Chemical enrichment of media

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By Joe Dirt (Mushroombandit) on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 06:19 pm:

Does anybody else have experience with cultivating mushrooms on media that has been enriched with various chemicals, i.e. dextrose, trypamine, glucuronic acid, homobrassinolide, etc? I have had outstanding success growing with these chemicals, and would like any input on similar successes.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 08:45 pm:

And what are you using those last two for?


By Joe Dirt (Mushroombandit) on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 11:42 pm:

Homobrassinolide and glucuronic acid are both fungal growth promoters... makes a big difference in yield.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Wednesday, January 30, 2002 - 05:18 am:

I'm sure pot growers would have some huge success with colchicine, too...

Where did you learn of these things? I don't know a whole lot of fungus growers that are into such "unnatural" supplementations.

Just curious.


By Kman (Kman) on Wednesday, January 30, 2002 - 08:29 am:

this soudns interesting and ion ewe it sounds like you've used these before? Anbody got more info on this chemicals?

By Hatcher (Hatcher) on Wednesday, January 30, 2002 - 11:24 am:

Curious 'bout the pot thing ion, was an indoor cultivar of said at one time..

Mr. Dirt, on an empirical vein, which of these chemicals,(dextrose a chem?), would be the most practical to obtain and utilize for yer average mycophile, and it's usefulness..
Hell, doubt there's anyone here that wouldn't try somethin' that sounds worth a shot, just for the hell of it.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Wednesday, January 30, 2002 - 09:56 pm:

The colchicine thing was a snide remark... I apologize. I meant no real malice, Joe.

Colchicine is a mutagenic compound used in agriculture to promote a condition in fruits and vegetables called "polyploidy". The cells effectively "double" producing rediculously huge fruits... like 2 1/2 foot carrots, head-sized tomatoes, man-eating oranges, etc...

The shit is deadly poison. I believe it is actually derived from a plant, but when concentrated... well, you know the story with coca.

And, no. Even if you could get some, you shouldn't try it on your "consumables". If any is left over (which it always is) you could be poisoned. Cancer, death, birth defects... serious shit.

No, I don't do anything illegal. Just research in books...

As he said, the last 2 are growth promoters. Tryptamine is to enhance potency. Dextrose is a sugar (yes, a chemical) that fungus can use for fast energy. It is used up quickly, though, and it can increase variation in your contams (lots of things grow on sugars). Really only good for liquids or "jump-starting" colonization in small amounts.


By Spun Yun Gi (Spunion_Elf) on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 03:51 am:

So, might it be a good idea to add some dextrose to the substrate before steaming and innoculating, in order to speed up colonization a little bit?

By plinkerdink420 (Plinkerdink420) on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 04:45 am:


By Fishy1 (Fishy1) on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 05:02 am:

ion!! yer a fucking nut!
I have a degree in horticulture, and find your "snide remarks" amusing after a tough day at the office.
Maybe I could use some colchicine to boost biz here in the coffee industry! Never thought of a bean as big as baseball!! Talk about peaberry...
Thanks for the laugh- fishy1

By Stoney (Stoney) on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 06:31 am:

Ion. Whats the story on the tryptamine what is it,where do I find it, how do I use it, what does it exactly do, and are there any draw backs? It sounds good.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 04:35 pm:

No, spunion. That's what I'm saying. It can promote greater variation in contams, make it contam more easily, and it doesn't really help very much as it is used up quickly. If you have a race that you've grown before, and you know it is a slow starter, you can use a tiny bit in the substrate... but I would recommend just growing out some liquids and inoculating semi-heavily with them (maybe 1/4-1/2 cc per site). This way you will have aready started growth, and you are also squirting sugar around the inoc site to get the myc started. No real point in using it as an additive, you see?
Besides, it is possible that since the sugar is not in solution, it will form a thick "syrup" with the little excess water in the substrate. Not good.

Your welcome, Fishy.

Stoney, how long have you or your buddy been growing mushrooms? I haven't seen you post much, and I'm kinda apprehensive about giving out such info... What I'm saying is that you need to have all your other ducks in a row before trying any additives. Make sure you can grow... because, yes, there are some drawbacks. As with everything.
Besides, if you really want the info, I'm sure it's still around here somewhere. Run a search.


By Karna (Karna) on Friday, February 01, 2002 - 11:03 pm:

I am yet to try an additive that can conclusively be shown to make a yield difference worth mentioning. That's not to say such a booster doesn't exist, just that the ones I have tried have not produced any remarkable difference over control batches done without the additive.
Most people try adding something, get good results and assume it was the the additive when the results would more than likely have been more or less identical without.
I have tried soy flour, hempseed flour, dextrose, flax seed meal, CaCO3, gypsum as additives and in my experience at least, the results, while excellent in and of themselves, could not conclusively be shown to be the result of adding the respective substance and further, differed by a negligibly small margin or not at all, from a control batch.
Of course yield as weight is not the only measure of the efficacy of an additive, but no other variables could be identified as being significantly affected by the additives either. Admittedly the experiments were focussed on yield, and not say, resilience to infection or even fruit shape, number or size, so maybe more experiments need to be conducted in that direction but these themselves seemed to me to be unnecessary since the batches results were so similar in so many respects.
Just my experience. I still use the flax seed meal as an additive to whole rice (post cooking only), but only because I have a whole lot and cannot think of anything else to do with the stuff.

By Joe Dirt (Mushroombandit) on Saturday, February 02, 2002 - 01:02 am:

Sorry, it's been a few days since i've been on here... homobrassinolide is a steroid that's found in pollen. you can generally find it sold as surprisingly enough, "mixed pollen" at health food stores. add a maximum of like 10% to your final substrate mix for growth promotion. Glucuronic acid is the same way... but at a max of 2%. This one is harder to find, but can be obtained from many many chemical suppliers. Dextrose is the easiest one to find... here's who I go to. call USBIO's sales dept. at 1-800-520-3011... they sell it as glucose monohydrate. 5 kilos for like 35 bux. If you're considering using tryptamine as an additive, you'll have to synthesize it from L-Tryptophan, and you'll have to read an article by Barton, et al in JCS 3992 (1965) entitled "Tryptamine from Tryptophan". Hope you like chemistry. A note on Tryptamine: Although the percent of psilocin goes up to a whopping 3.1% (holy shit), the % of psilocybin drops to like .02%. This gives a much more "high" feeling to the shrooms, but it doesn't last as long, and the mushrooms lose their potency faster.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Saturday, February 02, 2002 - 07:49 am:

I must get digging...


By tryptamine (Tryptamine) on Wednesday, February 06, 2002 - 06:24 am:

For the ref on turning tryptophan into tryptamine you can go to rhodiums site: it is a pretty easy decarboxylation, but it'll require certain other chems and a reflux apparatus.

In my opinion it isn't worth it, you can also buy tryptamine but it'll be expensive.

Psilocin and psilocybin have the same effect, what are you talking about? Psilocybin gets turned into psilocin as soon as it hits your stomach.

By ion ewe (Ion) on Wednesday, February 06, 2002 - 08:14 pm:

Ever had just one and not the other, tryp?

Same concept with ALD-52... it turns to LSD-25 upon contact with water, but the trip is generally more mild and calm than LSD.

I'm guessing it has something to do with the optical rotation of these invivo-converted materials. Perhaps there is even a slight difference in structure... a single bond here instead of a double, an extra hydrogen ion that hangs out next to it because the magnetic properties are different, etc.


P.S. That is a sweet link! Thanks, brother!

Spawn Mate : Eros & the Pineal : Shroom Glossary