The usual stoner is often writing breeding plans that can be practically accomplished only by the kids of his grandchildrens. And on another side, he’s scared to breed in loop a line during only a couple of years. This ambivalence is not new, but the prevalence is strong today.
That’s one of our nonsense, on a global scale. I think that this generic behavior affect the perspectives on lasting works, then their massive disparition ^^
Rationnal approach VS Irrationnal aproach
A rationnal approach is weighted and easy to plan, it concern most of genetic maintenances and polishing. This is also a reccuent angle in IBLs.
Taking a landrace to inbred by example, it is easily rationnal :
- cleaning (herms and runts)
- weed improvement or conservation
- maintenance of traits worked
A bad irrationnal approach will be to ignore the timeline, the context and the goal to reach :
- taking a hashplant cultivar to deliver weed
- BXing it directly without any stabilization before
- crossing this messed up line to a higher quality, thinking that the averages will be improved.
And sometimes you just want to germinate in loop all seeds you have of a line. This, for an unique specimen that the line can potentially generate.
Maybe 50% chances to land on the right spectrum of phenos, maybe the half to get on top the right scents … and more generally with coky breeding plans, a 1%-10% chance to get the genetic material. I’ve calculated my rate from 8% to 25% (IBLs) in average, final selection ratio. In my comfort zones and with over two decades of seeds i can’t even count.
It’s by definition an irrational game in our weird context. Our scene mostly generate popular genetics by accidental pollination of herms, in cash crops and not inside breeding labs.
And the most delicious fact is that the biggest companies of the modern cannabis industry still rely on the closets of stoners.
It’s important to understand that the ground is already a nonsense, to dodge layers of unecessary irrationnal problems, most of the time acting as neutralyzers at the concept stage.
Let’s visit the most commons :
Rip-off industry
I was a bee a long time around the needs of white label’s structures, to don’t say dedicated to this. The concept of this kind of need is entirely based on an obvious copycat of everything for cheaper, it’s assumed and (smartly) marketed generally.
You have all crossed the path of this kind of seedbank :
- Enormous catalog impossible to maintain in production technically (considering the contexts ^^)
- Cyclic and agressive marketing campaigns. Most of the money is spent there, i’m talking litterally about the major parts of the profits.
- Dynamic offer : generally by semesters, new lines reflecting previous retailer’s volumes.
It exist various forms : those planned to last only a coupled years, those acting also as wholesaler distributors but also the startup-look-alike ones since a decade that don’t even touch a single seed or bud inltheir daily routine.
The catalogs are quite uniforms among companies, it surprised me the first time. And i’m talking about the similarity of combos in the details.
At first you have the funnel of the production. It’s easy make a lot of seeds. But not when you need to bill them, pay taxes on it and offer a certain level of reliability (predictable quality/price ratio) and liability (r&d ready to fire).
No one will beg after you for a line that can be “bulked” in the cheapest countries for tremendously cheaper prices, fem or not. And legally operated.
It’s the part of the lethal irrationnality i see in a lot of little labels that are just obviously hacking another catalog or trying to make a “peak-a-boo” on a saturated demand ^^
The line is quite porous and biased, behind the easy targets of the cheapest seeds of the market. But also behind the biggest volumes. Popular little labels represent perhaps as a whole the volume of one single line sold by one of the biggest Dutch white labels retailers.
So sincerely, just selling fast repros is pointless in any way you take it lol
Now the real ambivalence is that we are all “ripping of” someone at one point. Even the most “full of rules” collector of landrace you can find.
We reach a philosophic point that leave the goal of this section, But for me it’s resumed at the old school etiquette :
- You’re using, you’re crediting. Even against the will of the source, it’s a matter of education on strains to preserve for the comunity, and not about egos.
- I dislike the notion of property on a line but if you release something factually better than the original … you’re the holder of a necessary evolution. Specifically if it mean to sweat blood to de-herm a line with expensive low grade seeds ^^
Reinventing the wheel and the will
When i’m able to maintain a line, most of my daily cones are filled with JH. So for most of close friends, i’m falsely only smoking this ^^
And i always got this critic : Why the hell i don’t make my own, this weed being just a NL5H with a shot of Skunk#1. Always fresh meat in general.
