Genetics Worth Preserving?

Breeder's Lab
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#1

What’s up OG? Wanted to share a line of thinking I’ve been considering recently, as I sample new strains and draw new conclusions about what I really value in my greenery:

From sampling countless strains, I’ve come to find that most strains seem bland compared to the amazing ones. Too many strains out there are roughly similar to each other—aside from smell—such that a few strains at the top of the range make the others seem more like mids.

Also, some strains seem to specialize well in one single effect, but most don’t, providing a more entourage experience. And I like entourage experiences but so many strains don’t seem to be that well-dialed for physical comfort / physical activation / mental stimulation / perception :thinking:

A guy in one of the Landrace / Heirloom threads dropped a note saying something about only preserving landraces and not interbreeding, which was very new to me. Anyway, taking the muddy gene pool idea in hand along with the preservation of landraces idea, I wanted to ask OG:

What strains are worth preserving? Why?

What makes a strain truly worth preserving?

Are most strains watered down in some way?

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#2

Fair enough question.

I do believe there are quite a few muddy highs.

One problem is that the vast majority of smokers seem to want some average weed that is very tasty and soft smoking. They aren’t looking to be taken on a journey, they want to chill out.

There is a much smaller market for people looking for speedy weed, creeper weed, trippy weed, etc.

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#3

Peanut Butter Breath. A very unique smelling, tasting, VERY heavy hitting strain. I’m doing an “Exploration Series” myself, which more accurately is a comparison run, stacking some PBB related stuff up against a cut of the original.

Blueberry. The more i read up on it, the more it seems its glory days may have already come and gone. Such an amazing aroma and flavor, SO worthy of saving in my opinion.

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#4

The word strain is pretty generic in itself; and your question is not one that a single answer or event thread will answer; but society as a whole throughout the ages.

#5

Tomato-tomahto. Pretend he said “cultivar” and just play along :wink::+1:

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#8

as for whether most strains are watered down, it’s hard to say. With so many strains out there and so much crossbreeding happening, it’s possible that some strains have lost some of their original characteristics, but there are still plenty of amazing strains to discover

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#9

The Blueberry. Because it’s a part of our history and that its career was fucking long. The last stellar release i’ve known is the Blue Dream.

It’s a matter of tastes and trends generally. The vast majority growing for pleasures/recreational considerations, it’s hard to find reliable patterns. Specially today.

For the BB, because i want to work again with it and i’ve a very hard time to find a reliable source ^^ When it happens generally, it’s the sign that the thing is barely lost.

This lady is so much challenging that it can break the teeth of the majority of breeding afficionados writing opinions and “magic methods” over internet. I don’t think it exist a better line but this strain to make a proof of concept on stabilization methodology.

For me it’s not its herms, its mutants, its bad grow performances, it’s supposed “blueberry taste” and its colors … but 100% for the high.

And feminized (even landraces with some brands), which reduce even more the optic to get a decent genetic material.

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#10

These are very loaded questions. If you like it, it’s good.

Some guys want undiluted equatorial genetics that take 16 weeks to flower and consider anything less to be inferior. That’s fine.

Some guys want ass on the couch 8 weekers. That’s fine too.

I just crossed one of each of these and an argument could be made that I am muddying the gene pool but I don’t buy it. I’d say I made a very cool cross.

If you like it, preserve it. Or make funky crosses and see what happens. Then share them with your friends.

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#11

What gets me, is how EXACTLY do we even know a certain strain is exactly what it’s says it is? You have 100 different seed banks selling say, Hindu Kush, keep in mind, generally potheads are breeding/preserving these strains lol. How do we know some of these strains weren’t accidentally pollinated by something else? Is it the exact same Hindu across the board with every single seed bank? When sending seeds around amongst humans, did the wrong seed slip into the collection and get mislabeled? Idk the world of breeding and seed banks and how controlled and strict the process is, and there’s always douche canoes who intentionally sabotage everything, so these are just random thoughts from a simple grower.

