G-ballz' lazer irradiated CFL Macgyver Grow

[ganjaballz]

After request from a couple of respected members here at 420, I've copied my grow journal from another site and added more details / photos /etc. (The other site has severe performance issues). This grow is still in progress and came close to disaster at one point.

My desire was to test the effect of pre-treating mj seeds with laser irradiation after reading about quite a few studies with excellent results (as well as some with poor results but these only proved it's not for use on every type of seed and that it takes a certain type of laser, length of exposure, etc to produce success which is in line with what one would expect of this type of thing).

Seeds:
I purchased some imported seeds w/ a well known history of good genetics and success. I thought I would be getting multiple seeds and was a bit surprised to find I was only given one of each breed (my misunderstanding) but luckily they included a "variety" pack of around 20 seeds described only as "short stuff". This changed things somewhat as I wanted to test laser vs. non laser treatment using the quality breeds as well as the generic.
Breeds:
1 - Reserva Privada Cole Train Feminized
1 - DNA Rocklock Feminized
6 - "short stuff mix" of Indica, Sativa, Runderalis, Indica / Sativa

Grow methods:
Seeds will be started in an AeroGarden modified w/ oxygen injection and transplanted to a Deep Water Culture grow tent of my own construction.

Obviously the laser experiment will need to be repeated with a crop of identical seeds from the same genetics. I decided to go ahead with it anyway as a full study would require a "random" genetics grow anyway as part of the "control" so we'll just do it out of order this once....

 

[ganjaballz]

Laser Irradiation of Seeds for Fun and Profit

As part of my ramp up for home growing I "acquired" an extensive library of mj grow e-books and botany, hydroponic theory, etc reference books. In the course of searching out these hundreds of e-books I came across a couple of studies performed on using lasers to "pre-treat" crop seeds. For various reasons the scientists believed that lasers could be used to stimulate seeds into germinating faster w/ less water and grow bigger / more bountiful crops on the same or less resources than non treated seeds.

I wasn't able to find any prior history of this being tested on MJ so, why the hell not?

Reference Studies (links provided by "Lurker"):
Influence of He—Ne laser irradiation on seeds thermodynamic parameters and seedlings growth of Isatis indogotica (PDF)

Representation of He-Ne laser irradiation effect on radish seeds with selected germination indices (PDF)

There are literally dozens of other studies out there on all kinds of plants. Food crops, beauty plants, trees, fruit, veggies - you name it. They ranged from wildly beneficial with almost no "technique" to destructive without extremely specific light spectrum and exposure times.

The simplified explanation as to why this should work is that a laser of the right type and strength (red laser, 5 mw output in our case) provides two things the seed needs to trigger it to go into a type of "accelerated" growth - heat and stimulation.

It sounds simple but that heat needs to be in a very narrow range at a specific part of the seed. A laser of the right type is able to penetrate the shell covering and heat that part of the seed without damage to other parts.

In more scientific language, provided by "Lurker" -
The primary theory(ies) behind this methodology involve both 1) A (small to moderate amount of) heating of the seeds (and breaking of kinetic equilibrium via em), AND 2) A stimulation of the Phytochrome (Pr) response, which peaks out at 660nm. The lasers used so far run ~633nm, which they've pointed out is only about ~55% efficient in terms of Phytochrome's absorbance at that spectrum.

My personal theory is that the laser replicates what the seed would "see and feel" in a drought condition where the seed has dropped on dry, un-shaded soil. This causes the seed to kick into over drive in order to get a taproot down and begin sprouting. Since we're only simulating the condition, the supply of water combines with this "over-drive" to create faster, heavier growth and fruiting.

Most of the studies used a specific type of laser the majority of us don't have. A red diode, laser pointer type unit with a 5mw output can serve as an adequate substitute, fortunately. Based on rough math this calls for a 20-40 second irradiation time using such a laser. (The variances were due to different sized seeds, thickness of the shell and how dark the shells were). The smaller the seed and more photo-transparent the shell the shorter length of time the seed should be exposed.

We just want to create a little heat and light inside the seed - not cook it.

AFAIK green lasers won't work but I can't say this for sure without testing.

 

[ganjaballz]

Day 1 - Death Star, meet seeds. Seeds, meet Death Star

My 5mw, red laser pointer died on launch day. Luckily, I had another red laser but being meant for aligning the mirrors of telescopes it had slightly more output. Around 20mw. Fortunately it also came with a dial which allows the astronomer to vary the output. Unfortunately there is no "scientific" method to this setting - just numbered stations of 1-11. (Mine goes to 11, hee, hee).

I figured that would call for a setting of 2 or 3 to reach the 5mw output - it would either be right or I'd be baking seeds....

