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Anyone here into plants? And plant "hacking" or know of a forum more directed at that
So I have an upcoming personal project kind of biohacking related but very heavily related to botany. One of the long term goals could be getting involved with those that have the genetic engineering know how and working together on plant based modifications. I should note that many of the more botany specific forums tend to have a slightly negative outlook on genetic engineering, from my experience and as such thought this place would be more welcoming. Another reason why I would argue that this would fall slightly into biohacking and the only reason why I even thought about asking here was from the Gabriel Licina talk at Biohack the Planet 2019 (and I know that this forum is more directed to grinders and human mods but still).
Anyways for those curious regarding the project, I will keep this short. Over the past couple of years I have been making a greenhouse with some amount of automated control and some level of climate control. Things that I have gotten to work are things like a water regulation system, light control (timing, intensity, etc), temperature control (to a degree), and more. Going forward I want to test and try to set up things like pollen control to prevent cross pollination from plants inside the green house to outside (though there already is some degree of control) and attempt to add some other systems like some degree of air control (control whats in the air like how much CO2, O2, etc) and more. Eventually the goal might be to set this up to experiment on modified plants like testing modifications on drought resilience, or something else to collect data and find the efficacy of the mods (long term goal, of course this would involve partnership with people that have more modification/microbiology experience)
So first I guess I am asking people if anyone here might be interested in this project going forward. Second, if this is the wrong place or there are better forums for this I was wondering if others might be able to point me more in the correct direction. Obviously this was not an in depth explanation of the project and there is so much more I could add on. Thirdly and finally, if anyone has information regarding doing this kind of thing (say they have attempted it in the past) then I absolutely would be open to discussing what I have done, what has worked and what hasn't and trying to bounce knowledge back and forth. If there is interest and people are okay with it I might be willing to make a more in depth post going into more details publicly regarding what I have been doing, but again it doesn't exactly seem like the correct place for this.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Comments
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This is something I haven't seen much here. Will you be doing genetic editing on the plants? If so either here or the genetic editing Facebook group are your best bets. I'm not sure about other botany forums other than reddit. But anyways, welcome!
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I can say with certainty I neither have the equipment nor the knowledge to genetic editing of plants (which is why I was looking to get more involved with others that might have the editing knowledge to work together). I'd love to try and learn but I am much more of an electric-mechanical type person than a person that messes around with things that I can't see.
I have been on a couple reddit bitiny forums but for the most part my experience has been that the people there really aren't into genetic editing (they kind of associate it with Monsanto and then we start getting conspiracy theories).
Thanks for the reply and thanks for welcoming me!
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@casuallyuninformed Have you looked at any of the beginner gene editing kits from The ODIN? And to answer your initial question, I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about your project and seeing your progress on the gene editing.