I’ll take OG stock over breeder stock any day.
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You check out the falconer and McKay quant gen book? Takes you past the basics and gets to population management as well.
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Yeah. The good Lord knows well seedbanks are not at all true professionals on the whole. It’s easier for them to stay away from landraces and perpetuate clones and 90s stock from people who did something real.
I can understand people replying to the post saying that they can self a plant and inbreed 4-5 generations ad infinity etc. I have not tried it . It could be a genius idea.
However, if the method works, they would be getting their starting materials from someone (directly or indirectly) who did something. Whatever does not evolve (organization) - degenerates ( primal hemp soup). The dogs would turn into wolves- which may not taste so good in a joint .
It’s Allso interesting to think about the difference between a phenotype and genotype. People correctly use clones as it’s a direct way to perpetuate a phenotype. Seeds are very different I guess as there are more variables at play. It’s impossible to stop the clock. Once you start you have to keep going before nature requires a balance from you. If you are a bad breeder then nature takes the balance quickly. There’s a lot to all this I think.
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What helped me a TON was reading through Population Genetics. Its a bit thick, but its a goldmine of information. Here’s a free PDF of it if youre interested.
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This is without a doubt the smartest thing I’ve seen on a cannabis breeding forum. THANK YOU!!! Understanding how populations work and how they maintain/generate diversity is hands down something every breeder should know.
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Nice first thread ^^
For historic bricks & mortars, the opacity was always maximal. But stoners/customers are prone to love it also in general, it generate looping discussions, dramas and stories. With backward, i think each side found its interrest in this opacity.
It’s not specially better with little labels, but they are more prone to share wtf theyr are doing generally.
Sometimes also just giving the real pedigree and its real generation give also the blueprint to make it at home without much difficulty (if you have the same material). In the actual era, it’s a complicated subject.
“Our” industry don’t have any constraints imposed by the customers, like hemp by example where storytelling is totally annihilated in favor of reliable datas and traceability : seeds/fiber yield, amendment per acre, cost of processing per volume etc …
You have to extend the question on a practical case, it’s way too evasive to be answered.
Strategies are the same, practical tricks are the same … the plant is the same ^^ But weed artists exist and are performing too … it’s not binary, even in competitiveness.
The most important is to obtain a factual evolution of your results, if one of both ways (methodical VS instinctive, like already said in this thread) is locking you in status quo … you know your poison. And if both don’t work for you, it’s maybe because you need both at a time in a balance that is your.
But technically there is none frontier just because you chose to sold genetics. It’s more a question of responsibilities (you serve a paid service) and niche.
But a bunch of breeding theories have to be thrown by the window ^^ It’s the game, you have to be segregationist also in your approach. Simply to make you agile with your own context, it’s not even hierarchic or qualitative. Ask Charles ^^
That what stoners do since ages in fact. Finding a motherplant to make a daily smoke is quite a basical steps before entering in breeding generally.
You don’t mount companies worth 8 digits on intuitions. Specially when you last decades at this game.
It’s a bit abusive and absolutist, like the “99%”.
The saturation of the actual market make it very visible with mushroom-labels, i don’t disagree for this specific angle. But even in this specific pool, they aren’t all “hit&run” and some clearly understand that structuring their production with methods is the way to last or to evolve.
I totally agree on the dynamic and the genetic cost but it’s a narrowed statement if you consider that it’s impossible to spread the work on specialized parallel lines. Just like with cattle. Resistances can be worked aside and regularly injected, just like any other traits of the final product.
I don’t disagree at all on what to plan to face, i’m just more tempered tactically.
The whole game turn around this, the fear disappear with a methodical evaluation of what you’re doing and why. There is no real critical point where you get rid of constraints, it’s more the reverse generally.
The first crosses that made me proud back in the days are totally a shame from my actual perspective. It’s also a factor : the more you’re experiencing, the more you’re demanding generally.
An agile breeding is the way, on the battleground you have constantly to adapt. At the moment you’re generating a progeny with choices (instinctive or not), you’re the breeder of the said progeny with intel from the making of no one else have. I don’t see the point to sanctify the word “breeder”, it’s not because you decide arbitrary that you’re a “chunker” or not that you’re breeding is necessary good or bad ^^
Better to realize fast the responsibilities involved in your choices early, and to don’t call it something else to avoid them.
Like i said it’s a quantitative mirage and don’t really belong to the breeders, but it belong to what want customers. If they want a new strain each 6 months, it reduce mechanically the options to satisfy them.
It’s not bad or good, it’s a matter of niche again.
Not necessary. But a bunch of “legends” can fall from their pedestal to talk about it practically ^^
You can have a high-flow catalog of stable strains, just in specializing your methods in BX and quantitative selections. As dumb that this.