Laser treating 4 of the 8 seeds on the germination paper towel

The obligatory "zoom shot" of an alternate method for treating just one seed

Since some of the studies used water soaking of the seeds I used two germination methods - the wet paper towel method and the soak in water method.

Two of my seeds had dark shells and two had light so I used:
5mw output for 40 seconds on the light ones
10mw output for 30 seconds on the dark ones

 

[ganjaballz]

Germination Results

All of the laser treated seeds showed taproots at the 12 hour mark. (None of the non-irradiated seeds showed at this point).

At the 24 hour mark all the seeds were showing taproots with the laser treated ones' being longer. In the case of the two water soaked, irradiated seeds the taproots were longest - around 1/4 inch.

Frankenseed...

Into the incubator. Grow my children, grow!

I placed two seedlings into one pod since I had 7 stations on the AeroGrow to work with. This AeroGrow has an airstone added and the lights are connected to a separate timer. For the first two weeks they will be on a 20 on / 4 off lighting cycle.

 

[ganjaballz]

Day 4

Seedlings growth at day four. There is an obvious difference between the treated and non treated subjects....

 

[ganjaballz]

The MacGyver Grow Tent

1 - metal book shelf (wal-mart) 20.00 back when I bought it, more now
1 - canvas drop cloth (home depot) 10.00 (optional)
2 - space blankets (wal-mart camping section) 2.00 each
2 - 12 or 14 inch fans (wal-mart) 10.00 ea
1 - 12 inch square furnace filter (wal-mart) 2.50
1 - roll black duct tape (high quality, doesn't come un-stuck easily)
1 - roll of velcro (home depot)
1 - box activated carbon (wal-mart pet section) 1.50


Directions:
Assemble book shelf and leave all but top and bottom shelves off or put two on top and two on bottom for extra strength. (You can also divide the tent into two chambers if needed using them).

Use duct tape to wrap the shelf with the space blankets. Use one on back and sides and another, doubled over for the front and top.

Use duct tape to attach canvas drop cloth to sides and back for insulation / noise control. (optional)

Use a razor to cut out the doors on the front. Use duct tape on the seams and to form tabs for velcro. use velcro to close the seams / seal the tent.

I left the bottom shelf open and used card board to form a floor minus a one foot square on one side. One of the fans goes here to pull fresh air in from the bottom.

Cut out another one foot square out of the mylar on the top. The other fan hangs under this to push hot air upwards, out of the tent. Tape the furnace filter on top of this and cover with activated carbon for odor control.

Hang CFL lights from the top shelves using something better than bread ties. (My lights slipped down and almost killed my plants at one point). Now I use multiple bread ties....

Total Cost: Around 40.00

I can only recommend this set up for a CFL grow. Using it with other lights would probably create one hell of a fire hazard.

 

[ganjaballz]

Day 21: Aftermath of the bread tie incident....

A lot happened between day 4 and day 21. I moved 6 plants into the Deep Water Culture grower. Two of the non-laser treated seeds just weren't keeping up and had to be sacrificed. We only have 6 openings...

I lost a ton of photos...

My lighting rig failed and the lights slipped to within one inch or less of the plants...

The rockwool "disintegrated" to some extent, leaving my reservoir and water pump, worse my irrigation tubes full of little black chunks of "crap".

The temperature in the grow tent went over 90 degrees and the plants stopped growing. Several started to wither and die...

My Ph control measure - lemon juice - completely failed to maintain a steady Ph level. After a day or two the water would go back to it's native 8.5 Ph level.

It was time for a massive, save the pot effort.

I moved the lights back up slowly, measuring the temperature until it was back around 80 degrees again.

I placed an order for some GH "Ph Down" and hoped it would arrive soon.

I cut new irrigation lines and ran 10 gallons of water through my filtration system so it would be free of chlorine when the Ph down arrived. Once it came I treated the water and checked it with my meter. Finally, it was staying stable at 6.8.

Moving the plants to an air bath holder, I scrubbed out the reservoir and spent almost an hour cleaning out the pump and irrigation manifold. I used some cheese cloth to make a pump filter in case more rock wool fun and games occurred.

Ditching my air stones, I assembled and installed a new Ario aerator.

I set up the Deep Water Culture with it's new water and irrigation tubes and switched everything on. The water flowed perfectly. The new oxygen injector worked great with tons of very tiny bubbles, like an alka seltzer tablet dissolving. I ran two tubes from my left over dual air pump to create large air bubbles, hopefully helping to create a current in the water and keep nutrients moving across the roots.

Only one of the plants looked like it was too far behind the others to catch up so I went ahead and pared the grow down to 5 plants.

Day 21 group photo

One of two which came out of the disaster no worse for wear...

I was sad to let her go but it was for the best...

 

[ganjaballz]

Day 27: Recovery seems to be working...

