Common Traits Of Males & Females When Breeding

Breeder's Lab
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I’ve searched through the forum, read a lot of threads about “how to choose a male for breeding” and learned a lot. However, I can’t seem to find information about people’s experience with known or common traits that a mom or dad will bring to the table in a cross or even if this is a thing.

For instance, and this is hypothetically speaking, but what would an experienced breeder expect the difference to be if they took a male Chem 91 and pollinated a female Triangle Kush compared to taking a male Triangle Kush and pollinating a female Chem 91?

Another example to help drive the reason behind my curiosity; CSI Humboldt sells packs of Air Force One, which is a cross of Obama Kush x T1000, for $500 each. The reverse cross, Secret Service, which is T1000 x Obama Kush sells for $100/pack comparatively. What did the male T1000 bring to the table that the male Obama Kush didn’t and vice versa with the females? Most importantly why? Why aren’t these crosses producing the same type of progeny? The genetics are the same, why does it matter if you switch the males and females?

If you have first hand experience with this sort of thing I’d love to read your input. I’m not just looking for answers/advice and tips on choosing a male to breed with. I’m looking for experienced observations about typical traits that a male or female plant will bring to the table when breeding a cross so that I can learn to look for them and use them as potential breeding tools.

If you have any recommendations for articles or books to read, please share.

Thanks all!

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Thats a great example and a very good question. Ya piqued my curiousity now, and I wanna know the answer as well now…

I did kinda wonder if there was that much variability when crossing, male A with female B, and male B with female A, given the same basic genetics…

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Have you listened to the pot cast? Lot of good breeders and every episode they talk about how they pick males. FYI episodes are 3 hrs plus. I’ve listened to nearly every one.

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Hey Bro,

Please take my response with a grain of salt as not all of it is first-hand experience.

As far as I am aware, apart from being extremely familiar with the line, the only way to know what males will consistently pass is to have used them in a number of crosses.

Bodhi for example, selects his males for certain traits combined with his spiritual feelings for the plant. However, those traits can only tell you that the male may be a good one. Knowing what it will pass comes from using known mothers and hitting them to see how they change. Or using said male in multiple crosses to see what he passes when you know the traits of the male line.

DJ short has said that the only way to know wether a male is a good one is from running the beans.

I have heard Mean Gene talk about using the best looking (or male which contained the best traits, or more of the traits he was looking for) male from strain A to hit a cut of X has resulted in too much or too little dominance from the male, or not passing the traits he wanted. So he had to hit the female again with the second best looking male and he found what he was looking for.

Polyhybrids make it alot more difficult as there is so much more variation plant to plant. When something is an ibl or inbred extensively you can count on it more often, almost always to dominate crosses. Generally the more inbred line will dominate crosses as more of the traits are dominant compared to a polyhybrid with more recessive traits. Two notable examples of the dominance thing are tom hills Deep chunk and Bodhi/greywolf/liquidkids acapulco gold line.

The final main thing to consider is phenotype vs genotype. Phenotype is what the plant expresses (genes that you can see being expressed) and the genotype is all the genetics of the plant.
For example you could have a male that doesnt express a purple trait but that breeds to add purple 25 or 50 percent of the time. This lends to what was stated above about the inbred characteristics where generally what you see is what you get, because all the traits are dominant as they have been bred in a certain direction for so long.

Hope this helps bro :slight_smile:

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I’m gonna start with this one. Seems easiest at the moment with one reversed male :wink: Just gonna give him all kinds of love and good juju :wink:

Interesting post though. Being a business major, decoding the whole genetics bit is quite the wild ride for me, but I love every minute of learning about it…

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How I always used to look at it when selecting.

Male - Structure, smell, resin production, vigor(in veg),shock resistance to hard transplants/breakage

Female - Leaf shape, pest/disease resistance, yield(flower production/structure), feed sensitivity(too much or too little)

How I look at it now.