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#12

@Foreigner others might call that “hybrid vigor” :man_shrugging:t2::wink: lol! Solid points.

But it still begs the question: what do YOU PERSONALLY think is a strain worth saving? :heart:

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#13

Me personally?

I like things across the board from super sativas to super indicas it depends more on my mood than anything else.

Really I’m not so selective and I’ll make seeds from pretty much anything neat within the limitations of my space.

Short answer: all of them. With very few exceptions I’ve never run into a shit plant :+1:

I don’t really care about authentic strain whatever.

Edit: one exception is things which have too much intersex. A little is ok, in some things, but if it’s extreme it’s gone.

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#14

There is a place for every single strain known to man.

That place is in a jar on my shelf.

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#15

This is the truth!

And if your shelf gets full, I got some space I can put to use

#16

Wondering if a plant that grows tons of branches from single node would be something to keep around or breed? I topped it at the fourth node and ended up with 27 tops and chopped a ton of branches off cause was unmanageable. Just thought It might be a good trait for someone to play with

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#17

When I first started growing romulan grapefruit I was not impressed. A couple of grows and I found a sweet spot. It was amazing in its boost to.my creativity.and the dreams I had when I first started smoking it were…well…very cool.
I.lost.my mother.plant and another.mother plant. Then found a couple.phenos from crosses that were amazing also so.im.gonna return to that jar.of seeds and see what is in there.
I crossed her with dancehall cbd and with pineapple thai.
Both crosses were great but different from the original.

I would.love to find some.original Durban and some.original Columbian red…but don’t expect to.

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#18

@Trowertripper

Check out love of landrace, hes got some nice looking old african lines like Durban and Malawi. the durban having a flower time around like 18wk as opposed to the much shorter flower modern durbans…. i cant yet speak on the authenticity since I havent grown my packs out yet but hes got lots of documentation on Ig and was spoken highly of by some other breeders ive talked with.

I will be doing a grow of these alongside Hazemans Durban, both AKBB Durban variety and a few others I cant remember who from of the top of my head. Ill start a log once that project starts but im going to be workin some NL and hazes first before I start that.

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#19

I’m gonna preserve the island sweet skunk as it’s my favorite sleep.med and kills pain and let’s me rest without getting too much.munchiees or cotton mouth
Tashkenti landrace is another amazing strain that rivals tramdol for killing severe pain.
I found a cbd pheno of bubba I’m gonna try to keep.going as well…

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#20

I try to preserve the strains that I like. It doesn’t really matter to me if other people like them too, but more often than not, I find other ppl do like them.

I don’t think it really needs to be more complicated than that, but sometimes getting your crown jewel to come up repeatbly is challenging.

Watered down can mean anything. Usually it means nothing. If you want an answer for that, I think you have to explain what you mean.

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#21

I think it’s near impossible to say what strains should be preserved… yes… for sure things you like… no doubt… but in the past people let shit go because it wasn’t popular anymore. I say preserve anything that’s remotely interesting.

I didn’t bother clicking through on the links about landraces and heirlooms… I can see the argument for keeping pure preservation repros of “landraces” and heirlooms, for sure. Both are also good to use making hybrids, but the more people hold onto repros of the pure lines the more likely they’ll be available in another 15 years when big corporate cannabis has reduced what’s commercially available to a few uniform cultivars they can mega-monocrop. I imagine they also mention the threat introduced modern commercial genetics pose to traditional landrace populations?

Are most stains watered down? I’m not sure what you mean, exactly, but if you’re talking about most of what’s commercially available, yes? By my understanding there was a time when just about everything was being hybridized with NL or Dutch genetics, and Skunk No 1, etc. Look at the lineage of most of the big seedlines available now and you’ll see the same names again and again. People selected for commercial appeal, whether it was the 1980s or the 2020s. I think there’s always a risk for watering things down in the pursuit of some commercially-popular trait to the exclusion of others.

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#22

We are.living in the hey day of cannabis
It will get worse.

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