Could phalaris grass be selectively bread like marijuana to produce the desired traits of high n,n-dmt content with low concentrations of secondary alkaloids? If so what would be the best testing method available to the layman to begin a project such as this.

This kind of already has been done to some extent by Johnny Appleseed in the 90's.

As I understand it, his method was to plant out a bunch of different grasses and test them with tlc for dmt content then clone out the ones with the cleanest highest dmt and 5-meo-dmt profiles. These being phalaris strains "big medicine" and "turkey red" respectively.

i think the only methods of testing available are reagent solutions / thin-layer chromatography.

Yes chromatography is good to know that there aren't much/any toxins like Gramine, though potential is there for who knows what else will affect one? Really the idea I have been playing around with is locally examine the phalaris grasses and after a couple LD50 tests with mice, if one can obtain enough alkaloid content to know my risk, is to try and find what species has the most pleasurable experience for me and work from there.
Personally its worth to have enough room and time to breed some mice if one is going to sample phalaris because that seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb for so many different types of toxicity, at least in my area as pesticides are commonplace enough to effect areas different lurk around rivers and bushes etc. Even growing your preferred strains aside testing different batches couldn't hurt you as to test LD50 know what level is comfortable enough for a healthy exposure.
That's only if time isn't a factor in your schedule because finding different phalaris breeds and sanitarily house a couple hundred mice securely can eat free time on weekends if you don't mind. The only question is that if one kept testing LD50 is that I could breed mice that could increasingly take on my potent alkaloids?

gramine has shown to be not particularly toxic, and completely possible to isolate from your product (room temp limo pulls negligible amounts, and it is insoluble in naphtha)

the main concern is a stimulant-like effect, which has been deemed unpleasant by a couple members (which isn't to say nobody would like it). we are thinking hordenine and gramine may be responsible, but nobody is sure.

nobody has tested the solubility of hordenine (due to the lack of access of pure hordenine), but if it is identical to gramine, it wouldn't be a problem either.

also some people are concerned about getting 5-meo in their product.

i should think the breeding of mice to establish an LD50 would be unnecessary.

You really want to breed, test and kill hundrets of mice because you want to test how toxic a gras is? When all you have to do is test for the wanted DMT/ 5-MeO-DMT and for the unwanted gramine and select, until you have much of the first and very little or maybe even nothing of the other? I mean really?! Why? I mean, it's nice that you can imagine a animal testing setup appropriate for LD50 testing, but it is really much easier.

Does any one know what alkaloid content could be possible, theoreticayll? If there is room for improvement for strains like Big Medicine, it could be rewarding breeding with those clons!

I had this idea recently (selectively breeding grass). I imagined collecting seeds from each grass plant, extracting from each plant and measuring alkaloid content, and then planting the seeds from the highest-scoring plants. I imagine that doing this over even just a few generations would noticeably increase the average DMT content of the population. But then what do I know about breeding.

My main concern is that the error in the extraction process would be larger than the amount of extracted DMT for each plant, and all I can do to prevent this is be incredibly careful and consistent in my extraction process. One problem I forsee is that I would have to reuse my extraction solvent, and then there might be problems with unprecipitated DMT from one extraction carrying over into the next.

This is a really naive question, but to what extent could one perform chromatography by studying the unprecipitated alkaloids with a handheld spectrograph? I feel like I might get some useful information by looking at the emission spectrum of the solution upon excitation with, say, a blacklight.

Yup. This has been done in universities and at agricultural research stations. Not only could they breed for more DMT, I saw one paper where they bred lines out which either produced tryptamines, gramine, or beta-carbolines.
Yup, you would either have to clone the piss out of every plant and do many big extractions or do microscale extractions and have a GC-MS on hand, thats how the scientists do it. They only cost as much as a car

There are a variety of strains that have already been selected for high dmt and high 5-meo-dmt content.

We've done our own analysis to verify DMT presence in some of these strains.

We have preliminary data confirming the product of extraction of these strains is indeed DMT.
See attached image of Big Medicine and AQ1 extracts compared against a DMT standard. Note that ehrlich reagent turns lavendar in the presence of tryptamines.

Why reinvent the wheel when 9/10 of the work has already been done? The only step left is for a few enterprising souls to grow em out, extract em, and compare yield numbers. Seems a helluva lot easier than breeding rats for an ld50 testing lab or devoting the next couple of decades to selectively breeding wild grasses.

some people will have the aptitude to continue working with grasses, and others wont. I think that more breeding work should be done, but I don't feel that most people have the patience to do it. It is already becoming clear who is going to push this forward etc..