.

Endless, yes local acacia.

I have been fishing for ideas and info for about 2-3 years, so so far this is the best i have come up with. I am still very open to ideas, but im not going to be waiting much longer to start.

the reason i wanted to do so many different things is i notice large difference in bark sizes/colors from harvesting, this is from 100's of trees.

One thing i now see i didnt make clear is much of the things above are going to be from the same tree to compare different areas of the same tree. I am worried about the variables as well, and wish to get any input you care to share. but different trees will vary quite a lot surely, so doing a east/west/south/north test on the same tree and comparing with a few different trees seemed logical, to me anyway haha.

The goal is obviously to figure out where dmt is concentrated most. and in the long run find out which environmental factors may influence it, if any (this one is going to be hard i think).

Material and supplies are not in short supply and cheap. time is a bit of an issue, but motivation takes care of that. the biggest obstacle is knowledge in how to go about it. I have seen a little on TLC as quantitative, but how accurate is it? its much cheaper for me to extract than tlc, but im looking for better not cheaper until we start talking over $1000 for machines.

that all said, i will be taking roughly 10x15cm pieces of healthy trees for each sample, something i really dont like the idea of doing and never normally do. but because this kind of study needs to have standing trees, there is no way aroudn it. because of this i want to make sure it wasnt for nothing.

it makes more sense to test the entire plant first before breaking it down to sections, and even then id choose to break it into 2 sections, whichever yielded more divide that into 2 sections...

this process would save alot of time comparable to the original 20 something sections to test

Divide and Conquer, O(log(N)) vs O(N).

https://en.wikipedia.org...de_and_conquer_algorithm

TLC is preemptive rudimentary testing. if you want to test concentrations, use a spectrophotometer and implement the Beer-Lambert law (first create a standard curve, using somehthing like five known dilutions of a standard closely related to the analytes of interest); you'll need to know molar absorptivity coefficients of the analytes, and the wavelengths of max. abs. these are often listed in the Merck Index.

if you want to know % purity, you'll need HPLC-UV/DAD, and a means of integrating the areas under the signal peaks.

Thank you very much, I can see that now it makes quite a lot of sense. Although i feel lots would be skipped just doing two, but i get the idea and will surely be using it to do up another plan of action.




Thank you kindly. I was thinking of using TLC to identify the extracts. Although it seems NMT might prove troublesome without something more specialized?

I was thinking about buying a spectrophotometer as they are not ridiculously expensive like some other equipment is. It would be nice to test various products.

taking a brief look at equipment, HPLC looks like it may be possible financially. In your opinion, if i may ask, how much you think it would run to get a system setup new (with warranty/tech support/maintenance/software etc) system like you suggest?


Should add this species is already well tested and positive in high concentrations for DMT, it doesnt need testing to find out if it has it or not, i am interested in finding out where and when the concentrations from in the tree.

So i have decided, following mews suggestion, to break it down.

round 1 is

leaves
trunk bark at soil level
root bark at 50cm from soil level
trunk bark at 50cm above soil level
trunk bark at 5 meters (think light colored bark

I will also have MHRB as a control from 2 sources and im going to do 1 control with Delonix regia because i just cut one down and though why not.