So last year I became a mod, then admin for a beginners growing group on fb. Mostly I just babysit bad comments, scammers, etc and try to answer questions as best I can without imparting any bro science. One of our members posted what in my very small knowledge, I’d call a fear mongering, argumentative theory without any data backing up his opinion and I’d love to share it with you to read your thoughts and reactions and maybe I’ll gain a little more knowledge in the conversations. Here goes "Pro Tip Never buy feminized seeds from breeders that created feminized seeds from female plants that came from feminized seeds. These will
Be prone to have weakened fight or flight systems and more prone to throw pollen sacks. Some white label breeders are doing this and are totally uneducated. You will end up with a huge crop of pollen chucking plants. Know your breeders and know their process. End PSA
To elaborate on the theory:
I’ll try to break down the differentiation.
P1 & P2 you have a male and a female, they create F1 Generation of regular seeds. That F1 grows out from REGULAR seed to a female and that female is reversed to create feminised seeds, retaining stability
VS
The F1 Female is reversed to feminised seeds creating S1 seeds. That S1 is then grown which creates a female plant, and in which is reversed again, creating more seeds, so forth and so on where the feminised seeds become multi generations derived from a reversed female weakening the genetic code, rather than a breeder continuing to create their feminised seeds from the original F1 female parent."
it does seem like it would be losing something but i doubt it would affect anything more than natural diversity would. i don’t think that you could get more removed from male genetics than you already are with fem seeds.
I think that the intention of the poster was more to blame labels hacking whole catalogs for industrial purpose; then double-fems subpar products. It’s a real concern and i share the anger.
On the details on how it’s expressed (with some sort of grandiloquence), i will not pay attention if i was you.
If you reverse a female that would normally create male flowers during a time of stress, it’s probable that herming would become more likely in the offspring. But if you reverse a female without that tendency, there’s nothing to combine so the risk of herm wouldn’t increase.
There are breeders who breed and grow, IBLs or hybrids without males. For generations. I believe Twenty20 Mendocino is one of them.
Personally, I think it makes sense. It’s pretty easy to tell which specimens to include in a breeding program when they’re all females. You can always backcross to males later to make regular seeds.
This part is definitely good, useful advice. The rest seems to be silly generalizations, maybe to avoid calling out anyone in particular? Dunno. “Fight or flight” is a ridiculous term for it, but stripping down all the generalizations and weird, attention-grabbing terminology he just seems to be saying that easily-stressed, herm-prone plants tend to create easily-stressed, herm-prone plants. We don’t entirely know what causes herms, but this is a generally accepted idea.
