Ideally, I would find several male and female candidates and then narrow down which male i would want to use with which females. Instead of 1 male and 1 female it probably would be more like 1 male 9 females.
Thank you @DougDawson
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Yikes! This is getting much more complicated!
This is another reason I respect cannabis so much More since growing my first time. Seeing all the work that goes into from start to finish.
I’m still confused though. Lol
So In essense, pheno hunting, is … selective breeding? with the purpose of creating a new strain that’s has a growers desired traits ? Are these traits usually physical? Like , high yield , fast flowering, certain aroma?
I’m learning I’m learning lol
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Pheno hunting is not always breeding related. It’s essentially so you can find the most desirable plants out of say, 10 females. The purpose is to identify which plants grown from seed perform the best according to your criteria- yield, flowering time, terpenes (taste and aroma), structure, stability, or difficulty of grow.
You could do this for your home grow to find your ideal ‘favorite’ plant to clone and grow out repeatedly, or you could do this for a commercial grow to find the best plant to crop out perpetually.
You can use this for breeding to find the best candidates to breed, as you said, selective breeding.
The reason i would pollinate 9 females with 1 male is because it makes sense to pollinate 9 females once instead of pollinating 1 female times 9 runs. So I could make 9 crosses at the same time, doesnt mean i would focus on them all equally.
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Great information ! Thanks!
Really appreciate your time .
I took the liberty off googling phenotype and finding a couple articles.
WOW
I think what Is tripping me up now is;
When hunting for a pheno, when do you know you found something?
After a entire grow cycle when harvesting?
Would it be only in the flowering cycle that you identify it ?
Or could it be something you notice in Veg?
I would i imagine that in flower you could identify a particular phenome easier, does that pose any issue then when you try and clone from a flowering now plant opposed to a plant in veg.
And this must Be why growers talk about keeping mothers plants?
It’s all making sense .
MY issue I just realise is that I have only grown from clones, so my plants are only going to be as special as the originating seeded mother .
I have some seeds now , so if i grow three of the same strains seeds, 1/3 may Be particularly dominant of its genetics?
Anyway, sorry to bombard your first thread.
edit
Prior to this thread I thought pheno was short for phenomenal hahahahaha
Good luck again!
edit
So this is why people REVEG
lol answers my own question.
Or I guess you could clone from flower cycle once you identified the particular phenotype…
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Absolutely. Sounds like you figured the rest out, except for the 3 seeds thing.
The 3 seeds will vary. They could all be great, a mix, or all meh. It will all depend on the genetics. The stability depends on how inbred the line is. A f1 cross where you cross strain A and strain B will have a wide range, but if you keep breeding that for 6 generations with the same selections to achieve your ideal plants, the range will vary less.
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Yes that was wrong lol I only have 3 seeds of each strain lol. That’s why I used that example.
They may all be viable but they could all be nothing special lol but I could potentially pheno hunt out of my 3 seeds lol
Thanks dood! Looking forward to reading your posts.
Edit
Thanks ! I still have a long way to go , but I’m glad I started here.
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No, thank you for asking questions! I like talking about this stuff
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This discussion opened up an entire New section of this site for me, the breeders lab.
I can kind of understand a bit more now. I just came across this other thread, what makes a strain, using lifesavers to explain. My brain isn’t quite there Yet though lol
I’m sure you could engage on this thread pretty well!
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It’s a great way to visualize it. Basically you should look up filial generations and punnett squares if you want to learn more details.
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Will do.
I’m interested in learnin how to make my own strain / breed
My buddy has 2 dozen plants outdoors right now and may have some males.
His are quality genetics .
Maybe not breed but cross i guess?
So would I grow a good female plant and throw It in a tent with a male …and hope for seeds. Then repeat 2 more times? Lol then effectively have a legitimate cross ? is that a poLYHYBRID lol
Depending on the strains
My seeds I have are Blueberry . Blue Monster and L.A.Confidential.j would need quality g1 strains
I think la and blueberry have already been done…too much hybrid going on there.
It’s gonna take a while to figure out this back cross stuff.
