This thread will just outline some results from using colchicine to induce polyploids and the weird things that you can get.
We started off with some colchicine powder, approximately 50 mg mixed in 4 g of lanolin, which was applied to axial growth tips using a q-tip once they had grown past the first set of single leaves. It wasn’t very seedling friendly and most died as was to be expected. I will put a link to the experiments I found to come up with this idea.
As a point of comparison, duckfoot and normal leaf plants were used to compare the results.
The lanolin helped to keep things in place so the growth tip was exposed to the chemical as cells pushed through it. Most growth tips were burnt off, but some managed to push through. Any remaining growth tips that were untreated were trimmed and removed.
The remaining plants that survived which showed signs of polyploidity were kept and the rest were discarded. They seem to be much slower growing, and they displayed signs on the stem of being a plant embolism of sorts, see pics below. This is to be expected as a doubled chromosome is basically a plant tumour or ogre of sorts. The ploids definitely were more sensitive to dehydration, required a lot more water and less sunlight through the first growth phase, and basically hated life for months. After a while they seemed to stabilise into a more uniform growth as the structure became more uniform.
Anyway, hope you enjoy. Hit me for any tips. I’m thinking of calling the mutated duck strain a “Quackmire”. Plant- why you grow so wrong!! It is quite interesting to see the effect of chromosome duplication on a webbed leaf.
Once they get through this stage, the pseudoplants are in a position of stable growth and are able to fend for themselves. Prior to this they were very prone to wilting in strong sunlight and struggled to get enough water
Final results seem to be fairly stable. As you can see the plant stem is basically treating the pseudoplant above as a foreign object like a graft. It doesn’t seem to mind so much though and is starting to grow normally.
The plant leaves are completely deformed from the normal webbed formation of a duckfoot, with some sort of plant polydactylism. A bit like a flipper, and the normal leaved ploids also show deformation. You can see there is still some growth occurring from the bottom of the plant that is unmutated for comparison.
Hit me with any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. I tried the seed soak method a couple of times with batches of 100 seeds but it wasn’t nearly as effective as the lanolin method.
Honestly I’d just try and make a mix with lanolin.
You should be able to find straight colchicine from a tissue culture supplier.
Here is a link from a paper that used the technique I implemented:
I found that the lower concentrations were mostly ineffective, so upped the dose towards the higher end.
If you want to do a seed soak, the pills will probably work but just remember that colchicine degrades quite rapidly in water.
Stem injections unfortunately will probably not work because you want to cover the axial growth tip and if it spreads through the whole plant your loss rates will be too high. I think going forward I will probably cut off one of the tips and see if it roots as a clone to keep it going. If things work out I can then use it to maybe make some triploid seeds.
Will keep this thread updated as plants flower to see if they do anything funny. Very oddball looking things as they are!
Also just FYI and for anyone else reading this thread:
Be aware that colchicine is toxic and when you work with it, it is important that you do so in a still room, wearing a N95 mask, long sleeve shirt and gloves. Make sure that you discard any containers that the powder touches and be very, very careful.
There are other mutagens that work in inducing polyploids like oryzalin and trifluralin which I hopefully will get a chance to work with in the future.
Have a nice day hope this is of help to people. It has always been on my bucket list of things to do, let’s chalk it up as a win
So why exactly are you doing this? What’s your end goal ?
Since your interested in Polyploids, here are the two I’ve got growing currently (obtained naturally - grown from seeds)
Both are BOG Sour Strawberry F3s
End goal- not too sure. I think I was going to make some crosses to generate triploids and see how they go.
I guess it was just a final boss of sorts and something I had thought of for a long time but never got around to. I’m interested in the interaction between leaf formation and genetics interacts in the plant and wanted to know if they actually do grow faster or bigger. I would say that the tetraploids probably don’t- but maybe once I make triploids (diploid x tetraploid → triploid) maybe I will see if there is any difference.
I’ve been working with some weird crosses like inbred Aussie ducks, freakshow x abc, trifoliates and whorled phyllotaxy and others with leaf buds, but I wanted something different and unique. Morphing the ducks definitely does strange things.
By “naturally” from seed do you mean that they were made from a seed soak in colchicine, or you have a pure breeding polyploid line? If you do have a pure line, let us know how you go about doing it. All ears!
I guess the next step up is to start working with doubled haploids, but it is really technical so I wanted to figure out how to make tetraploids first before I get started on that experiment.
No lol I mean I planted seeds like anyone would and I got 2 oddball Polyploids that grew as the result… IF possible I’ll be breeding them together, or atleast taking clones to reverse sex to pollenate eachother.
Sorry but that isn’t how polyploids work unless you are doing runs with literally tens of thousands of seeds to do choices it is unlikely. So it’s time for an impromptu genetics lesson so we can all learn from Professor Frankenplant
They are quite obviously mutants- but polyploids have double the amount of chromosomes to an ordinary plant. When you use a mutagen like colchicine to induce polyploids, it stops the processes of genetic division in the cell so the amount of genetic information is duplicated as the cells divide.
A simple way to think of this is to look at the difference between grass and wheat. Wheat is a hexaploid type of grass- it contains 6x the normal amount of genetic material (chromosomes) to an ordinary grass from which it descends. This is why it is more productive. Plants are a bit more tolerant of this sort of process than animal cells, I can’t imagine what a human with completely duplicated genetic material would look like and it probably wouldn’t survive!
Polyploids should more correctly be called pseudoplants. Some simple naming conventions are
Haploid = half the amount of genetic material, so an excised ovary or pollen can be used to make a plant
Diploid = normal amount of genetic material, like a pollen + ovary, or in animals sperm + egg
Tetraploid = Doubled diploid
Then things like triploid are a tetraploid x diploid, which has 1.5 times the amount of genetic information
Leave the pic in here though! I like the look of the little bubblers they will be interesting.
This is an interesting topic. Have you seen the stuff that Oregon CBD seeds has been doing with polyploid cannabis? Not sure the details of their method for inducing ploidy but it doesn’t involve colchicine and they are running thousands of plants to do what they are doing, eventually ending up with triploid super plants. Heard their breeding guy on Shaping Fire podcast while back. They only sell wholesale to large hemp producers though, so tricky for us hobby growers to access.EDIT: they do sell to home/hobby growers now! Maybe I could get away with planting a couple in the front yard,
I make mutations using Oryzalin from the brand Surflan. It prevents the cells from splitting or something and they get double DNA and stuff. I have mostly used the Australian variety because they handle the polyploid cells better …
This last one is a hexaploid. I created tetraploid females and pollinated them with diploid. The triploid seeds I soaked in oryzalin creating these hexaploid? The stem grew huge and barely any leaves.
I just created an account with Oregon CBD seeds. They sell to homegrowers now, can order a minimum of 10 seeds. They have some awesome sounding stuff! After I’m approved I’ll get to see what their pricing is like and might be making some CBD/CBDV/CBG/CBGV hash from triploid super mutants, muahahaha! Could even plant them in the front yard, don’t know if I want that much attention though, lol, they’d make great landscape plants though. Just got my account approved and can order now:) prices are comparable to most other legit cannabis seed sellers, probably fewer freebies though.
Thanks to everyone for participating in this thread. I’ll try and find the rest of the papers that gave some hints on how to do this. If anyone else has any more results of questions just dump them
hope this is of help to people. It has always been on my bucket list of things to do, let’s chalk it up as a win
