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Interesting paper - Mescaline quantification method in fresh cactus

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Keeper Trout

Keeper Trout

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pdf attached in case anyone else runs into issues.

Van Der Sypt Frederick A.P. Validation and Exploratory Application of a Simple, Rapid and Economical Procedure (MESQ) for the Quantification of Mescaline in Fresh Cactus Tissue and Aqueous Cactus Extracts. Zenodo, Apr. 2022, p., doi:10.5281/zenodo.6409376.
 

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Thanks for posting this!

I took the liberty to edit the title so it briefly describes the paper, I hope that is ok, K. Trout!

I still need to read the article in depth but it seems very interesting.

By the way, if someone can't download the article in the original link, by all means use the version attached by dreamoar, but better to first try and downloading from the original website in order for the author to be able to get info on the downloads and trends in views of his article.

I'll come back to this thread when I have read the article properly to comment on.
 
That is all fine. Thanks very much for doing so.

For anyone having trouble with download from the website the only option that works is the download button at the bottom of the page. If that is not functioning the first thing to check is security settings and being sure your computer will accept downloads from that website.
This is a moot point since the PDF is here now but it may arise again with some other download. At least for me that has been the most common reason that I can't download a PDF I find online.

There are quite a few interesting points in made in this paper along with a lot of potential applications for this approach. One of which is the analysis inflicts only a small amount of injury to the plant. That potentially broadens the range of what CAN be analysed; say if something is rare or just limited in availability or if it is a plant that the owner does not want harmed.

One weak spot is it is based on fresh material. To be sure the resulting quantitives are comparable with each other another sample may need to be taken, weighed, dried and reweighed to check moisture content. Most cacti come out in the high 80s to 90% water but a few can be significantly lower. This may not matter if it i restricted to Trichocereus but is easy to evaluate.
One other weak spot is the aliquot size is small so needs good technique and sensitive scales.
Both of those can be taken in stride.
 
Thanks for posting this! Great info here!

But I'm having trouble locating the actual results for the mescaline concentrations of all the cacti that were tested. Are those results in the article and I'm just not seeing them?

Thanks!
 
Their results are there. You are probably looking for a summary table of analytical results which is not how it is presented. This paper is not actually about tallying up the results of a series of subjects (even though it includes some of that), it is a presentation and discussion of a sampling technique using small aliquots. Some interesting results are embedded in there even though the presentation is rather abbreviated due to the focus being on the methodology rather than the results. They appear to only include results they found int4resting for one reason or another.
 
So can we talk about how 7/10 peyotes from all different locations had no detectable mescaline?

skeptical-3rd-world-kid.jpg
 
Keeper Trout said:
Their results are there. You are probably looking for a summary table of analytical results which is not how it is presented. This paper is not actually about tallying up the results of a series of subjects (even though it includes some of that), it is a presentation and discussion of a sampling technique using small aliquots. Some interesting results are embedded in there even though the presentation is rather abbreviated due to the focus being on the methodology rather than the results. They appear to only include results they found int4resting for one reason or another.
Click to expand...


Thanks for that info!

Could you or someone else explain Figures 32 and 33 in layman's terms? I'm having difficulty understanding what the charts are saying about the difference in mescaline concentration between Peyote and Bridgesii. Table 2 on the next page appears to indicate that mescaline occurs in Peyote and Bridgesii in roughly equivalent concentrations. Is that accurate? Is that what Figures 32 and 33 are saying?

Thanks!
 
This is an especially interesting article from the point of view of methodology and some of the DIY techniques are creative and thought-provoking, particularly the adaptation of an electric jigsaw into a shaker for sample preparation.

Grey Fox said:
Could you or someone else explain Figures 32 and 33 in layman's terms?
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Figures 32 & 33 show the efficacy of the extraction method across a range of starting concentrations by comparing concentration measurements from samples with the calculated concentration for each sample. They're not particularly intended to demonstrate anything about the concentration of mescaline in the species tested, more that they show a linear recovery rate across the detection range as an indication of the precision of the method.

Table 2 shows how much of the mescaline will be recovered from either of the species when they are within the stated concentration range (0.05-1% for fresh cactus material and 0.05-0.5% for cactus tea) and compares the standard deviations, which is an indication of how much variability can be expected when, for example, making repeat extractions from material with the same starting concentration.

As I understand it, this is a part of showing what range of error can be expected when using this quantification method.
 
