Icyurmt said:

Funny enough, dried mushrooms test higher in the minor alkaloids than fresh does; fresh just has higher amounts of unconjugated psilocin. None of them aside from psilocin are active though.

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I'm not sure about there being more minor alkaloids in dried than fresh unless the fruits have been dried at low temperature. Tryptamine and 4-hydroxytryptamine degrade really easily and don't usually show up in HPLC results. And it's the addition of the phosphate group at the norbaeocystin step that stabilizes the synthesis molecule which is why norbaeocystin and baeocystin often show up in the results depending on drying method.

So as you say in one of your linked posts, the precursors aren't manufactured and stored so the minor alkaloid content in a fruit has to be the product of active psilocybin synthesis. And with the precursors being unstable logic dictates that there are going to be higher quantities of all the minor alkaloids in fresh fruits.

They've stopped presenting their results like this now but I spotted a pattern in MagicMyco HPLC results with regard to minor alkaloids and drying temperatures. Low temperature dried fruits retained the more stable minor alkaloids whereas elevated temperature dried fruits just had psilocybin and small amounts of psilocin. This is typical of the patterns of the alkaloid ratios between high and low temperature dried fruits.

The temperature isn't mentioned here but the alkaloid profile is typical of elevated temperature dried fruits in their HPLC results.



And two with low temperature drying alkaloid profiles with norbaeocystin and baeocystin remaining in the dried fruits.





You can't compare total potency as they're all different strains but it's interesting to note that the psilocybin content is higher in the elevated temperature dried fruits where only traces of precursors remain which may indicate that elevated temperatures increase the rate of psilocybin synthesis in harvested fruits until the enzymes are degraded over 50C and is the only evidence I've ever seen that might indicate that elevated temperature drying could be best for long term storage.

This hasn't been resolved by the research yet but due to the reactive nature of all the precursors and the chemically rich environment of the cytoplasm I think the psilocybin synthesis enzymes are likely to form a metabolon (they all link together) so the product of each synthesis step is passed directly to the next enzyme in the sequence to prevent it reacting with anything else. So the minor alkaloids likely come from the remains of the metabolon when ingested fresh or the fruits are dried or extracted.

Dave Bennett said:

with the precursors being unstable logic dictates that there are going to be higher quantities of all the minor alkaloids in fresh fruits.

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Fresh fruits also have functioning enzymes that drive the reaction into psilocybin as you said yourself, the mushrooms are not storing the intermediates the way dried fruits do. The study that compared fresh to dried found much higher levels of all of the intermediates when compared to fresh (when dried at room temperature), obviously one can destroy and degrade them depending on harvesting, handling, drying method, storage conditions, ect but psilocin can be destroyed in similar ways. So if you want to experience the effects(or more accurately the lack there of) of all the minor alkaloids just dry them at room temperature

“Generally, there were higher concentrations of all analytes except for psilocin in dried mushroom powder. We found a 27% increase in norbaeocystin, a 12% increase in aeruginascin, a 26% increase in baeocystin, and an 18% increase in psilocybin in comparison to the fresh mushrooms. On the contrary, there was a 34% increase in psilocin in the fresh mushrooms.”

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until the enzymes are degraded over 50C

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Dave Bennett said:

We were talking about amounts not concentration. The concentration of all substances in magic mushrooms increases with drying as the fruits are 90% water and the amount of an unstable substance can go down as its concentration increases like it does with psilocybin during the drying process. 

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Dave Bennett said:

What I'm saying is from examining HPLC test results it's clear that the amounts of the precursors and alkaloids contained in fresh fruits either decreases or they're completely destroyed by the drying process, especially at elevated temperatures, so logic dictates that like psilocybin there are higher amounts of all the precursors in fresh fruits.

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I'm pretty sure I've read all the published research on drying, temperature and potency and I'm not aware of any research papers that found that drying (apart from freeze drying) didn't result in a loss of potency.

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Every other paper that investigated potency and drying found that even room temperature drying led to a not unsubstantial loss of potency. Like this one.

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They're talking about concentration not comparing analyte yield between fresh and dried fruits.

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Which is likely the reason they survive the drying process.

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And the increase in psilocin in the fresh fruit results is likely to have occurred post harvest as it's now thought that there is no psilocin present in healthy undamaged growing fruits.

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