Home | Community | Message Board

MushroomMan Mycology
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Left Coast Kratom Buy Kratom Extract   Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates   North Spore Cultivation Supplies   PhytoExtractum Kratom Powder for Sale

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
OfflineBoulderMushrooms
Stranger
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/21/13
Posts: 61
Loc: Boulder, CO
Last seen: 9 years, 7 months
Mass Spectrometry and various cultivation issues
    #19315501 - 12/23/13 10:04 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Hey all, I have a set of question about using Mass Spectrometry (MS) as a tool for various things in the mushroom world, or looking to find some other form of technology that is accessible and will perform these functions.

I am wanting to:
  Assess the nutrient profile of grown and wild-harvested mushrooms for macro-nutrients such as protein, lipids, etc.
  Assess mushrooms for medicinal nutrients such as triterpenes, polysaccharides, beta glucans, ergosterols, etc etc
  Look for and assess heavy metals or other contaminants and pesticides in fruit bodies
  Test water and soil for contaminants

I'd love to have access to the equipment or the labs that have this equipment and do this kind of testing.  County extension services are not really equipped for this, but there are some university programs and certainly private businesses that will assess for these components.  Does anybody have good sources for laboratories that do this stuff for relatively cheap? Usually around $400-$600 which is priiiicey.

Second aspect to the post - has anybody had any experience doing their own assessments of these things?  Refurbished spectrometers go for under $20,000, and if they have the capability to test all of the above, that is not much of an investment for a well designed business plan that offers testing services to the community and to other commercial businesses. 

Has anybody heard of or used Public Labs equipment?  (http://store.publiclab.org/products/desktop-spectrometry-kit) This is a link to their website - they offer Mass Spectrometry desktop kits - obviously less technologically involved than a 20 grand machine.  They also offer smart-phone plug in kits that are mini mass spectrometers.  Their companies data infrastructure doesn't seem set up well enough to, say, run a soil test and get a full report on the constituents and their amounts. But I don't know enough about it to say that with authority. It seems it has the capability to do so, but a lot of work would need to go into it.

Public Lab is set up to be a community, grass roots sourced data analysis (check out their balloon camera kit - tie a camera to a balloon, release it on a 1000 foot real, and film things from above. They tracked parts of the BP oil spill with this set up!).  I would think that if enough of us myco-philes got involved with this, we could establish baseline levels of contaminants, medicinal compounds, macro-nutrients, or whatever else the machine has the capability of 'seeing', and there could be a myco-focused community of mass spectrometers.  Lots of potential for water testing, soil testing, testing pre and post mycoremediation, assessing heavy metals in wild specimens, etc. 

Anybody have experience or ideas? Anybody know of any cultivators (larger scale) that have and use this technology? Also, relatively new to the posting, so I'm not sure if this is a good place to post, or if there are better places on the Shroomery sphere? Advise if necessary:)

~


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleTheMaster
PATIENCE


Registered: 07/13/13
Posts: 705
Loc: Earth
Re: Mass Spectrometry and various cultivation issues [Re: BoulderMushrooms]
    #19316359 - 12/23/13 02:08 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Yeah, testing is quite expensive. Like you said, a water sample test is ~500 bucks alone. AA stands for atomic absorption spectroscopy and is different than mass spectroscopy, AA splits and measures different wavelengths of light while the MS separates and measures by mass/charge ratio or size/polarity etc... Depending on if its a ICP, GC or LC - MS.

The only other place that might cater well to this question would be the chemistry and pharm. section... I realized it after posting in the mush cult thread you started.

It's a great idea you have, but all labs require a rather hefty operating budget to get stuff done right. Perhaps kickstarter or another crowdsource site could help get your idea started!


--------------------
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." Mahatma Gandhi


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Left Coast Kratom Buy Kratom Extract   Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates   North Spore Cultivation Supplies   PhytoExtractum Kratom Powder for Sale


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Thor: Serious security issue zoodoo 2,614 13 06/05/02 04:58 AM
by Larrythescaryrex
* credit card, paypal and mail system issues UFOz8MyGoat 954 1 07/29/02 02:43 AM
by Lana
* Possession/cultivation punishments for shrooms. FrostyBong 1,207 5 11/11/02 11:57 PM
by bowling-name
* Microsoft Issues Patch for 'Critical' Windows Secu Mojo_Risin 1,150 4 11/21/02 06:44 PM
by Mojo_Risin
* FBI Carnivore and the Patriot Act Ellis Dee 895 1 11/23/02 05:39 AM
by Anonymous
* Mass Media Storage? EffedS 1,386 18 08/22/03 09:00 PM
by wingnutx
* Security of Cultivation Set-Up shr00ming_tux 1,307 3 10/26/01 05:36 AM
by DarkCoyote
* Post deleted by Administrator
( 1 2 all )
Alien 6,143 25 05/30/01 05:32 PM
by them_26

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: trendal, automan, Northerner
320 topic views. 0 members, 1 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.021 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.