It’s all luck. Roll the dice. All hail the orgy! Anyone who tells you different probably has some beans to sell you. lol

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Thats it bro. Leaf shape and stem rub as defining factors in working lines in the direction of the female is so handy :slight_smile:

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Yeah bro sometimes you just get those plants that speak to you :heart:

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@NorthNorthNugs , when i am running seed which is almost always, i look for a good male by running a couple of packs, ill take 3-4 cuts of each, yes the numbers add up real quick, one minute you are running 20 from seed, blink your eyes and get cuts now your at 60. now as the plants get older ill toss a lot. slow growers, anything that looks sick, or i just dont like them, now i got my selection and im down to around 30, i find my males and label all, put in separate tents, and flower the males, what i am i looking for, im looking for smells, im looking for big producers meaning for me, they have more pollen sack and the stem rub on males is the true test, now out of all the males i pick the biggest one, get rid of the others, turn around and put back into veg under 20 hours of light to stop any pollen from dropping although some strains will drop pollen after flower and continue to do so.
however you can collet your pollen if you do not want to re veg the male. this is the roll of the dice move.
now the females i have left il also pick the biggest healthy stinky, ect females, the others are left that make this is high cause ive gotten rid of the unhealthy, ect so now i have my male and my keeper females ill put the females into flower and ill check for herms, and also stretch, some times if i am not sure ill re veg some of the females.
now from the 30 plants. im working with the best dozen and one male.
i used to feel bad when tossing but now i kind of do but not so much.
now i have my plants and ive collected my pollen, i ll then hit those woman, sometimes ill hit all and sometimes ill hit most keeping some seedless for me, sometimes this part is tricky on my part cause i think i have more stash than what i do and yes i run out of bud faster
the idea of the cross you talk about, csi found the male, and it most likely got the best one did the obama kush x t1000 and said dam this is heat,
and wanted to do the reverse but the male was not as vigorous, now the tester runs will show you what you made, and now you will see the work.
when you select and get picky it makes the world of difference,
now lets just say you pop a 10 pack of a great strain thats already tested, now you pick the biggest, ect. those are now your picks of that stable strain and get your seeds. in the end it is all about health, vigor ,size, and still rolling the dice but the dice land more in your favor. it is a lot of work, little pay if your lucky and lots of seed, and when done right you can have a few 1000 seed easy, you tell yourself i dont need to buy anymore but you always do looking for the new heat.
im hoping this helps you on figuring it out,
there is a grow book by dj short on growing cannabis and there is a small chapter inside about breeding, he also has a pod cast as well so i agree with listening to the podcasts of any breeder out there that is willing to talk about this, you also have breeders that will never do that and they will not talk.

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Yessir! Every single one. Multiple times! Big fan.

Very helpful write up. Thanks bud!

:joy::joy: there is a lot of that shot going around tho for real… marketing :roll_eyes:

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The most common trait among males that I’ve used is that selection was easy because I only had one of them. :+1:

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Wondering if any of the following would be so kind to share their expertise on the topic:

@nube @Sebring @lefthandseeds @vernal @Upstate @minitiger @Grease_Monkey @ReikoX

Again, I’m just looking for people who have direct experience with breeding to share their observations about what a male/female will typically bring to the table in a cross.

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Haha I’ve got anything but expertise…

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Same! I don’t really have any experience with selecting males or females other than hobby chucks, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. I’m just a newbie, which is why I try to avoid picking breeding males by doing open pollination preservation runs. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Females are easier - pick ones you like to smoke!

But one thing I have noticed in the preservation runs is that a large amount of the females from the F2 seeds look like their moms. Not always, maybe not even 50%, but a lot of the time the growth characteristics and “looks” of the mom pass to their daughters. I mean, this makes sense, right? It’s pretty common to have kids look like their parents, or puppies to look like their dams & sires.

