Fridge
Rising Star
Good day everyone,
recently the topic of crossing Psilocybe Cubensis varieties came up and since my most recent growing endeavors led me to create a cross (not yet 100% confirmed), I thought why not document my progress here.
A while ago I received a couple of clone cultures from a friend. I inoculated quite a few grain jars with agar wedges. Once these were fully colonized, I mixed the spawn with coir/vermiculite.
It turned out that I made too many jars, so I got a few left over jars I didn't know what to do with. I like to experiment, so I decided to mix two different varieties and spawn them to one tub. One of these varieties is called TAT, which is an albino and the other is PE7, which is a cross between PE and Texan.
It is important to note that I chose two varieties that express distinct differences in phenotype (please see the first two pictures attached, first is TAT, second is PE7). This is important, because otherwise it will be difficult to see if the crossing attempt has been successful. At least for the hobby mycologist who doesn't own the equipment for DNA sequencing.
I did not really expect this to work on my first attempt. I thought I will just get a tub with two varieties growing side by side.
However soon I saw the first pins popping up. The more they grew, the more I saw that next to the typical TAT fruits others appeared, which didn't resemble PE7 at all. They expressed a mix of TAT and PE7.
This new variety has yellow gills, yellowish caps and doesn't drop spores, which is a trait I like. (Third picture shows the fruits and fourth the gills)
So I took a spore swab and some tissue samples and inoculated some agar dishes with these, which are currently growing. I still need to do some tranfers and clean the cultures from any contaminants, before I send these to grain.
It will take a lot of work and time to stabilize this variety.
This is kind of exciting to me and I hope others will enjoy following along. If you got any questions let me know.
recently the topic of crossing Psilocybe Cubensis varieties came up and since my most recent growing endeavors led me to create a cross (not yet 100% confirmed), I thought why not document my progress here.
A while ago I received a couple of clone cultures from a friend. I inoculated quite a few grain jars with agar wedges. Once these were fully colonized, I mixed the spawn with coir/vermiculite.
It turned out that I made too many jars, so I got a few left over jars I didn't know what to do with. I like to experiment, so I decided to mix two different varieties and spawn them to one tub. One of these varieties is called TAT, which is an albino and the other is PE7, which is a cross between PE and Texan.
It is important to note that I chose two varieties that express distinct differences in phenotype (please see the first two pictures attached, first is TAT, second is PE7). This is important, because otherwise it will be difficult to see if the crossing attempt has been successful. At least for the hobby mycologist who doesn't own the equipment for DNA sequencing.
I did not really expect this to work on my first attempt. I thought I will just get a tub with two varieties growing side by side.
However soon I saw the first pins popping up. The more they grew, the more I saw that next to the typical TAT fruits others appeared, which didn't resemble PE7 at all. They expressed a mix of TAT and PE7.
This new variety has yellow gills, yellowish caps and doesn't drop spores, which is a trait I like. (Third picture shows the fruits and fourth the gills)
So I took a spore swab and some tissue samples and inoculated some agar dishes with these, which are currently growing. I still need to do some tranfers and clean the cultures from any contaminants, before I send these to grain.
It will take a lot of work and time to stabilize this variety.
This is kind of exciting to me and I hope others will enjoy following along. If you got any questions let me know.