Let’s test the freaks for the sake of phenotypic research ^^ Everybody have spotted Mendel i guess, but there is one priest in the pack that look like a F1 Hybrid of Ed Rosenthal x Ben dronkers. Find Charlie lol I love this photography for this especially, i find it surreal lol
Necessary disclaimer
When my elder son helped me to deal with the plants last Sunday, i realized that it can be cool to write something about this subject like i would write it for him. At the difference that he don’t give a fuck about breeding, he just respect the path i chose to put the bread on the table and it’s far enough for me. He’s 20+, he saw a bunch of labs of all kind since he’s born ^^
It give me also an excuse to don’t fall in a pedant academic exposition of what I consider as the core of cannabis breeding : facing the constraints of something that is doomed to be piloted by the passion.
And to do this without running in loop, you need conceptualizations and abstractions. All points that will follow are not existing in the real dimension, it’s all about the methodism necessary to don’t be neutralized in the practice. And then, to can evolve through the punitive hardiness of breeding.
And it was the quintessence of these impressive minds that were Mendel, Bateson, De Vries … the pioneers of the cure i’m taking all days since a week and that feel like a 4th millenary medicine for a 20th century native. But also responsible of what we have in the plates when we eat something. Well not me for a while lol
It still a pure share too, straight from my hands and my own personal priorities. So i will tell you the story from my point of view and from my experience. It require to be enough smart to build yourself your own grid of reading to handle all of this adapted to your sole case.
Remember this : Each round of selection is an unique equation that will never happen again. With its own laws, with its own expressions and with its own balances. And it’s what make it very addictive.
With a structured focus, you can overcome this fate and to be the pied piper of Hamelin of these flowers.
F1s and the Heterosis - 001
The F1s and the heterosis : It's relative, bro.
F1 just mean “1st Filial generation”. As simple than this. But beyond this, there is a bunch of momentum in the agronomy that make also this specific notation a whole concept linked with heterosis.
If you trust blindly the agronomy standard, it’s all about the binary presence of heterosis : ON/OFF.
If you trust blindly the nomenclature, it’s only the first step of a (new) genotype not necessary linked with heterosis.
And if you dig even more, you discover that there is true F1 and false F1 …
And you know what, the three options are valid ^^ It just totally depend on the round of selection you have in front of you, and its specificity.
I’m torturing you right now but it’s to put some elasticity in your mind, absolute and binary reasoning in cannabis breeding is your worst enemy. Each round.
For now it’s the best way to handle this, the starting point. Consider an heterosis mastered as the superior sum of both parts. Or it’s just a mistake to learn from. For the sole purpose to evolve from the equation you have badly mapped.
It’s hard by definition, never blame yourself. Blame your methods and make them evolve with the line.
And yes it’s valid also to make these damned fems. Heterosis and its constraints still apply.
Now i will enter a bit more in the mechanism of the heterosis at a conceptual level, to show how it’s vicious if you only search a rigid manner to handle this. The sexy teaser is that after some mileage on the line(s), you can generate heterosis at a point you’re choosing and this, without outcrossing your ladies with a chaotic agent.
As you know, mother nature hate the void. But what you’re seeing when you’re watering your plants tell you something else that doesn’t have any sense both scientifically and rationally.
Let’s say you have one afghani#1 F2 line and one skunk#1 F2 line, to balance what you’re rolling. And let’s fall into clichés, because one weed that get you stoned and one weed that you can use during an active day.
You decide one day to cross the twos, in keeping also the initial lines. Not for breeding purpose, just to fill the stash more easily with something in the middle.
In launching 10 seeds of each of the three lines, you’re seeing a phenomenon that clearly disavantage your love for the two initial lines : what farmers call the “hybrid vigor”, the heterosis at work.
The F1 plants you created take quickly one week of advance on the others, eat stronger and fill better their medium with roots. You clearly see a “switch” of heterosis that force you to make a specific feeding schedule for these plants. You don’t dream, this “activation” exist and you have it under the eyes. Farmers know this phenomenon and use it, and you can even find a bunch of scientific papers on the subject that mention clearly the term.
But sadly for your human brain that search often direct shortcuts first (because you have neuronal system), the heteoris don’t exist. It’s not a trait, it’s not somewhere in the DNA, it’s not a mutation … it don’t exist. And the more frustrating, it’s not something that you can breed over multiple generations. It’s just something that you can generate at one point. And it’s still here under your nose.
Beside this sudden superiority of your fresh F1, you also see something else that will give you the key to understand what is really heterosis : your F1 look like a cocktail made by a skilled barman. You don’t really selected the father and the mother, but the progeny look like cemented by the same dynamic and that tend naturally to an average.
You find your F1 too small to have a better yield than the skunk#1, not enough crystallized to make hash with the trims like the afghani #1… but hell, the balance you have under the eyes is quite “cemented” from one specimen to another. Making it more easy to grow in top of the extra vigor and speed.
