Howdy ho, for some strange unknown reason, I am an ethylene buff. If you do not know, ethylene is a gaseous plant hormone involved in all kinds of things like fruit ripening an flower senescence. Ethylene has also been shown to change the male flowers of cucumbers into fully functional female flowers. Well, when I read this, I instantly thought, will this work for pot?. Surprise, it does.
As I was doing some research in an old book,Ethylene In Plant Biology, by Abeles, 1973, I noticed that experiments have been done to induce the formation of pure female flowers on male cannabis plants, plants that have fully shown their sex and even began to flower!! Since ethylene is a gas, and any one that has made gaseous solutions knows, it is not so easy to work with. To give plants a good dose of ethylene, an ethylene precursor called Ethrel(2-chloroethylphosphonic acid) is just added to the soil at 960 ppm. The synthesis of ethrel can be found at Sakai, S., Imaseki, H., and Uritani, I. (1970). Plant Cell Physiol. 11, 737. However, ethrel is no longer commonly used, but it is now replaced with an biosynthetic precursor of ethylene, ACC. I have never tried ACC with pot, but it is effective in giving full ethylene dose response at a concentration around 10 uM. And those bees tied into the professional scientific community, ACC is readily available and pretty harmless.
I cannot find the original reference in libraries, but the experiment with ethrel and cannabis sativa is at "Mohan Ram, H.Y., and Jaiswal, V.S. (1970). Experientia 26, 214".
I just thought that some people might like to know that a male plant can be transformed into a female plant, without hermaphrodite flowers. Oh yeah, ethylene is also an anesthetic when inhaled at greater than 80% v/v, but I have firm belief that one should not ingest any lab reagents.
My guitar killed your mama.
