Legitimate breeders/ best practices... name names if you want

[RickSanchez]

Which breeders do you think are using good breeding practices?

After reading the Feminized seed thread I started thinking about this.

Breeding is hard. You need to grow a lot of plants and spend a lot of time to do it well. On the other hand making seeds is really easy. Seeds from random crosses might turn out to be either good or bad, but if you aren’t selecting for traits you aren’t really breeding (probably not the right term)

There is a lot of marketing going on. We can expect this will only increase as cannabis becomes more mainstream. I believe that with good marketing you can sell a lot of just about anything regardless of demand or quality. If this is accurate a theoretical breeder good at marketing, or willing to pay for good marketing, would be able to sell seeds based on packaging/hype/advertising alone. If said breeder had questionable ethics they might be inclined to just cross two popular hybrids, make some seeds to throw into their sweet packaging while they roll around in their Scrooge McDuck style Moneybin. (I think this is what @Baudelaire and others are mainly railing against in the feminized seeds thread)

Anyway… This post is getting pretty long and I kind of lost my train of thought. What are your thoughts? And specifically, which breeders do you think are professionals who can be trusted?

Conversely, Who are the hacks? Who should we watch out for?

[Worcestershire_Farms]

Signs to stay away:

• Half dozen or more strains, all pollinated by the same male. (They’re clearly not testing their males.)
• More than fifty strains, with a majority out of stock. (They’re not working to make strains better, just pumping em out.)
• A dozen new strains every year. (They’re not testing)
• Every strain they have is crossed with every other strain they have.(They have no interest in making new legit cultivars, just new names to sell)

[MadScientist]

@Worcestershire_Farms

Signs to stay away:

• Half dozen or more strains, all pollinated by the same male. (They’re clearly not testing their males.)
• More than fifty strains, with a majority out of stock. (They’re not working to make strains better, just pumping em out.)
• A dozen new strains every year. (They’re not testing)
• Every strain they have is crossed with every other strain they have.(They have no interest in making new legit cultivars, just new names to sell)

This basically puts out of the business at least 75% of the breeders i know sell seeds nowadays!

[Swampthing]

Using the same male isn’t a bad thing… I would be more worried about 30 males on 30 strains strong text

[Kraven]

Well straight up, I simply quit running random breeders gear looking for the “flavor of the month” when I hooked up as one of the many testers @LED_Seedz runs his beans through. Also he is the pickest mofo I know, if it aint right he simply wont put his name on it. I’m stoked he is about to start offering his gear to a much broader community…

Grass Monkey- Flower Day 38 of 56
by @LED_Seedz

@RickSanchez - I hope you didn’t mind me tossing up a pic of his gear I’m running. If so I will be more than happy to remove it. Thank you.

[RickSanchez]

Not at all @Kraven. Beautiful pics!

[Worcestershire_Farms]

What do you mean by thirty males on thirty strains?

If we make thirty batches of one strain and use a different male for each batch, nobody knows what’s being passed on. Every batch will be different.

If we make thirty batches of one strain with thirty fathers for each single batch of seeds, it can make up for not properly vetting your males.

[Swampthing]

Sorry that was a bad explanation. I just mean using tons of untested males instead of lines using a few tried and tested true males on a bunch of clone onlys. You

[Calyxander]

@RickSanchez

Breeding is hard. You need to grow a lot of plants and spend a lot of time to do it well. On the other hand making seeds is really easy. Seeds from random crosses might turn out to be either good or bad

Yup.
In the distant past I had aspirations to breed cannabis. But it is indeed hard. Too hard for me.
However, I became quite proficient at pollen chucking. I love to make f1 seeds and see what I get. You are correct…sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes great.
It is easy and fun… a genetic adventure!

Nowadays, it seems to me that a lot of people conflate pollen chucking with breeding.
This is unfortunate.
They are two different endeavors.

[adkfoothills]

@MadScientist

This basically puts out of the business at least 75% of the breeders i know sell seeds nowadays!

There’s tons of companies selling seeds nowadays, very few are breeders, and of all those companies selling seeds nowadays, at least 75% should go out of business imo.

