so I understand theres 3 types of cannabis breeding (I think)
open pollination = makes s1, unstable
stabilizing = where you open pollenate and stabilize by crossing desirable traits against progeny
backcrossing = open pol, then crossing back to father/mother to stabilize traits
right?
I plan on taking reg seeds, open pollination, taking the seeds, open pollenating another set, and crossing desirable traits with each other via clones until theyre stable ie a set of phenotypes
which can be xy (strain 1) + xY (strain 2) = xx? dont know the menders squares
Open pollination is just that open. If you run a couple plants and you let the male plants openly pollinate the females that is open pollination.
S1 is when you take a female plant and clone it then reverse one of the clones and use that pollen on the other clones to make seeds.
S1 is “selfing” or somehow forcing a female plant to make pollen to self fertilize
Stabilizing is a process. Many different processes, but the goal is to then have the most similar plants every time.
Back crossing is just breeding back to a parent/ grandparent. Open pollination is not required.
It’s Mendel who did the genetics square.
Imo. Breeding is a numbers game. You just need to grow a load of plants and keep the plants you like to make babies. Throw away the babies you don’t like.
open pollination makes unstable progeny right? so after an open pollination, you cross two plants (male and female) with similar traits (tall plant female x big pollen clusters) and it stabilizes?
F1 is the first generation of seeds made from a plant. F2 is when you take the F1 seeds and grow them out and make more seeds the seeds that are made are F2.
Open pollination is a good starting point, if you’re starting off with quality genetics imo. Once you do an OP, you can then start to look through those seeds to find desierable plants and start to breed 1:1.
I’m going to double post and not care because I feel open pollination is very frequently misunderstood.
If I have Mom and dad, two totally unrelated plants, TWO plants that I picked because I like them. That’s selective breeding. Their seeds are F1 mommy x daddy.
If I have a handful of seeds. Doesn’t matter where they came from. I plant them all, walk away and let nature take it’s course. Every male randomly pollinates every female. I gather every seed from every female and put them in a big bag.
That’s open pollination.
You will get a huge variety of babies this way, but that means the stupid, sickly, weak or stunted plants threw their genes in that bag too.
There are a bunch of good suggestions and referenced materials above that should help you understand the terminology and techniques of cannabis breeding, but I suspect you might benefit from a perspective on the practical side.
I’m over two years into a breeding project now and I’d like to share a few insights.
Making seeds is easy and fun, cannabis breeding isn’t!
Breeding is a serious activity and requires serious planning in advance. If you don’t have a very clear goal in mind you can expect frustration and likely failure.
Breeding is a long term commitment to a series of sequential grows that produce the intermediate results towards your goal. Many of them aren’t very interesting by themselves, but must be performed for the long term success of your project. In most cases the growing is continuous all year long uninterrupted. That’s hard on life and family.
Breeding is lonely work, with results measured in months and years and the outcome always uncertain. If you don’t have a clear goal from the onset it can be hard to stay motivated.
Overgrow has dozens of very talented breeders working overtime to create new wonders and classic revivals for our use and enjoyment. If you are successful in your breeding project, you will face an audience that has a plethora of offerings on the table.
If I read your OP correctly, you really just want the excitement of making some seeds. If that is so, don’t sweat the details, grow some males and females, let them do their dance, enjoy the sublime mysteries of cannabis biology and have a happy life. Leave breeding to us lonely compulsive obsessives haunted by visions of delivering unto the World our really, truly, super-special dream weed!
Respectfully,
-Grouchy
PS, If you want to follow the steps of an ongoing OG Breeding Project, plow through this beastly long thread:
Instability, in a nutshell, as far as I know, is caused by, or perpetuated by, breeding unstable plants and/or introducing viruses or diseases in the process. It has literally nothing to do with the style of breeding.
“How do you know if a plant is unstable?” – ideally you should grow a plant out a time or two, or few, before breeding with it. That’s how you’ll know; you don’t breed with anything that looks or acts fucked up, or displays undesirable overall traits.
“S1” I don’t think appears in any of Mendel’s writings; I think that is “bro” science. F1 is commonly known as first generation. Second generation is F2 and so on.
But you know it doesn’t have to be lonely.Some of the best things came from collaborative projects actually. Directly or by accident 