There's some interesting bits here and there !
i think, for the vast majority of us, this is still way too complicated ; maybe for a profesional cactus grower wanting to truly optimize his genetics ?
Even though, i like these ideas - i think it rises broader issues. As with weed, we might to "optimize" mescaline content (or thc), to realize there are other interesting synergetic alkaloids at play, ... and eventually going full circle, re inventing nature diversity. But meanwhile, we favored centralize, bigger scale operations... rather than just the mysterious infinite diversity of little cactus growers over the world (i like that the cactus didn't went mainstream, and mostly not codified nor labeled with names and brands and quantitative %... )
But yet ! i would love an easy, low tech way of roughtly judging the potency of a brew... while i like the unknown, for dosing first timer it's sometime too random...
Inspired by their work, would there be a way ?

the most intesting data for me, was the variation of mescaline within one specimen! apparently, they can be much stronger by the top !
(which then, make you think , while harvesting, to maybe choose to cook the top, while rerooting the middle cut ? )
 
Quetzal7 said:
the most intesting data for me, was the variation of mescaline within one specimen! apparently, they can be much stronger by the top !
(which then, make you think , while harvesting, to maybe choose to cook the top, while rerooting the middle cut ? )
Click to expand...

Same here, the vertical signal is a surprising discovery. About 2x the mescaline in the top vs bottom. Such a strong signal would be worth reproducing.

The strong vertical gradient help explain some of the columnar cactus variability: This paper's example data.suggests that when comparing strains, the same vertical part of the cactus should be used (e.g. middle 1/3). If the location of the vertical sample is not controlled, specimen comparison contains a lot of noise: for example if comparing the light blue vs dark gree.specimens in the plot below, one could erroneously conclude that the light blue is significantly stronger than the dark green if a bottom dark green cut is compared to a light blue top cut. This could also lead to the false impression that yields are not reproducible if different vertical segments are used when trying to confirm signals.

Perhaps the cactus yield is more consistent than we think if we take vertical location into account.

I also wonder if dark storage affects the top/bottom equally.
 

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I found the issue of top parts having more alkaloid content pretty interesting...it seems to contradict what I have read previously..I mean..people saying old cactus parts being most potent...apparently the top zone should be the youngest zone...
Also if this proves correct..maybe inducing pup formation could be a way of increasing total alkaloid content someway..just increasing the young new grow points...
Still lot of interrogations...how old should be the cactus to start a consistent alkaloid production..etc etc...
anyway..great reading, thanks for posting it.
 
The top is the youngest, newest growth.

What I have observed is that older, larger cacti tend to be more potent than young, small cacti. I have sampled from the same cacti over the years and witnessed first hand that this is the case.

I think some people have confused things and thought that the oldest part of the cactus is the strongest. But it doesn't work like that. Its well known that most of the alkaloids are concentrated in the green flesh. The tip contains more of the green flesh than any other part of the column. Near the base of the column it is common to have corking or scar tissue that limits the amount of green flesh that is present. In addition, columns often get fatter as they grow taller. So there will just be more green flesh and alkaloids at the top of the column than anywhere else.

This paper seems to indicate that the green flesh itself may even be more potent nearer to the tip. For what its worth, the tip is where many predators prefer to feed on / attack the cactus. It would make sense that the cactus is loading up that area with alkaloids.
 
Grey Fox said:
The top is the youngest, newest growth.

What I have observed is that older, larger cacti tend to be more potent than young, small cacti. I have sampled from the same cacti over the years and witnessed first hand that this is the case.

I think some people have confused things and thought that the oldest part of the cactus is the strongest. But it doesn't work like that. Its well known that most of the alkaloids are concentrated in the green flesh. The tip contains more of the green flesh than any other part of the column. Near the base of the column it is common to have corking or scar tissue that limits the amount of green flesh that is present. In addition, columns often get fatter as they grow taller. So there will just be more green flesh and alkaloids at the top of the column than anywhere else.

This paper seems to indicate that the green flesh itself may even be more potent nearer to the tip. For what its worth, the tip is where many predators prefer to feed on / attack the cactus. It would make sense that the cactus is loading up that area with alkaloids.
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Thank you kindly. I was misunderstanding. :oops:

And looking back on it that was a dumb mistake. I wasn't thinking. My apologies.

One love
 
This is mescaline concentration, so I think the wider top or older thickness don't matter.

Damage could be a factor: older cacti could have had more battles triggering mescaline. The more tender top growth having more mescaline for pre-emptive protection also makes sense.

Do we have any data on purposely slightly attacking the cacti to simulate an attack and produce more mescaline? Similar to how bumblebees do sometimes on other plants to increase flowering. I'm sure this has been tested...
 
dreamer042 said:
So can we talk about how 7/10 peyotes from all different locations had no detectable mescaline?

skeptical-3rd-world-kid.jpg
Click to expand...


I'd like to hear more on that. Can you wrap some more words around your question to give it some context?
"7/10 peyotes from all different location" in particular. Thanks!
 
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