Research The nexian phalaris breeding programme

[Ivan Illich]

Thanks! I appreciate the quick answer.
This is a quite a solid recurrent selection setup, Some things remain unclear to me however. A few follow-ups on what I think are some key things to point out/find out here:

How many plants enter each breeding cycle, and how many contribute pollen and seed, are these sampled?
Since the plant is self-incompatible and tetraploid you can't inbreed to fix traits, so a population size is really your main defense against losing traits. Removing the bottom 50% low producers each round is a good intensity, but population has to be kept high enough. Please note here!!!: If you keep 100 plants but only a handful end up as pollen donors (because a few produce copious pollen and dominate, or they produce ripe pollen first), your Ne is set by that handful, not by 100.

Have you tracked whether group means for metabolite are actually moving across cycles, or is the gain assumed? What measures have been taken to minimize the effect of environment on alkaloid content? This is to make sure that the effects you are seeing actually have a genetic foundation instead of an environmental one.

The selected plants are then grouped according to their chemotype profiles using the following classification:
Type 1: DMT-dominant
Type 2: DMT and 5-MeO-DMT
Type 3: 5-MeO-DMT and 5-MeO-NMT

Plants are subsequently cross-pollinated within their respective groups. Where, exceptional individuals may be used for introgression between groups to combine desirable traits.

Since the metabolite profiles likely represent the final branches in the metabolic pathway, it is probably not very useful to separate your plants in these chemotype groups yet and just aim for higher total alkaloid content instead. As this represents the total flux capacity of the metabolic pathways that can produce these compounds. If the effective breeding population is sufficiently large, you will keep all these chemo types at the end of that ride, then you select from there. Even keeping gramine in might actually be good, that is if it is yet another tip of the fork of the N,N-DMT or 5-Meo-DMT biosynthesis pathway. However it is super promising to see that it can be selected out relatively quickly from a population! I'll see if I can dive into some literature to find out what the bio synthetic pathways look like for these compounds.

It makes sense that the lineages are unknown from your wild samples. However, have population level lineages been kept, as soon as you started breeding and crossing?
moreover:
- The amount of generations for example,
- which plants were taken for the next generation,
- how many plants were kept? (Although getting the actual pollinators would be amazing).
Basically anything that will help me see important aspects of the breeding process

Really looking forward to hearing what you guys think! It's been a while for me when I had to use good old breeding genetics, so if I made some errors, or you just have general disagreements, let me know!

Thanks a lot for initiating this wonderful project.

Much love

 

[TransistorBass]

I'm simply asking out of interest.

I don't understand why you don't like acid base? Tnt tek is just another form of alcohol Tek.

 

[Grasshoppers]

The Evolution of a Underground Project
This project began years ago, sparked by decades-old rumors in the psychedelic community and literature on dead sheep on Phalaris pastures. It started with gardeners, hobbyists, and plant enthusiasts collecting seeds, exchanging ideas, and conducting positive bioassays that induced life-changing psychedelic journeys.

Eventually, we moved toward Thin-Layer Chromatography (TLC). By testing what we grew, we began exerting selective breeding pressure, leading to even more intriguing discoveries.
There is no written genealogical tree—no standardization, no formal documentation. Only anecdotes. It isn’t standardized today, and perhaps it never will be. The number of plants entering each breeding cycle is strictly limited by the testing capacity of myself and my fellow grasshoppers.

This work has evolved far beyond average gardening. Today, chemical testing makes up the majority of the breeding effort. While the exact number is unknown, a few hundred plants enter a new cycle each year.


The Current State & Breeding Dynamics
Progress is undeniable. Potency means are way up, and low-yielding plants have become rare in the breeding line. In fact, some of our selections are approaching the potency of Psychotria viridis. However, this plant is notoriously difficult to work with.

Here is what we are learning and navigating right now:

• Environmental Variables: Plants must be compared locally—grown in the same conditions and sampled during the same season—to limit the massive impact of environmental factors.
• Testing Rigor: Repeated testing is highly recommended before selecting a single plant. We hope to reduce the recommended number of tests per plant once we better understand the alkaloid fluctuations.
• Genetic Challenges: Self-incompatibility is not a reliable trait in these hybrids (Putievsky, Oram, Malafant 1980). Furthermore, extreme profiles (Type 1 and Type 3) could easily get lost in the massive Type 2 middle ground of the tetraploid Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Because these extremes are vital for future exploration, separating them into distinct breeding groups is essential, even if temporary.
• Keep moving forward: We currently recommend a heavy culling rate of about 80%.

Where We Are Headed
Right now, our focus is to deeply understand these chemical profiles: how they respond to climate cues, how to streamline the testing/growing process, and how to map the exact psychedelic effects of the different types and subtypes. Of course, we are also continuously acquiring wild germplasm to expand the gene pool.
In the future, we will certainly see a more structured, planned approach—though it can never be completely steered, given the independent nature of the grasshoppers involved.


Join the Search
Every gardener is welcome to join us. We need more hands plowing the soil to raise promising seedlings, and more eyes finding wild germplasm to enrich our gene pool.
There are still so many unanswered questions, and so many things left to try.
I am curious to hear your thoughts and deeply appreciate your contributions to this space. Your posts will be read.
Welcome to the journey if you choose to join us.

The project is just beginning.

 

[aizoaceous]

Since the plant is self-incompatible and tetraploid you can't inbreed to fix traits,

To emphasize @Grasshoppers's note, the genus Phalaris is reported to contain both consistently self-compatible species (e.g. P. brachystachys) and consistently self-incompatible species (e.g. P. arundinacea). From previous discussion P. aquatica appears to be inconsistent, with examples of both.

I assume you're not emasculating for your crosses, so it's possible that some of them are actually selfed? Have you tried deliberately selfing any of your plants, both as potentially interesting descendants and as a test of whether emasculation would have an effect? Manual emasculation seems impossibly tedious, but hot water was reported to work on P. canariensis.

This is really interesting work. @Grasshoppers potentially has the most diverse collection of Phalaris anywhere in the world, if commercial breeding programs (for forage grass or alpiste) discard most of that diversity when they first select for low alkaloids.