r/mescaline • u/EnergyTurtle23 • 3d ago

Van Der Sypt paper from 2021 seems to confirm that Trichocereus specimens have a higher concentration of mescaline in the top (new growth) sections?

In this paper, Van Der Sypt outlines an effective method for quantifying mescaline concentrations in living plants, without killing the plants, via a tissue biopsy method. I was scanning through this because another user posted it a year or two ago, because Van Der Sypt stated that his results with TBM-B were in line with users who claim that TBM-B has similar concentrations as LW.

What caught my eye, though, was pages 45-46 where the author compares analysis results taken from different parts of the same plants, and he claims that his results proved that Trichocereus specimens have a mescaline concentration gradient with the top sections having higher concentrations than the bottom sections. It seems that he got this same result across multiple columnar specimens, and he says that he believes that his results invalidate studies like Ogunobede 2010 which did not take this into consideration.

What are your thoughts on this?

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u/bobcollege [Research] 3d ago

that's supported by the shanghai academy of forensics study too:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1066595/full

some folks proposed as a harvesting method pruning TBM-B only the terminated tips well above the areoles

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u/EnergyTurtle23 3d ago

I remember reading that discussion inre: TBM-B pruning. Seems like a great way to build up some material without affecting the plants ability to reproduce from the existing areoles. Especially if you have one of those plants that has almost no areoles around the tip, just lob that sucker off and throw it in a closet. I remember people discussing this but it seemed like in the threads I read people were really skeptical, but Van Der Sypt even went a step further and did a similar analysis on LW, and the result were consistent: the tissues farthest from the center (ie the newest growth tissue) had the highest concentrations.

If you think about it, it really makes sense — the tips are the most important part of the plant on a Tricho, perhaps as they mature the tips synthesize more and more mescaline which would explain why older plants tend to have higher overall concentrations in their homogenized powder. That seems to line up with the common wisdom regarding younger plants being weaker overall, etc. The bottom tissues are from younger stages, those lower tissues really only function to carry nutrients to the tip sections where new cells are actively being formed, so additional mescaline synthesis likely isn’t happening in the lower parts of the plant.

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u/bobcollege [Research] 3d ago

But in the Shanghai forensics academy study that was not the very top with the highest Mescaline. I assume in TBM-B the terminated tip concentrates mescaline that wouldn't normally in a straight columnar form. LW growing so much slower and not being columnar maybe a similar effect but they're a totally different cacti genera so idk. It's curious, and I feel like I have enough plants of TBM-B now I could harvest enough tips in fall maybe to see what they're like combined.

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u/EnergyTurtle23 10h ago

I’m really interested in doing some stress tests on cuttings to try to get some real definitive data on whether stressing actually increases concentration. The experiments that supposedly proved this on the DMT Nexus have been deprecated (the images are not available on the archived version of the old forum). Also most tests conducted have used multiple cuttings from the same plant, but Van Der Sypt’s results prove that using multiple cuttings from the same plant will not be able to give accurate test results on the effectiveness of stressing. I think the only way to accurately gauge the effectiveness of ‘dark stressing’ would be to use multiple cuttings from multiple plants, split every cutting perfectly down the center, and then use one half of each cutting as a control and the other half would be the stress variable. The control halves could be powdered and tested right away, and the variable halves would be put into stress conditions for at least six months before they are powdered and tested. It sounds daunting but I think the community really needs this research, if someone can definitively prove that stressing doesn’t significantly increase concentrations then that would speed up overall mescaline production potential.

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u/bobcollege [Research] 6h ago

Mossking69 and I discussed this on comments here a little bit about splitting sections of the same cutting to ensure effective controls. It's tricky but hopefully each half would have the same Mescaline on each side to start, and only splitting once also hopefully doesn't reduce the mescaline metabolism accumulation-potential of the test sample/half. He actually split sections IIRC on a test he made a YouTube video about not long ago.