[HERBrastafari]

I would say Dynasty, BOG, La Plata Labs, and CSI: Humboldt all work their lines and aim for stability. I like being able to grow an IBL and know that I am growing exactly what that breeder is advertising in their menu, see uniformity in all the plants, or if a fellow grower on forum recommends a strain to me, that I can order it and grow exactly what he/she has. But also I have enjoyed pheno hunting through F1 and F2 stock from certain breeders, and finding a gem that maybe not everyone else who bought that strain has. Realistically anyone can pollen chuck, you just have to carefully pick and choose which pollen chuckers you buy from. And be diligent in watching your ladies for herms. I can honestly say the Chernobyl and Marionberry Kush phenos I found in 10 packs of TGA are true keepers, and I can almost certainly say they will always have a place in my gardens, at least as mothers. On the other hand I have bought packs from other chuckers and been thoroughly disappointed. Anyone with access to a bunch of elite cuts can be a decent pollen chucker, the difference between a good and bad one is in their selection of parents, and work habits. Most recently I have been impressed with some of the F1s I’ve got from In House Genetics, and haven’t found any nanners either. I don’t understand all the hate Chuckers get. If you can make a living selling seeds of this wonderful plant, who am I to judge you. It’s the people who get caught up in the pics on the menus and hype of the names and what’s the new cool thing. It’s funny how people can spend hours ranting and raving how much they hate certain breeders on forums, but can’t do their due diligence and research strains through grow journals and reviews before they buy it. Do everything you can to know what your buying before you spend, money, time, and supplies on it. Sorry for the rant. Hope someone takes something from it.

[MiG]

@HERBrastafari

Humboldt all work their lines and aim for stability

Are ya talkin bout Humboldt Seeds?

[HERBrastafari]

No. CSI: Humboldt. Completely different outfit. Breeders name is Nspecta.

[RickSanchez]

I would think true breeding would be a goal of any breeder, but it seems like a lot of the time you kind of get a lottery situation. Ex: plant 5 seeds-end up with 5 different phenotypes.

[MiG]

This isent a problem, @RickSanchez, if ya knows previosly how many genotipes a strain have, n that all this genotypes are good enought… Example: old Sensi Seeds Jack Herer…

[legalcanada]

a lot of times people will just completely rename a phenotype as if its a new strain too

[oranje]

@RickSanchez

I would think true breeding would be a goal of any breeder, but it seems like a lot of the time you kind of get a lottery situation. Ex: plant 5 seeds-end up with 5 different phenotypes.

This is something that gets my goat when reading about beans: descriptions like “there are 8 main phenotypes, ranging from an inside-out sweater to Jaws 3 which must have been good because it was in 3D.”

I get that homogeneous results from seed is nearly impossible, and would be incredibly undesirable from a genetic perspective, but there’s a pretty big gap between a stable strain and breeding two great plants. I’d describe most of my seeds as “interesting hybrids” rather than strains.

There are still those who do Interesting Hybrids quite well, of course, but I’d put many modern breeders into this category.

[Worcestershire_Farms]

@HERBrastafari

Do everything you can to know what your buying before you spend, money, time, and supplies on it.

Cheers to that!

[Fuel]

I’m feeling bad to name somes as constant secure sources, it’s a garantee that can’t longer exist in our market by definition. It’s more about the millesimes that anything else imho.

But seriously, if you want a grand come back of the quality in the market, you have to educate customers first. Simply, and today it’s a pharaonic project.

We can throw shit on breeders one more decade by tradition, it will change nothing. If they have to produce garbage, to survive or maintain, because everyone ask for it, … they will.

If the majority of customers stop to ask garbage, Darwin’s rules will do all the job fast and you will see the actual number of seedbanks drastically decreasing.

[RickSanchez]

I don’t think people are asking for garbage. There is just a huge market and a lot of people, myself included, have trouble sorting through the hype. Therefore it remains profitable to sell garbage (not that I have found much garbage out there, I just want to give my money to the right people)

“It’s more about the millesimes that anything else imho.” Could you elaborate on this? I don’t speak french.