*Official* Colchicine: Adv. Growing

Discussion in 'Advanced Growing Techniques' started by Extracurricular, Feb 10, 2008.

  1. Okay, so I felt like there needed to be a thread specifically for those who have heard of or want to know what this method is. I will be using a lot of Wikipedia information as long as information gathered throughout cyberspace. This is not my idea so do I take no credit as to more so providing a place for all the information to exist. Here we go..

    What is Colchicine?
    "Colchicine is a highly poisonous natural product and secondary metabolite, originally extracted from plants of the genus Colchicum (Autumn crocus, also known as the "Meadow saffron")."

    What is Colchicine used for?
    "Originally used to treat rheumatic complaints and especially gout, it was also prescribed for its cathartic and emetic effects. Its present medicinal use is mainly in the treatment of gout; as well, it is being investigated for its potential use as an anti-cancer drug."

    Now, how does this relate to the growing of Marijuana??
    "Since chromosome segregation is driven by microtubules, colchicine is also used for inducing polyploidy in plant cells during cellular division by inhibiting chromosomemeiosis; half the resulting gametes therefore contain no chromosomes, while the other half contain double the usual number of chromosomes (i.e., diploid instead of haploid as gametes usually are), and lead to embryos with double the usual number of chromosomes (i.e. tetraploid instead of diploid). While this would be fatal in animal cells, in plant cells it is not only usually well tolerated, but in fact frequently results in plants which are larger, hardier, faster growing, and in general more desirable than the normally diploid parents; for this reason, this type of genetic manipulation is frequently used in breeding plants commercially. In addition, when such a tetraploid plant is crossed with a diploid plant, the triploid offspring will be sterile, which may be commercially useful in itself by requiring growers to buy seed from the supplier, but also can often be induced to create a "seedless" fruit if pollinated (usually the triploid will also not produce pollen, therefore a diploid parent is needed to provide the pollen). This is the method used to create seedless watermelons, for instance. On the other hand, colchicine's ability to induce polyploidy can be exploited to render infertile hybrids fertile, as is done when breeding triticale from wheat and rye. Wheat is typically tetraploid and rye diploid, with the triploid hybrid infertile. Treatment with colchicine of triploid triticale gives fertile hexaploid triticale."

    I will add more later. I have to go but ask questions and everyone can answer. A summary will be added later as well. Peace.

    Sources:
    [link] [link] [link] [link]

    Safety Info
    [link]
     
  2. VERY INTERESTED

    How is this chemical given in use in plants?
    I have always been interested in how seedless watermelons were seedless, and why this is not widely applied to many plants and fruits in which seeds are undesireable.

    The problem I see is that most governments' restrictions on marijuana research will inevitably prevent us from getting any concrete or conclusive evidence.

    What are options for people looking to take research into their own hands? i have never heard of this before and dont even have a starting point...
    and now i'm off to google!
     
  3. well there are two ways that it can be givin to the plants themselves.
    a) put them in a glycerin and colchicine solution and rub that solution on the seeds as you are germinating. but this lowers the chances of it happening by a lot, seeing as when you do this it makes the seeds less than 5% viable (able to sprout a tap root) and then when you have that 5% that did sprout less than a 1/3 of them will be polyploid/tetraploid.
    b) you can put it in the glycerin and colchicine solution once again and just put it directly onto a plant. personally i suggest cutting a part of the main stem off and applying it directly to the injured cannabis plant.

    as to why this isnt applied to many plants.. it IS! the information is semi-widely available and manufactures use this and other chemicals/methods to induce polyploidy.

    if you would like to do this yourself.. get some colchicine!! you can, which im attempting to do, fake getting gout to get a perscription for it. or just tell my doctor whats going down lol. or you can use the autumn crocus bulbs and extract the colchicine from there. which you would need to google those methods. i may put them on here someday if i can successfully do so.

    good luck mate! pretty soon ill be doing my own colchicine grow. but dont forget that its highly dangerous and you will NOT want to smoke the first gen parent. you will want to breed it with another plant. as for if the original polyploid plant needs to be male/female when you breed it with another plant, i dont know. i do believe however that the polyploidy will take over no matter what.
     
  4. Great thread - just what I was looking for!

    As it happens, a freind came by today and gave me some 0.6 mg colchicine pills with a hand-scribbled set of instructions. He said, "this stuff is supposed to turn seeds into female and make super potent plants!". So, I did a little looking around, and the first thing I found was this thread.

    These were the instructions given, and note that I also found the same instructions in one of the posts that I found via Goggle:

    - Germinate and sprout as usual.
    - Half fill an empty Tic-Tac box with water.
    - Put in a single 0.6 mg colchicine tablet and wait for it to desolve.
    - As the seed coat falls off the seedling, start these treatments for 5 days:
    - Use an eyedropper to place a single BB-sized drop on the seedling - once in the AM and once in the PM.
    - And don't worry if the seedling turns white-ish.

    At first, I was so put off by the "highly toxic poison" statements, that I already decided to just forget it. However, I kept researching and the general consensus seems to be that second generation plants will be colchine-free, or at least colchicine-free enough (I still have concerns, though).

    Well, I'm just an enthusiast grower, not a breeder. I'm in no position to grow a plant all the way to fruition, just to collect a few seeds, throw the plant away and start over. However, it finally dawned on me that since the plants produced in this way are impotent, the idea is not to produce seeds, but to simply cut a clone from the first gen plant and then go with that.

    OK. That's easy enough. I don't mind a couple of extra plants in my veg area for a short while. So, I'm going to try this. I do not intend to use any of my expensive Dutch seeds for this, but I have a bag of 40 unknown-strain Sativa seeds that seem to produce consistent plants. I'll use two of those, grow them to cloneable size, cut a clone from each, and hope for at least one female. This is assuming that the first gen plants actually become polyploidal at some point.

    As long as there is expressed interest, I'll post my results in this thread. Updates may be slow to come however, depending on space availability in my 12/12 room when the clones are ready.

    I'm still not sure if I or anyone else will be smoking the final product. I'll have plenty of time to continue researching before I will have to make that descision. However, I'm pretty sure that some people eat seedless watermelons, so maybe it will be alright. Still, I'm definitely going to try to talk my freind out of playing with this stuff at all.

    Thoughts? Suggestions?
     
  5. Apparently, the interest level on this colchicine issue has waned, so this will probably be my last post in this thread.

    Here's my new plan: I decided to do this test with one of my femmed New Super Silver Haze seeds purchased from amsterdam.seeds.nl. I have one of these plants vegging now, so I'll be able to use that one to clone a baseline comparison plant.

    I'll grow the gen-1 polyploid mother until it's big enough to take a cutting. Then I'll grow out the gen-2 clone and take it into vegging. I'll also cut a similar clone from the one that's vegging now and try to grow them side-by-side.

    I'll take pics and keep a log along the way. If it works out, then by the time they get to flowering, I'll setup an indoor journal thread with a title like "Colchicine Experiment Journal" and share what I learn.

    I just started the germination about half an hour ago.
     
  6. lol, put the link in your sig?? lol i hate looking for them....... im lazy.

    if your not lazy your no stoner lol and i am a weekend bubbler too!!
     

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