The clean up, temperature control (I watch it like a Hawk now) and Ph level all seem to be working. We have positive growth once again.
Ph: 6.8
TDS: 500
Cycle: 20 on / 4 off

Frankenseed is now Frankenplant

The worst hit all seem to be growing once again

She's so pretty!

 

[ganjaballz]

Day 30

This gets us up to date with today's photos...

The growth rate has picked up nicely. I'm just hoping I can still harvest before the end of November now.

 

[ganjaballz]

9 Days of growth:

Day 21

Day 27

Day 30

 

[IrishBoy]

truly amazing and very very interesting..

sorry to hear about all the bad things but looks like its doing good now once you got it sorted out.

ive never heard of this tek before so this is very cool and very Pro journal you have going with all the data.

 

[Raisin J]

Very nice dude, at first I thought this sounded kinda out there, but damn interesting stuff, looks promising to say the least. Your walmart gro tents pretty slick and would be a great starter for someone looking to start growing. +rep

 

[619ster]

Always good to see new studies and new info. Great grow. Hopefully Things don't go wrong anymore. BTW, don't you think 6.8 ph is a bit high?

 

[ganjaballz]

Always good to see new studies and new info. Great grow. Hopefully Things don't go wrong anymore. BTW, don't you think 6.8 ph is a bit high?

All the books say 6.8 is supposed to be the ideal. My plants really started growing fast once I got it set there.

I can get my water to around 5.0 or even lower but I'm really not sure. Ideal growing medium should be "slightly" acidic - I'll check my grow books again, maybe I mis-read something.

So far the best growing plants are still the ones which were laser irradiated - even despite my issues along the way. I need to beg, buy or grow enough identical seeds to do a repeat of the test and have enough seeds to risk baking a few so I can test all the various exposure time lengths to see which one gives the best result.

I haven't smoked mj in over 10 years and have no local supply, don't know anyone within 500 miles, etc so my only way forward is to grow it myself. I'm hoping I can harvest a large number of seeds from at least one plant this time.

ETA-I checked various grow books on the Ph and they're all over the place. Some say 5.6 to 6.6 - some say 6.8 to 7.1. My plants seem to be growing well at 6.8 so I'm going to leave them there for now unless enough growers convince me otherwise.

 

[The Lurker]

Thanks for posting an update to this experiment, Mister Ballz ! We appreciate it. Nice job on the journal, BTW. I hope to see more people experimenting with this in the near future--!

Sorry to hear about all the issues. I was hopin' the lab-yet-uber-ghetto approach would take you through ok - twist ties, eh? Sometimes, over-engineering is better...

So if I understand you correctly, burning issues aside, those leftmost two plants were in the treated category?
-------------

Fortunately, even lasers in the ~650-660nm range (i.e. closer to Phytochrome's action peak) like This One can be acquired for under ~$15. Makes this technique accessible to almost anyone willing to try it.

Read the links to the studies gb posted above when you have time, folks. A few more notes from the OT:
----------------

"Not only was there an increase in germination activity, they also found a significant increase in overall vitality, chlorophyll synthesis, water utilization efficiency, and biomass compared with the control group, among other things. In other words, larger, healthier plants.

So the positive results continued to occur far beyond initial germination.

These studies have gone on in various capacities using light treatement since the early 80's, lasers are just the most recent version of this. The overall effects have been fairly well documented using different (non-mj) strains at this point. At least for commercial purposes, this has also shown evidence of:

1) Better germination % of older, more inviable seed stock
2) Better growth overall

If one can get better germination rates AND larger, healther plants by spending almost an entire minute per seed doing this, I'd say the return on investment (ROI) for the time and effort involved might be worth it - wouldn't you say?"
---------------------------

The link to the research study abstract from gb's OT can also be found here:

Effect of laser pretreatment on germination and membrane lipid peroxidation of Chinese pine seeds under drought stress

All the books say 6.8 is supposed to be the ideal. My plants really started growing fast once I got it set there.

I can get my water to around 5.0 or even lower but I'm really not sure. Ideal growing medium should be "slightly" acidic - I'll check my grow books again, maybe I mis-read something.

If you're growing in soil a pH of 6.8 is ok; if you're in hydro, much better to be in the 5.8-6.0 range. Over (and under) that range and you tend to get some nutrient lockout even with chelated substrates in solution.

If you want a good (huge) reference for soilless culture, I recommend Hydroponic Food Production by Dr. Howard M. Resh (Ph.D.); it's also known as 'The Bible' within 'the community'. A university-level textbook I still have sitting in storage somewhere that I kept from my college days.

Still comes in handy from time to time...

Cheers mate,

-TL

 

[ganjaballz]

I was wondering if anyone can confirm the breeds by looking at the plants at this stage?

