Landraces often have intersex traits that need to be worked out by breeders.
Are the intersex traits present because landrace ganja farmers actually prefer having plants self alongside being pollinated by males to ensure genetic consistency across harvest seasons but with enough male pollen to prevent inbreeding depression?
OR
Do these plants actually not present any intersex traits in their indigenous environments and it’s only when you take ‘the fish our of water’ e.g. growing in DWC under LEDs rather than growing in Loamy soil under the tropical sun that these intersex traits pop out?
Or is it a little of column A, little of column B? Or something else entirely?
That makes sense but I wonder if it’s something landrace cannabis farmers try to breed out or whether they choose to continue sowing seeds from intersex plants.
On one hand, making selections like that can have drastic implications to the totality of the landrace population.
Something to consider, these genetics have been growing in a specific outdoor region for many centuries. They’re genetically tailored for a specific climate through natural selection. Growing outside of this climate/region, especially indoors, might be a bit shocking for them.
Do landrace farmers consciously only plant seeds from true females and breed out intersex plants so in their fields there are actually very few intersex plants.
But then I take some of those seeds from a female plant that grew in a field in some nice Columbian soil and stick it in a tent with DWC and intense LED lights and the offspirng are like “What the fuck is this??!!” stress out and herm.
OR
Is the Colombian landrace farmer thinking “Damn the crop is absolute fire this year.” And then consciously select the seeds from the intersex plants to plant next year so that next year’s crop is similar to this year’s crop.
Obviously intersex traits are a big no no for most modern breeders because we are ultimately after sinsemilla but for landrace farmers who are used to producing seeded crop, intersex traits could actually be beneficial to maintain crop consistency across seasons.
I recently read something along those lines on some messageboard and it changed my outlook on hermaphrodism:
When the seasons are short and the daylight differential between seasons is big (= in regions far from the equator) most plants can be expected to flower at the same time, because the flowering window is short and the flowering trigger is strong.
When the seasons are long and the daylight differential between seasons is small (= in equatorial regions) this coherence becomes less clear, because the flowering window is longer and the flowering trigger is weaker. In this situation hermaphrodism might offer an advantage.
So hermaphrodism is not some kind of degeneracy caused by bad breeding practices, but adaption by the plant to humans moving it across the globe through different lattitudes.
This does not mean, that hermaphrodism is limited to equatorial Sativas, because todays non-equatorial Indicas might have been “moved through” more equatorial regions in their lineage many generations ago.
I’m not a biologist, so I wouldn’t mind being corrected on this, but as a layman this makes intuitive sense to me.
Yeah this is the thing. Hermaphrodism is a disaster if you are growing/breeding for sensi so it’s seen as ‘unstable’ or ‘degenerate’, ‘bad breeding’ etc. But like you say there are reasons outside of modern sensi breeding where hermaphrodism can be a beneficial trait.
This would probably also vary between resin farmers and ganja farmers. Resin farmers likely don;t care because they’re thinking in fields not plants. But ganja farmers would likely be more concerned with the uniformity of their crop and like @Tupperware says the uniformity of maturity times in the season and potentially be drawn towards planting the seeds from intersex plants.
Another issue is a lot of growers don’t know and believe it. @drgreensleeves Is one of the most knowledgeable growers and breeders that is a good friend of mine.
Landraces do express herm traits in their origin fields.
There have been studies that concluded that cannabis may have evolved from a monoecious ancestral strain… at one time all cannabis may have been “hermaphroditic” (not really --as males and females had not yet differentiated – but as a broad generalization based upon our commonly understood language in order to disseminate this postulation) and at that long-past time male and female plants did not exist individually. What we see today is the result of thousands of years of both natural – with wind-born pollen and local plant pollen all mixing – and manmade selections where human tenders cull the early males and herms from the fields manually… if and when they are found.
In nature, with landraces and all outdoor grown plots, huge numbers of plants grow and hermaphroditic expressions on individual plants would not be noticed. Landrace tenders would walk through the forest of plants and kill any early-flowering males, the landrace growers do not like early-flowering males, and herms-- but they aren’t looking at each and every branch, nor the undersides of each and every plant, they are looking at whole plants and killing the ones they find… most likely missing some of the plants with herm tendencies… so those traits can remain latent in landrace cultivars.
Then there is the complexity of plants having dominant and recessive genes… we can’t see the recessive traits so they remain hidden. This means that they may be present, but may not readily express themselves, and the genes need to be grown out and thoroughly tested before being able to pass any judgement as to their stability.
When people make s1’s, backcrossing a plant to itself, they focus the genes of that one plant onto itself and that exposes the hidden genetic traits-- when we make a backcross, that can create plants that have two of the same recessive genes and that makes those genes express themselves physically: By backcrossing, we force a plant to show us what it has contained in it’s hidden recessive genes and then we can then select away from unwanted traits or towards the wanted traits… making self-pollenated plants a crucial and desireable tool in helping stabilize an otherwise indeterminate genetic makeup
Great topic, I believe Indian farmers prefer seeded as it means more weight… they maintain the genetics by bringing fresh seed from another place for the next cycle.
Could it be that intersex traits occure to ensure dominance of pollen from their particular genepool to avoid plants being pollinated by stray pollen??
More likely this one ^^ here and some of the older landraces it seems are far more intelligent and freak out about being in pots and I have found that if you bary the pots so the roots can grow out the bottom of pots and mingle with the other plants then they will chill out and start to make up their minds but when they think they are all alone they will make seed any kinda way they can ps and I have found that there are no absolutes
and I have found that if you bary the pots so the roots can grow out the bottom of pots and mingle with the other plants then they will chill out and start to make up their minds but when they think they are all alone they will make seed any kinda way they can 
ps and I have found that there are no absolutes