Stoners like “White or Black” matters, but breeding is all about the Grey sincerely.
It’s totally possible to just be a grower, yes ^^ I guess that the formulation of the question don’t really express the initial idea.
So many things that a list is impossible to make. But at a conceptual level it’s quite simple actually.
When you fall in love for a type of smoke and then, the type of specimens producing it … logically you want to increase drastically the rate of these specimens in progeny.
It create a funnel. And the more you dig down in the rabbit hole, the more the accuracy of selection have to increase. It’s not this long to obtain an uniform progeny, which complicate the selection more than the reverse.
It’s not an obligation too, you can bypass it and just stay in perpetual F1. All ways lead to Rome at the moment you obtain factual results worth a blunt ^^
Look at this, your notion of “failure” will maybe change with this vulgarization.
The lack of poly-hybridism is specifically what was burnt to ashes over the last two decades. In favor of one-shot work focused on only one trait (monohybridism), when there is a focus ^^
Not much filial 6 generally, but more “gen 6” implying different technics. I’m talking ofc about advanced works, not about all lines “sold as” advanced.
The occurrence of homozygous recessive phenos mostly belong to the kind of pressure applied and your constancy to maintain them.
Most of commercial releases today have to be screened for basic lacks of cares : herms, vigor, predictability of the final product … so pragmatically the occurence of “homozygous recessive phenos” mostly belong to you and your methods.
Don’t worry i understood that you was talking about “super phenos” or the motherplants mentionned previously.
Working with IBLs is my poison but not necessary the golden road either. Depend on the goal and the timeline you give to accomplish this, mostly.
Inbreeding landraces is all but a “safe way”. Obtaining dominance from a line mostly depend on what you’re pairing on the other side. Mendel laws aren’t absolutes, but totally relative to the genotypes concerned.
Add to this that this dominance … have to be dank and worth the ride ^^
I totally disagree to compare a S1 with a F1. They aren’t even related technically.
You can make S1s that are F2, F5 , F10 … there is no obligatory correlation between the filial generation and a progeny built with a cheated haploid sequence.
So true, so ignored today.
I’m less faithful on this point. Budgets still a thing that is already limiting a lot the actual searches, i mean by this that we are already far to use full throttle the present “constrained” context.
Just an opinion, but overall i believe that the next 5 years will be quite a dance anyway.
Very much, but it’s important to prevent the dreamers that it’s a methodological statement. On practical leverages, the vegetal reign can’t be superimposed. Thx for the share, i find everything from the 90’s dope generally ^^
Amen
If only, but no i disagree. Commercial release are barely maintained today. Selected and stabilized on multiple traits, even badly ? I think you’re a bit faithful on this one. R&D is limited to buy cuts and to stack them now, i’m a bit abusive in saying this but … not fundamentally wrong for the biggest players either lol
If it’s a true poly, it’s already stabilized. Why reinventing the wheel and not using directly the IBL ? I don’t understand the strategy to push it more.
You can even do it 100 times from the same F1, and never get the same line at the end of the chain. It’s what people are totally under-evaluating today, and give edge to smart ass in marketing too. I loop on the “i pushed a line to its true genetic depression” or the “this F1 is depressed” often read, and never really shown ^^
Absolutely not ^^ Quantitative breeding, back-crossing, methodic early screening … it’s not really a “weed-artist”.
He don’t desserve today that I defend his 90’s works, but fairness on this one is important to don’t lure people on “what it take”.
It’s a matter of specialization and niche. Actually it’s more easy to sell a landrace preserved (people don’t expect high level of standards) that making competitive hybrids with them.
But there is a lot more labels selling landraces than 20 years ago.
That’s breeding buddy, perpetuating. Now if your philosophy consider that starting from scratch and throwing in the trash-can all the legacy is the only way to be respected … you end almost in the prehistory this way, it’s never ending.
It’s a debate i often have, i still don’t understand this drive to reinvent the wheel for everything. The true credibility is always built when the lighter come close to the blunt at the end of the chain …
I never try to understand, i just look at their plants and make my opinion this way. Even more if they are selling.
It’s why it’s totally crazy to mix mammals with vegetal reign in these considerations. We don’t smoke dogs as well like you said ^^
But i understand you concern and it’s not so about an hidden time machine in the DNA (both cases), but more about the grade of the progeny for a given goal. The cost of the performance and the performance of the cost.
Just to be playful, making S1s and exploring them teach you the strict reverse. Even if it’s narrowed around the potential of an unique phenotype. This plant is really fantastic overall.
A good breeder will use the natural dynamics at its advantage, over to believe that he can see the code like Neo. So i disagree on this binary judgement.
