I recently found out about plolyploidy, the manipulation of the DNA by applying a mutagen to
basically double the amount of DNA in the plant, and so hopefully get much better production.
(i read it increases alkaloid production, along with the size, and growth, and everything else)

Such mutagens are; Colchicine which is very dangerous occurs naturally in Autumn Crocus,
WEARING GLOVES, the bulbs can be crushed up with alcohol and water to make the solution.
Also, a much less harmful chemical 'Oryzalin' can be used to induce polyploidy,
SURFLAN A Pre-Emergent Herbicide 40.4% Oryzalin is available, as it SAYS HERE

I read that seeds can be soak for 2-3 days in solution. Concentrations of 0.05% are common.
Another method is apply a mutagen to baby leaves, or directly to a cutting made on the stem.

Hope to experiment soon. What do you all think? i have some P.viridis i will try it out on!

I think colchcine is to dangerous to play around with at home. It causes nondisjunction of chromosomes during cell division. It can do this both to the plant and to you, causing cancer easily if you get it to a working concentration.

That being said results can vary widely, and you may have to continually treat the same strain for several generations. A plant going from diploid to tetraploid may not give a significant increase in product. Going from tetraploid, to octaploid though may. As far as cannabis I have read in a few places that treatment with coclchicine has no appreciable affect on phenotype or chemotype.

If you do decide to go ahead with this make sure you keep a control. I doubt you possess a microscope to view chromosomes with so you wont really know if you have created a true doubling of chromosomes or caused some other strange mutation.

I think this is really interesting, but I think if you do decide to proceed, that you do so with extreme caution. Getting an extra .5% yield isn't worth giving yourself cancer.

Thanks for your reply, i plan to get Oryzalin as it's safer, but still deserving of respect.
Also, planning to grow Autumn Crocus in a pot just to have, and maybe someday use.

Any reference to support this? My pharmaceutical books make no mention of it causing cancer and colchicine is routinely administered to humans for gout.
Granted, overdose can cause vascular damage, kidney damage, pissing blood, and death. 65 mg is the estimated lethal dose but 7 mg has caused a death before, and homeless have been sickened or killed when eating the corms out of the trash. No mention of cancer that I can see tho, except its use in fighting cancer in man and "bitches" (as in female dogs, some of my books are old )

Wow ,this is such a coincidence,I just saw a polyploid plant (cannabis) last week .
A friend who is a medical cannabis grower has one.
She is working with seed breeding ,and had it occur naturally. No colchicine.
So, do you think it is random , or in the plants ancestry?
From what ive read these colchicine induced plants could only be
reproduced from cloned material.

Only Produce clones because for one reason like in cannabis all poliploid plants are females.
I have seen before on cannabis forums some natural polyploidies, so it does happen naturally.
Colchcine can cause deformed babies and stuff like that i read somewhare, So i recommend any-
one interested in trying this try using the Oryzalin, it's WAY safer, cheaper, and available.

"So, do you think it is random , or in the plants ancestry?"

it could even be from it's 'recent ancestry, because some very strong cannabis strains came
from using colchcine on cannabis to create plolyploidy, then taking polen of a regular male
plant of cannabis and crossing it with the female poly, and so getting the genetics & seeds.

HELLO, i need some professional help!
i've got some Oryzalin 40.4%, and need to make it into about 0.4~0.5% solution.
(iam going to soak some seeds i have, and see if they sprout polypoid.)
Somehow i came up with <1 part 40.4% to 10 parts water> makes 0.4% solution.
is this correct ? iam not sure about the math.

40.4/11 = 3.67

So...
40.4/X = 0.4, X being dilution factor. Treat both sides equally.
40.4X/X = 0.4X thats 40.4 = 0.4X
40.4/0.4 = (0.4X)/0.4 thats 40.4/0.4 = X thats X = 101

Dilute 1 ml to 101 ml total solution.

This is why math teachers told the stoners to stay awake in highschool, they wanted to help you grow drugs- they just couldnt tell you that!

Well that would have made math interesting.

Thanks Auxin! i see what you did there, but iam not really sure why,
and i've made another numbers mistake, i needed 0.05% NOT 0.5%

Ok, 40.4%/0.05 = 808 sO i need 808ml to 1ml ?

Yup, or dilute 1 tsp to one gallon and 13 tablespoons... if your planting a whole farm

I made a poly hybrid cross using MKU and White Widow seed stock. No colchicine.
Several progeny came out polyploid. Two came up diploid (at least appeared so visually; having almost having bisymetric colas that looked "joined" up to the apical tip.) The others were either triploid or "whirled". Overall they produced way more floral tissues than the other non poly progeny. They didn't reach maturation all the way and also produced way more fiberous tissues that seemed to stunt the plants. They had observably least vigor and really had no drug value. Potency, gland production, chemotype appeared the same. Yields were significantly lower as well. The thread is probably still around if you search icmag. When I was young and worked for a garden center I was able to find colchicine and giberillic acid. Colchicine seemed to sterilize everything it touched, and my source information cautioned against its use in f2 generations due to its carcinogenic effects. Giberillic acid was alot of fun if your into creating Franken-plants.

bbing how were you able to confirm you induced polyploidy? AFAIK the only real way to do it is to observe the chromosomes before and after. Without doing a karyotype analysis I don't believe you can know created a triploid organism for certain. There are other possibilities, other chromosomal aberrations you may have induced instead. Or more likely the cross resulted in the expression of some harmful recessive traits, which is more likely since it seems unlikely that only some of the progeny would be triploid and the rest normal, that sounds more like the result of a heterozygous cross where some of the progeny that resulted were homozygous recessive for the detrimental traits.

I shouldn't have said it causes cancer because I don't know. I work with colchicine, and I just know that its real toxic, sometimes I get mixed up with which chemicals cause cancer and which kill you other ways. Anyhow being that it causes non-disjunction in chromosomes you really don't want to get any on you or anything you might contact at all, is what I should have said. Some of my sources say that 3mg is the lethal dose.

My old pharmacy books say the typical lethal dose is estimated at 65 mg but as little as 7 mg has caused a death (for that it references Ann. Rheumat. Dis., 1947, 6, 224).
The typical pharmacological dose is quoted as 0.5 mg every 30-60 minutes for 6-8 doses, no more than 4 mg per day.
It also says when people begin grabbing their gut and complaining and get diarrhea and vomiting to either discontinue the drug or give them a bottle of opium tincture, ah- the good old days

And remember, sunlight destroys the stuff rather quickly.

No idiogram confirmation sorry, just speculation based on feedback received from thread I posted pics on at overgrow (or icmag). What I was calling triploid or whirled appeared different that the double fused colas. These had the appearance of triple floral clusters and a different symmetry.

Franken-plants are probably cool. Thanks, giberillic acid sounds interesting!

UPDATE:

A half-pint of cannabis seeds were soaked in 0.05% Oryzalin/H2O solution for ~2.5 days.
They were drained, washed once, and drained.
Planted very closely together, because there are so many, but maybe most won't sprout.

So far there isn't many signs of mutation.
Most seeds didn't sprout, or died after sprouting.
Some looked to have extra fat roots, but most of those died.

i don't think i'll be getting any super strains,
but this was only an experiment for fun.

Most of the sprouts had there heads bent over (as if they were ashamed)


Some were leafless.. except for the two sprout leafs, and so they died.

This one has a different kind of leaf, but it's not to healthy looking.


Another popular one was plants growing a bigger leaf, only on one side.

Enough for one decent smoke, and i found a mushroom, and lookout a helicopter!