If you don’t have the best of the two parts, you have something better than the both reunited. Congrat, you respected enough well your initial lines in screening out the trash. It’s sincerely enough to make a good F1, even without any real selection.
And legitimately, you don’t really feel responsible of this. Frustrating right ?
And that’s exactly how, when your initial material is enough clean and reliable, that a good heterosis is generated. The heterosis is in fact the blend itself, and not something responsible of the blend or having a leverage on it.
It’s just the efficiency of the complementarity of your cross that produce a better expression of the DNA by heterosis.
During the step when the pollen dig to the ovula of the female to make a seed, a complex game is happening. And it’s not peaceful. Each complex compromise that will make the genetical code will hurt the heterosis potential, like by example two traits that don’t work together.
In your case, the crystals of the afghani #1 and the yield of the skunk#1. You got a better plant than the two, but not their maximal potential reunited.
But i will not crush your mind yet with the selection, just remember that it’s possible with enough momentum and changes on the initial lines to planify this.
You can by example breed the trichomes coverage of the afghani#1 … not to be even more crystallized than it is to compensate the lost. Hell no, you will end in a loop of failures that will waste your precious time. But to pass more crystal coverage to the fattest skunk#1 specimen of the other line. And you can eventually end with a F1 more crystalized than the initial afghani#1 … in using the heterosis “boost” at your advantage.
But for this, you need an heterosis with a good torque. So now let’s see how really look this heterosis switch when it belong to a practical manipulation of it.
It’s where the petrol head i am will start to talk about the torque of the heterosis. Yeah i know. But it’s very relevant.
It’s very simple again, not rocket science. The more distance between your two lines hybridized, the more torque get the heterosis. I’m not even sure i’ve to develop this … it’s very as simple and in practice as mechanical that i just writed it.
Look at my shitty design, not proud of this one. What is a Northern Light finally if not an afghani hardly inbred ? (STFU for the NL5, i try to make it simple to don’t see your brain flow through your ears).
But the distance between an afghani and a blend of sativa-ish cultivars … now it’s talking loud. And it’s why the majority of popular strains are afghani/skunk based. Even if today most of next gen breeders don’t even know it for their own strains lol
So be careful when you choose your pairings. Take the time to study the line you want to use in its pedigree. The real cannabis genpool is quite narrowed since the begin, there is not numerous grand families
So by example if making an F1 between an afghani #1 and a NL look nice, it’s just a BX in fact more than a true F1. A Backcrossing. It’s not a bad idea because the heterosis will have a very little torque, but if you was expecting the streamlined effect of the heterosis to have uniform F1 specimens it’s like pissing in a violin to have music.
Now a little secret, because it’s about my failures about this when i was a youngster like you. Don’t tell anyone. The secret, but also that i’ve failed something ^^
In playing mostly with raw landraces at my begin, i had the chance to handle quite fast the concept of heterosis. These plants helped me a lot to reduce my learning curve about it, the pairings, the distances etc … BUT they were landraces and it blindfolded me.
When a bit later i gave more muscles to the game in juggling also with modern dutch lines, i started to lost my shit. Because i losted a lot my reliability to plan results, and i you know how i’m a freak about this. It turned me mad during a couple of years, maybe 30% of my F1 were like they were supposed to be. Making me feel like a piece of shit unable to enter in the game of more tailored strains. It’s awful this sensation to only roll dices, and it marked me very strongly. Like a fucking trauma.
The error was in fact extremely stupid, as is the right manner to handle the heterosis.
I first “sur-conceptualized” that the distance of the heterosis was like an elastic. The more you stretch it, the more you store energy when you release it (F1). Making myself a true perfect example of the law of Murphy during all these painful failures. There is no way to be more wrong with heterosis and i wasted a shit ton of seeds at it.
Then one day i was watching for the millionth time my favorite horror movie of the universe with a fat blunt of ghanaian : Hellraiser. The answer was in the cube.
It’s not about the length of the distance, but about the complementarity of the two extremes used. Simply.
You want max torque ? Easy. Trust Pinhead.
Take one strain that need to grow dry and take one hydro strain, make your F1 and watch the satisfactory magic. And it work like a charm without any rocket science, landrace or not.
The more the DNA bits used to make the final blend are not entering in a conflict of function, the more the heterosis is an explosion. It’s the complementarity i was talking about just in up if you don’t falled asleep yet.
And the best for the end, it’s cumulative (in layers of traits) and can be even exponential in results if you change a little bit your contextual mapping in this sense.
I told you, best horror movie ever.
I hope this copter view on the heterosis helped to get rid of unnecessary complication and worse than anything : rolling dices with F1s. Don’t tell anyone, just in mastering this concept people can believe your lines are stabilized and worked since centuries because they are uniform as fuck. But in F2 it’s the shit show if they reproduce it, the lie will not last long with the more experienced of the pack ^^