Even without flowering they're already producing a sweet, skunk aroma. It's a very pleasant type of skunk though, I have to admit I like it.

 

[ganjaballz]

Thanks for posting an update to this experiment, Mister Ballz ! We appreciate it. Nice job on the journal, BTW. I hope to see more people experimenting with this in the near future--!

Sorry to hear about all the issues. I was hopin' the lab-yet-uber-ghetto approach would take you through ok - twist ties, eh? Sometimes, over-engineering is better...

So if I understand you correctly, burning issues aside, those leftmost two plants were in the treated category?
-------------

Fortunately, even lasers in the ~650-660nm range (i.e. closer to Phytochrome's action peak) like This One can be acquired for under ~$15. Makes this technique accessible to almost anyone willing to try it.

Read the links to the studies gb posted above when you have time, folks. A few more notes from the OT:
----------------

"Not only was there an increase in germination activity, they also found a significant increase in overall vitality, chlorophyll synthesis, water utilization efficiency, and biomass compared with the control group, among other things. In other words, larger, healthier plants.

So the positive results continued to occur far beyond initial germination.

These studies have gone on in various capacities using light treatement since the early 80's, lasers are just the most recent version of this. The overall effects have been fairly well documented using different (non-mj) strains at this point. At least for commercial purposes, this has also shown evidence of:

1) Better germination % of older, more inviable seed stock
2) Better growth overall

If one can get better germination rates AND larger, healther plants by spending almost an entire minute per seed doing this, I'd say the return on investment (ROI) for the time and effort involved might be worth it - wouldn't you say?"
---------------------------

The link to the research study abstract from gb's OT can also be found here:

Effect of laser pretreatment on germination and membrane lipid peroxidation of Chinese pine seeds under drought stress

If you're growing in soil a pH of 6.8 is ok; if you're in hydro, much better to be in the 5.8-6.0 range. Over (and under) that range and you tend to get some nutrient lockout even with chelated substrates in solution.

If you want a good (huge) reference for soilless culture, I recommend Hydroponic Food Production by Dr. Howard M. Resh (Ph.D.); it's also known as 'The Bible' within 'the community'. A university-level textbook I still have sitting in storage somewhere that I kept from my college days.

Still comes in handy from time to time...

Cheers mate,

-TL

Glad to see you here and thanks for the added info.

Given your advice and the reference material I'm going to work on lowering my hydro Ph down to the 5.0-6.0 range. Where you find stasis has a lot to do with which buffer minerals are present in the water. We have very soft water here, very alkaline at 8.5 and with just a little Ph down it seems to find stasis at 6.8. Hopefully not much more Ph down will get me another -1 or so and be able to hold there without constant adjustment.

I agree completely - if 40 seconds of time irradiating seeds produces such dramatic results it's well worth doing. When I have more seeds I plant to experiment more to find the optimum exposure time for various size and darkness of coverings in mj seeds - ideally producing some graphics / charts.

I really need to work on hooking up with some other growers around here so I don't have to pay thousands of dollars to import a seed supply, though. I'm not wild about growing a male plant in order to harvest my own - I'm not set up to isolate a male in my current living arrangement.

Oh and yes the largest of the plants remaining are the irradiated ones. (As you can see two of them fared much better, probably thanks to heat resistant genetics). The last of the non irradiated seeds is still not growing as well which actually matches the drought resistance some of the researchers found in irradiated samples. Basically, they were able to deal with heat and drought better than non-treated seeds. If nothing else I'd have to lean that way based on my results.

I still need to do another run using identical seeds only in order to claim definitive results, however.

 

[ganjaballz]

I'll have to do some extensive google work later - there is an easy way to adjust the output and spectrum of most any of the red diode based laser pointers. Almost all of them have tiny adjustment screws for this purpose and can be adjusted to the point where they destroy themselves. (Not that we want that but it illustrates the desirable, wide amount of adjustment available).

I have the sensors and software to measure light spectrum, luckily. (I was involved with a group called the "Imaging Science Foundation" at one time). I'm working on a cheap and simple, DIY hand held analyzer which will enable growers to not only tweak laser pointers but also measure the lighting they use so they can add or subtract the required spectrum for optimal growing.

I'd like to build my own LED setup someday and I plan to make sure it has exactly what I need to get the best growth / veg results.

 

[SnowBender]

 

[Raisin J]

Hey I think others might be willing to help
some, like me even, I copied that link up there for the cheap laser pointer, and could definately see trying this out as a test. Would that pointer be adequate for this? It's not alot of cash and would be fun to try, I have alot of seeds and can and will be producing more. I had planned on trying some pre scuffing of some seeds vs non scuffing already and I'd much rather try this. I plan on starting some seeds fairly soon.