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Very enjoyable Discussion very much in depth I will take this all in like a sponge and Use it to see what my results on my next project i have going on currently and check my notes in the end and see visual and chemo type similarities
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@ThePotanist I haven’t, and I haven’t been reading much lately due to my disappointment with cannabis related books. I’m sure I’d like your rec.
I’m really in my own weird zone right now, I pop hundreds of beans per quarter. I’m trying a lot of things I don’t think people have tried before, or at least mkt documentef, and I’m also finding that there is no book that can teach me what just growing a lot of plants does. I find that just books, especially cannabis specific books, are full of the same bad info being repeated.
I am not some cannabis expert, I’m an expert at growing coral, which I’ve done seriously for 35+ years. I went about growing cannabis by reading a few bad articles and then diving in. Once I understood the PH range I needed to be in, NPK needs in the various stages, and light timing stuff I was off to the races. I pulled, what I’d estimate to be 700g dry from three ILGM white widow autos 
It was phenomenal smoke, the buds and plants were gorgeous, and I was forever hooked. I grew 17 more of those things and enjoyed every last one of them. The last one I popped I pulled more than an elbow from and that’s when I decided to get serious about growing and genetics.
You want to learn about this plant, get 4 trays of 50 seedlings going in a 2x4 tent. You’ve got 200 plants, now figure out how you’re going to find the best ones and get rid of undesirable traits while enhancing and encouraging the desirable ones. That’s it! The plant will show you exactly what you need to do, you just need to be able to see it while simultaneously being capable of growing well. Knowing how to take a plant to the brink of death and then bring it back to glory is another very useful skill.
Hell, for that matter, you can be a good breeder simply by being good at killing plants in creative ways. 3-4 years ago I gathered 150+ clone only strains then then very much whittled down from some not liking the basic requirements they were being provided. I had to start getting creative with how to kill them once I got to around 75 or so 
Or, I took a bunch of the blueberry Reg autos and worked with them and doing repopulations and isolating certain traits in various f gens. @Alaskagrown was kind enough to send me a bunch years ago. First time I ever grew an auto reg, and I’ve been hooked since. I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun growing than I have when sorting through a population of small blueberry plants.
My point in all that long windedness, to why young breeder, throw all the internet chatter and things you read out the window, get back to basics and grow a lot of plants, you’ll find your way!
So you make one of the best points here. A lot of cannabis books, especially now that we can research, are full of bad information, misinterpreted data and different repetitions of the same basic science.
My honest advice, forget that you want to be Cannabis focused for the moment and instead read the theory and application of ideas in other plants. My experience talking with and interacting with Cannabis people is that they 1) greatly appreciate the plant which leads to 2) consciously or not, mythologizing the plant. We like to set it apart from other plant species, but it has to follow all the same physiological, ecological, evolutionary, developmental, and genetic laws as other plants. You can’t escape them! Focus on those topics in other plants, and very quickly your ability to better understand and work with your cannabis plants increases exponentially. There are certainly going to be things that you will have to make a hypothesis on, but those hypotheses will at least be informed by centuries of plant science and your basics and foundations will be solid.
It’s so easy to only want to learn about plant science in the context of cannabis, but the resources, for the most part, aren’t well developed yet. Focusing on learning about cannabis in the greater context of plant science will yield much better results.
Instead of making your next purchase another cannabis grow book, check out a general plant physiology book. You can find em pretty cheap used and the information is both applicable to cannabis and has likely been reviewed by research professionals.
I also love your attitude on how much you loved your first grow! That’s the real key, keeping that feeling going. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details and it is incredibly important to step away from that sometimes and go “yeah man, this shit rocks”.
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totally. theres a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in cannabis . thats for sure . being a illegal substance in a lot of places for so long has certainly helped to generate a aura around the cannabis plant and theres a fair share of people who are challenging themselves to get creative in order to achieve something. On the way to achieving those goals there are signposts and decaying remnants of people who have gone before and perhaps not made it to the end. This i see is not at all poetry . there is a underground ladder for people to climb up - some easier than others depending on only your chosen goal. but . now back to the discussion - the limitations of time boil everything down to a melting point. ie. grow methods, phenotypes vs genotypes , selection methods, The best way that ive found to learn is to take things to extremes. learn from extreme situations initially . dont stay in the middle ground with the internal chatter. dont panic if you lose a crop or something . how bad do you think it can go if you were to mix to very healthy plants of different genetics without any plan ? probably alright. add cloning to the mix and you can take a huge amount of short cuts to get to any goal. this is what basically most seed seller in america are doing . in a way it is the opposite of traditional breeding - or rather a continuation of it (prolongation). ie elite clone cuts. i have recently bought some expensive seeds from captains connection and the quality of the seeds was pathetic.