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[modern]

There are caffeine pills for sale. Jet-Alert is 200 mg per pill so easy to experiment with known amounts. I will need to find the published article but I'm sure they presoaked the seeds rather than seedlings. I'd say 1 mg per mL would be an easy starting point and you can test higher and lower concentrations.

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[fairdinkumseeds]

Starting a trial with 200mg caffeine pills. Seed soak in hundreds of cups, 1/4pill, 1/2pill, 3/4pill, etc etc etc.
Tried surflan, but turns out its a very effective weedkiller on wombat berry, even at really low doses....

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[modern]

You should presoak seeds in water for a few hours or days depending on the seeds used and germination speed. Then soak in caffeine for 24 hours followed by 24 hours water soak to remove excess caffeine on seed coat. The concentration of caffeine was quite low so you should dialate greatly. 200 mg would go a long way according to this published article. May still be worth testing higher concentrations though it seems less is more.

http://omicsonline.com/open-access/studies-on-the-effect-of-caffeine-on-growth-and-yield-parameters-in-helianthus-annuus-l-variety-modern-0974-8369-1-014.pdf

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[BubbleCat]

FDK, whats your design for evaluation, do you have control groups ? Will you keep track of germination rates so we do have data about how coffeine affects germination, if it has done something will then be the later question

[fairdinkumseeds]

Was just gonna put a heap of disposable cups on a table, 20seeds per cup. Various concentrations caffeine from zero(control) to heaps, various time soaks, 1 hr, 6hrs, 12hrs, 24hrs, 2days, 4days.
Rinse before planting, cross fingers, see what happens.
Surviving sprouts get photographed daily/weekly/monthly.
3months later tubers as big as footballs, instead of peanuts.

[hereje]

Never heard or read about caffeine being used as a mutagen but if its a dna targeted displacement reaction a ph buffer helps the chemical react with the dna strands while lowering the liklyhood of seed death from chemical shock - i dont believe this is needed when doing rna mutations

Phosphoric acid is probly the best way to achieve this from my understanding

oh and i believe i remember reading that citric acid is a popular buffer in labs aswell

[BubbleCat]

Me too, but google shows theres several accounts on coffeine being mutagenic in funghi bacteria plants amd animals.

[hereje]

Very interesting - ill have to look into that

[BubbleCat]

This might have similar effect like Colchicine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelidonine
But thats just a guess.

However I got a rather small amount of seeds now

[FewTrueSeed]

Question about inducing polypoloidity. Wouldent it b more effective to give small doses of a mutagen to a plant over time and harvest the seed. It seems like a fully established plant could take higher doses of the mutagen over a longer period, increasing your chances. You could even treat several species in one genus and cross them. This should work. And could I make a polypoloidal hybiscus for instance, into a tatrapoloid?  How would I know?

I was just reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_U so cool.

[BubbleCat]

Question about inducing polypoloidity. Wouldent it b more effective to give small doses of a mutagen to a plant over time and harvest the seed. It seems like a fully established plant could take higher doses of the mutagen over a longer period, increasing your chances. You could even treat several species in one genus and cross them. This should work. And could I make a polypoloidal hybiscus for instance, into a tatrapoloid?  How would I know?

I was just reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_U so cool.

I think youd get a few lightly mutated genomes with a high chance of all kill switches still functioning and all, the plant will cut those of and not let their genes anywhere near their inheritance line - your seeds will probably be fine.

[FewTrueSeed]

Interesting. Hence the seed soaking being the most effective option. I have many seeds and would like to do an experiment soon.

[hereje]

Im not 100% sure of your question but if you try to cause a dna mutation in a living plant you would have a lower success rate because the plant has a dna repairing mechanism but would also have a lower fatality rate

If your shooting for mutations its generally better to mutate the seeds of a plant because they are not living yet and have no way to repair the dna you damage with the mutagen, although this has a high fatality rate for some seed species so you would wanna start with a lot of them to offset this

[FewTrueSeed]

Another debatable question. If I get a successful mutation in a vegitable, is it safe to,consume?

[hereje]

That question has been debated for decades - but the way i personally look at it is.. just about everything grown in this country is geneticaly modified to produce higher yields for the farmer, knowingly or not ive been eating them my whole life and it hasnt killed me, harmed me, or had adverse effects, i have never met someone face to face who is ill or dying because the have eaten canned corn or green beans so im willing to bet that gmo plants are safe to consume

But theres thousands of pages of documents on both sides that says the other is wrong