Breeders Secrets and Tips!

Ay, I respect it to be honest. We need more of that in our personality now a days. We’re all going so soft nowadays :joy:.

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True that my friend :raised_hands:t2:

If the air smells good your plants are happy.

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In large scale breeding plant projects, first a list of desired quantitative and qualitative traits
are identified. Qualitative traits are things like taste, aroma, to some extent growth habit etc, Quantitative traits are those that can be measured, such as biomass, thc levels, flowering time etc.
Then once you have these attributes you can begin to look for your target plants; once lines are loosely identified; you need to understand the combining abilities ( and direction) of the crosses you are going to make if you hope to make the cross predictable.

There is two types of combining abilities:

1.General Combining Ability (GCA).

General combining ability (GCA) is directly related to the breeding value of a parent and is associated with additive genetic effects.

The GCA of a line is the difference of its average performance in hybrids relative to the grand mean of all line crosses, The expected mean of a cross is the sum of the maternal and paternal general combining abilities, GCA§ + GCA(M).

  1. Specific combining ability (SCA)

Specific combining ability (SCA) is the relative performance of a cross that is associated with non-additive gene action, predominantly contributed by dominance, epistasis, or genotype × environment interaction effects

In large breeding programs a full diallel design is often done involving dozens of lines and hundreds of plants, obviously that’s outside the abilities of the vast bulk of us, so there are a couple or approaches that can be taken:

The topcross design, in which a particular line (the testor) serves as the common male (pollen) parent and the GCAs of female plants are estimated by the performance of their seed. For this, inbred stable lines are needed otherwise it’s impossible to work out where a trait might have come from and those traits may not be reflected or fixed further down the line, besides it renders any objective analysis useless if random traits are popping up without any predictable continuity into next crosses.

The other approach is a polycross design wherein females are allowed to be randomly fertilized from among all the other lines. Again, the elite lines are chosen by those with the best-performing offspring.

From here you can gauge the combining abilities of the targets in the cross and work out early if they are traits that are going to be reasonably straight forward to fix, or very difficult etc. there’s a whole lot of statistical analysis tools that be used for working out the most efficient crossing that delivers both the desired traits and maximum hererosis/hybrid vigour etc.
Also the direction of a cross is an important factor in working out the nuts and bolts of how and when you are going to cross and which line is the male vs the female, they may be completely different.

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Years ago, after learning that seeds germinate faster after a forest fire, I got to thinking about whether I could use that to help germinate seeds.

I looked it up and found some articles, namely this one

Ever since then I’ve used it sparingly here and there, and I can’t say for absolute sure cause I’m just the one person and I’d like to see more ppl try it first, but I can say that every time I have tried it, seeds seemed to sprout a few days faster than normal when I let them soak in some bongwater.

That’s right. Your stanky bongwater is your next next-level seed germination soak.

I don’t usually use pure bongwater either, I just go half n half with regular water or some X-seed, but I’ve never really noticed the X-seed to make much of a difference on it’s own, where as with bongwater I’ve seen seeds sprout a tiny tail in less than 24 hrs at times.

Let me know how it works for you!

Wizzlez.

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Out of curiosity has anybody developed a dwarf cannabis plant something it doesn’t get any higher than maybe 3 feet I was thinking something like that would be perfect for people wanting to grow on a limited area

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Any short-stature Indica or autoflower can be used for that, with a little training (gentle training for the autoflowers) it’s pretty easy to keep them below 3 feet.

You can also accomplish the same by planting very late in the year and in smaller containers, and if you want to put them in full soil by pruning the apical tips a lot so the growth is directed to the side branches.

Ahh so not a natural small. But bonsai the plant small. I used to work on my bonsais. And planned on doing a pepper bonsai

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You can definitely bonsai a cannibas plant.
I had one of my Runtz for over 2 years. Just kept cloning it. Well that tuned into one knarly plant I called my bonsai.
Just kept chopping it back.
Looked really cool. Just chopped it so can’t show pic…:smirk:
I top and cut back some plants to keep in My small room. Where I keep my mothers

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I agree with planting them late in the year if you are outdoors and want smaller plants. You can also just keep pruning them to whatever height you’d like.

I disagree about the small pot sizes. I grow huge plants in small containers.

All the best.

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Yep!

@Wizzlez , keep em small with a root trim every few months, foliar trims every month, and constant lite feedings. Some of these Mothers are over 2 years old :wink:

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I’ve done a pepper bonsai too, first succeeding effort towards a bonsai.

Planning on doing a bonsai pot mom in the future too.

The root pruning seems to be the most important aspect towards keeping the moms healthy in bonsai cannabis I hear.

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Yes, totally. and I am LATE BY 4 weeks so my plants are pissed off with me lol.

How much do you leave when you root prune, percentage wise? 50%

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if you look close at the 1L pots you’ll see a “nub” of soil above the rest of the soil line…

Thats what I leave; a 2"x2" plug, then I cut off 1" off the bottom where fresh medium will rest. I then saturate it with nutes and let the buggers do their thing.

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Here is a freebie for yas…

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i have an isdue here i tried to reveg males in the past but did not became successful
i have monstercropped multiple girls but males i never had them to reveg ill try that again

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Howdy Nerds, more of shortime seedmaker than a “breeder” but figure y’all might be able to answer a question. Is there any benefit to having multiple males pollinate the same females, instead of culling to only the strongest bulls?

I had some autoregs, liked a couple, gave them a tent, made seeds. F1 seeds are vigorous, I went as far as doing test germinations outside over winter during warm weeks. Super happy with them. I started a few in soil solo cups on Super Bowl Sunday that are bangin, started a bunch more in similar cups and also rockwool about a week ago. If my goal is diverse healthy autoregs - anything wrong with keeping most everything that thrives in 24/0 light? I’m not really looking to steer, just to have a million seeds that make 100day mini christmas trees in any light. I figure the more diversity this round the better, then next generation I can do a nice selection and maybe even backcross to original seeds (still have a few of my starting point, still have a ton of my F1s). So goal is to cull only the worst, instead of keep only the best. Is this just a stupid practice only a newbie would do?

When I first started growing I thought it would be all about the end product, but the "hobby " of it all is what really bit me! Too much fun to watch things grow. I don’t really have the time, space, or organizational aptitude to do the whole cloning thing so have really fallen in love with the autoflower. Commercial autofems have been great for growing some personal flavors, but seeing personal progeny actually “work” has been amazing!

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I would say no, with a caveat; good luck actually figuring out what the strongest are. :stuck_out_tongue: Realistically, I think your best bet is to just keep everything that isn’t completely terrible rather than trying and failing to pick out the best genetics from a single phenotypic expression of the dominant genes. Especially without any experience, though I’m dubious about how valuable experience is in this case. Further complicating it is the fact that the best genetics for combining with one line might not be the best for combining with another line… aka SCA and GCA. Until you actually know all of this for this particular strain, you’re basically gonna be throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks; might as well throw as much as you can in hopes that a few more things will stick.

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I stick with one male for the only reason that it’s easier.

There is a benefit to keeping more, if you’re so inclined.

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