I think observational breeding is mostly guesswork. Until we have good genetic testing, I don’t trust anyone who started breeding within the last few years and says every seed from their their Urinal Cake Bx3 is a dead ringer for the original mom! I just don’t think it can be done. I also don’t really think it’s worthwhile because these days, mashing together 2 polyhybrids will almost always result in at least a decent outcome by IG standards, if not a pretty good one!

My suspicion is that only a few people in the industry have enough experience and do enough testing to even have a clue how a particular cross will turn out. It takes so much experience with the mamas and the papas, so much testing, and such strict procedures to make sure there’s no cross pollination. Punnett squares and math don’t actually help beyond maybe 1 or 2 obvious traits because we don’t know what genetic traits are linked to each other, which are fully dominant and recessive and which are only partially or incompletely dominant.

You can’t really know what the male brings to the table unless you use him to pollinate many different moms that you’re already familiar with and which are genetically diverse enough that you don’t just get the same predictable hype cookies derivative outcome.

And then you gotta keep the clones around for so long (especially if doing line breeding) because thorough testing of a few crosses from each male probably takes a year+ from the time you make the seeds to do internal testing, and then probably another year+ to send out the seeds to get enough feedback to really know what the male brings to the table. And then you might have to start over if he’s too dominant, or has some undesirable traits that weren’t expressed in your environment.

There are not that many breeders doing this level of thorough testing of their males. And even fewer who’ve been doing it for the decades required to even get a good sense of how certain traits will interact with each other.

In short, I don’t believe you (not you specifically, but the general you) can look at 1 or 2 or even 3 rounds of males and females and know what they’re going to do unless they’re so genetically similar that you’re bound to get something similar in the kids. And then, why would you? All you’re doing there is derivative work, not advancing the field. There’s certainly money to be made in that approach, but it’s not really breeding, and I wouldn’t call it honest work.

:rainbow:

:seedling:

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All good questions.

The one thing I have to add to the conversation is regarding price of the CSI gear.

I know Caleb has talked about the difficulties of getting viable pollen of certain reversed plants. For instance a full room pollinated with one will give less seed than a single plant of the same mother pollinated with another.

I believe the same can be said for some of the more inbred or quirky cuts that don’t like to seed up as much(so I have heard).

While hype or quality of the progeny may play a factor in the pricing, I think overall the things Caleb prices higher are largely because they cost him more to make. You could always reach out to him and ask as well.

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I know very little…my male is a stinky stem, prolific pollen producer, had hollow stem and actually got me off when i smoked sime of his upper leaves and pollen sacks.
I once heard a breeder say he was able to reverse his males to female and made seeds and tested them before using that male as a stud.
Apparently it can be done although i cannot define ir understnd the chemistry.

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@nube Thanks for you’re input! Really appreciate it. Maybe I’m over thinking things when it comes to breeding or wrong to think that there are common or known traits a male will bring to a cross until you actually work with that plant for many generations.

Yep :+1:t3:

Well said.

:joy: Fair enough

Definitely makes a lot of sense.

Ya man I was blown away when I learned about this. Males can be reversed just like females and flowered out to see what you’ll get. I bet this would take a lot of effort and time but it’s definitely an interesting technique!

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Kevin Jodry formerly of wonderland nursery said only way to really kniow on males is to have them tested.

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They are different genotypes. Perhaps it is the female Obama Kush that was so special.

Absolutely! The only way to really know is progeny testing. For example, I’ve used a lot of Lowryder2 pollen I saved from a particular male. I know have seen this particular male pass on several traits, short flowering time, automatically flower when the tap root hits the bottom of a pot, and a 60:40 male to female ratio.

Good point, and likely the answer to his initial question. :+1::seedling:

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I think this is a better approach than crossing multi-poly-hybrids to multi-poly-hybrids and searching for that one elite clone.

Seriously my motivation to giving away so many seeds here. I saw a lot of Divyder, El Ruv, and Ghost Rose grown out as a result.

The autoflowering trait is the only one I can think of.

I suspected scarcity of seeds had something to do with the price of a pack.

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