Home Improvised Polyploid Induction HIPI

Summary None of seedlings dipped in colchicine died. And I wonder if I get any polyploid plants at all. People had published on why and how to make polyploid cannabis since 1940. Seemed that the classic way to make polyploid cannabis is to dunk them in a vat of toxic chemical. This may kill some unfortunate seedling. Some, but not all, of the survivors would become mutant with polyploid power. Before you go on and make polyploid, there are pending patent registrations. Do make sure that you don’t copy their method. Stuff that I used: The chemical I used is an extract from autumn crocus call colchicine. Concentrate stuff is available from the internet. However, gout medicine made from colchicine is easy enough to get over the counter. And I bought 150 of 0.6 mg tablets. This caused me under five USD. Concentrated stuff is cheaper, but I would not know what to do with the remaining stuff. Supply and tools used: mini size jam, facial cotton balls, electrical tape, scissor, small glass jars, rubber gloves, seedling handling box, dishwashing detergent, tap water, plant label, permanent marker. Stuff that I should use but did not: Leaf penetrating agent, surfactant, automatic shaker stirrer. What I thought about making polyploid: Polyploid works during the period of rapid growth. Early seedling stage would be better I started making polyploid from day 2 after Golosa seedlings were germinated. The concentration that I aimed for was 0.2%, 2,000 mg/liter. I used 45 CC of solution. Doing some math, this is 150 tablets of colchicine. Took a bit of time to pop all the tablets. The best success rate from university professors seemed to be only half of the plants become polyploid. So, I treated only three plants with mutating poison. Perhaps I would get one polyploid. I still want normal Golosa. And I keep three without the treatment. Not so much as a control but for the flowers. Polyploid seemed to cause root problems in many plants. So, my idea is to immerse only the top part of the seedlings. So I put them upside down with tops pickled in colchicine jars for 24 hours. One thing that I can see is that researchers are rich and can afford to kill off hundreds of seeds. I, on the other hand, paid a small fortune for these seeds. And I want them to survive even regardless of polyploid success or failure. So I think I’ll attempt making polyploid in a way without letting the root touch colchicine. Here are my steps: 1) Stuff cotton balls around the base of three seedling. 2) Tape the base to compress cotton ball a bit and keep the soil from falling and also prevents colchicine from reaching the root. 3) I bought and ate mini size jelly just to get the tiny jar. Real sacrifice since I normally abstain from sweet. This is just to get containers that are small enough. :D :D :D 4) Check immersion level with the jar. See how much solution to put in. Seedling will bend upward from this unnatural upside down pose later. 5) Safety precaution! 6) Always wear gloves. And I use syringe to fill the jar to avoid spilling. Mutating poison scares me. 7) Tape the bottom of the colchicine jar with long piece tape. 8) Put the plant tips inside the jar. And tape it so it won’t come loose too easily when I leave home for work. 9) Let’s sit for 24 hours. The colchicine from tablet settles on bottom of the jar. I may or may not get 0.2% concentration. I did shake the jar once but it is no replacement for lab gentle shaker. May be I ask could ask a taxi driver to keep plants in his cab for a day? This would be like how Norwegian age their aquavit. 10) Carefully unwrap the seedlings from mutating jar. Keeping the main layer tape on. 11) Clean the treated seedling well with water once. Then dip in dishwashing detergent for a minute each. And then rinse the seedling well again. 12) Ever so carefully remove remaining tape then cotton balls. I was happy to see that the cotton balls were not soaked and I don’t think colchicine got in to the root. 13) To be sure that the root part is not damaged by colchicine, I flushed the plants in their little containers with water. The last round, I added weak compost tea mixed with alfalfa wax suspension. 14) Put label on so I won’t mix them up later. 15) Put the seedlings under 9W white-light table lamp at about 20 cm distance. Week 1 so far: Day 3 – no plants died. Untreated plant kept going. There were white deposit on the treated plants. I transplanted the seedlings to 300 cc containers put these in my computer case light boxes. Day 7 – Untreated plants are a taller than treated seedling. Treated plant number T1 is only slightly shorter than normal plants. At this point, it is too early to tell if the treatment works for this one. Plant T2 is shorter and is growing okay. Plant T3 is stunt. It could be from colchicine or could be a runt. However, I chose the healthy plant for colchicine treatment. Let’s see how she develops.