I reallly want to pop all these seeds now play pheno hunting lol. But not bin the non bright eyed bushy tailed ones.
I need an introduction to breeding.
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It is a polyhybrid but most people would call it a F1 cross.
Taking a quality female plant and male plant would get you a lot of seeds, and you’d have to grow like 10 to 40 out to make a good selection to get the best traits. repeat 2 more times and then it’d be less of a cross and more your own strain.
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Wild!
So…not intended to offend anyone at all
But- how legit are all the strains that are on the open market? When searching to buy seeds - is it often safe to assume they are legitimate strains that have been bred out properly ? or possibly 1x generation cross ?
Is there a regulatory group or anything ?
Or should you just educate yourself so you know what your buying?
Instead of buying a new hybrid. And chancing it on getting something with strong genetics.
Buy something that is not polyhybrid : a strain that is of solid reputation which would offer more consistent quality generic traits.
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You do have to educate yourself. That being said, lots of people want the latest polyhybrids. They want cookies, gelato, runtz, zkittlez. They want that hype stuff. They want Miracle Alien Cookies or Gelatti.
So a lot of the best genetics on the market can be fresh polyhybrids. That’s why Blu-Tri created that lifesaver “what is a strain” thread, because presumably they’re tired of people not stabilizing and inbreeding their strains before release. But that’s not how you make money nowadays. The $$$ doesnt go to inbred stablized strains, it goes to hype strains like Gary Payton.
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I’m glad I had a 10 year break and never got caught up with all this glamour life hype cannabis…yet haha…i had to google Gary Payton hahaha not a big sports fan either clearly.
when I stopped being a daily toker around 2009 . The only variety i remember was just some hashplant, blueberry ,and …bc skunk …and that was If you we’re lucky. Everything else didn’t have a name. Or we just didn’t care.
After that I wasn’t to concerned about having a puff every day.
In 2011 in my area , kush got really popular and it was all any body wanted, if it wasnt kush it was junk! lol boy am I glad I never cared for kush much, still don’t …it was like gold though and fetched $50 an eigth easy …
Now I still don’t care much for anything extravagant ,I like my own work and smoke my own Work! I’m hooked on my 9lb hammer.
I’m also glad I’m learning about all these varieties through cultivation discussion…
All be it’ nothing wrong with smokers who spend they’re $$$ on the hype , it’s they’re $ they can spend it how they wish and I sincerely hope they enjoy every puff!! A lot of workmanship does go into growing , just wish everyone recognized the effort.
I sure as hell know that 1/5 the way through my first grow , i realised I would never take cannabis for granted again.
Grow on!!!
EDIT
all coming back to me now, early early on ,
We classified it as, INDOOR, OUT DOOR, HYDRO. AND BUBONIC chronic hahahaha
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Here’s a quick update.
I got my humidifier and now my RH is around 50% on average. I do have to refill the misting chamber every half hour cause the pump broke pretty much immediately. Great value for $100, right?
I’m gonna lightproof my room and flip on the 30th I think.
The strains in this picture are:
5 mt zion open pollination
6 split her cakes (atom splitter x ice cream cake)
6 citrus sour (jillybean x sour power og)
7 sour dragons breath (sour diesel x ((hindu kush x afghan kush) x blueberry trainwreck))
6 raspberry beret (sangria #4 x raspberry breath)
5 gods green crack (god bud x green crack)
4 gods green crack x chemo
6 atom splitter x chem d
6 atom splitter x chem 91
6 samurai sour f2 (atom splitter f2 renamed)
Atom Splitter is (headbanger x sour d ibl) x sour power og
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Nice thread you got going on here , Way over my head but very interesting !
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Thanks man.
Today on my lunch break I ordered some pollen. Supposed to be 3 types, one is forum cookies bx3. Supposed to hear back later about the others.
Probably gonna chuck some pollen on my plants lol
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PBB x Wilson and Romulan x Wilson are the others.
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I’ll sit in on this as well my fellow Canuck 
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Still waiting on my pollen to be shipped. It was supposed to ship on monday but now I’m waiting even longer to flip my plants. Unfortunate but oh well.
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