I’m loving and rolling both : the NL5H and the JH, smoked at different moments for different uses.
Technically both aren’t hard to recreate, even from scratch. But these combos were done with specific selections, with specific hands and during a specific zeitgeist influencing what’s hunted.
I’m prone to yell at everybody that the study of a pedigree is a strategic approach to dodge the muddy weeds of unwanted BX. But not to make it a breeding plan in anyway.
The specimens you get at each batch of germination will decide the ride, then the sequence of your cross. Maybe it will be this initial (AB x C) thinked, maybe more finally a (AB x AC) … no one know in fact, even in sequencing, how will be the round used to extract the pairing.
What make this NL5H x Skunk#1, a JH, is the situation at the moment that the pairing was done. The context as a whole, humans hands included.
You’re not forced to accept this, and you can even make it a motor in your journey.
But it’s important to understand that there is not much ways to obtain a singular smoke : to stabilize it or to generate it.
It’s the reccurent error of little labels, acting like struggled sellers of a soup. They add water each year, until they finish to sell just hot water with a product name. Don’t be one more of this seriously.
Sometimes it’s as simple that continuing to simply love to smoke daily something, then polishing it until your stoned brain is shining.
Now most of my best lines are generally built on a JH blueprint. What a surprise …
The harder part is to accept that the built matter and not the reference. The soul of the weed come at the moment you have the array of seedlings under the nose.
The truth no one want to listen about landraces.
I don’t count the number of stoners thinking to have find the magistral idea that no one thinked before them : recreating a strain from the raw landrace point.
The truth is that you need in general a decade to chisel the gloral qualities of a landrace, at the point to be competitive with modern standards.
In the 70’s the gap between the landrace’s grade and their young hybrids wasn’t the valley of today.
The conceptual reverse engineering have its limits, and you have to take the pedigree of sensi seeds and the serious seeds with a grain of salt.
It’s more a matter of a given hybrids nursery rotation, than really inbred landraces inter-crossed.
In the same vein i can note a SD BX as a triple afghani x mexican x colombian … not fundamentally wrong but so silly.
Conclusion : You're drawing on the sable of a beach
Most of these considerations are thrown on the table with the sincere wish to see more pragmatism in discussions that are revolving around breeding. More context shared too, it’s all the salt and the soul of a true strain.
I’m all for principles, specially if they are assumed entirely. Sometimes it even give interresting signatures, i’m totally fine with this.
But not used to blindfold you on a demand that can fuel your vision, not with too much faith on how are made the pillars-breeder’s cut (absolutely not from raw landraces lol) etc …
I’m really frustrated to can’t give a recipe to make working in peace a standard with the necessary elasticity, to don’t drawn the lead breeding.
It’s actually a perpetual tension among cycles of R&D, not really an equation to solve. The more you’re pushing in accuracy, the more you invoke your self-discipline.
From a repro it’s not hard : generally the materials now are raws and unstables. Any rationnal care (genetic health) will improve the line.
But when you have reached the plateau of the genotype, after the tempests of co-dominances, you’re quickly punished to underestimate the exponential leverage of each selection. It’s also where you can generate the true competitive singularities, “Jah giveh Jah takeh”.
So i have a bad new, but it’s a true chemically pure feedback on how to have fun in this nonsense.
I like to handle my awareness of the difficulty with challenges. Mostly self-challenges i must say. Some others with an agressive arrogance (yunub) equally with “the best humility of world” or excuses called humility.
Look like I’m mocking but I’m quoting three persons that I was appreciating a lot in term of posture/factual output ratio. Be cool, don’t blame the messenger.
Behind our excuses, beyond our lefty manner to hide the insane context … we are all sweating blood for a grail at one point. And it’s not about breeding, it’s almost a massive ritual on an ethnobotanic angle.
Not knocking the wall of the hardiness with the head first is a wise move.
Breeding is not a sequential progression but more a constant pressure you’re applying on a genpool.
If you’re weak one year on your most accurates lines … it can be simply the end of the ride the next season. It’s a respiration for you too, the quality of your focus is also a parameter.
It relativize also the fact to possess a given genetic, and the fact to being actually able to cycle it for a constant improvement. Wathever is the checkpoint, a motherplant or seeds.