I have no clue atm about what will be the next chapters, but there is something sure : it’s more long and complicated for me to dodge some words that are very practical to explain a concept or a point of view.
Nothing really groundbreaking or innovative, but specialized and narrowed on a matter that matter for us ^^
It’s more to be the practical intermediate between a cold dictionary and the dirty hands of the stoners. Also to give some leads if ever one bit is stimulating or inspiring you.
It’s not with the intent to be exhaustive or academic, but more (also) to refine the grid of reading necessary to best handle what i’ve to share.
This term is quite bitchy to handle, conceptual and factual at a time. But it’s not hard to integrate in practice.
Simplified : It concern all indirect leverages influencing the DNA and its expressions, that is not the DNA itself. The sentence look stupid like that but it take in count also advanced cases.
For our concern it’s quite easy to demonstrate a narrowed case by the nutes. You launch a batch of 10 seeds, then during all the life of the plants you feed them without any P. The grow will be streamlined around this lack, the visible deficiency being an answer to this strong epigenetic factor.
But not only, the DNA can react to this problematic in revealing answers/expressions not usually possible to detect. Even if we got divas sometimes, cannabis in general is quite resilient.
On top of this, if the P deficiency become lethal for the line it directly influence the progeny in changing drastically the priority of the genotype, then the average of its expressions.
By extend, environmental factors are epigenetics leverages stacked : the RH, the temps, the sun/lamps density, the environmental photoperiod, the balance of the soil or the type of medium and even the nutrients used.
Of course it is necessary to relativize the torque of this leverage. A drastical absence of P don’t have at all the same effect that just a variation of a couple of degrees of temps. Both are epigenetics leverages in the absolute, but only one is concerning us : the drastic change.
Another drastic leverage is simply pest and diseases, because it’s enough strong to imply the chance of survival of the genotype concerned.
The way i push here the herms to declare fast without really torturing the plants can also be considered as an epigenetic factor. I’m not selecting specimens directly, i just reunite the conditions to favor their expressions faster. It permit to cull them earlier and/or to don’t have surprises at the last minute.
The rules implied by the traits you’re working mechanically this way are inherent to the strain, you have to test, to adapt and to refine. It’s not magic.
In practical breeding, it can be compared to the gearbox of a cars for the selection. You can multiplex various leverage around a trait to increase a pressure that will be capped with only one factor. Like simply hardening off clones or seedlings : restricted root area + root booster + 24/0
These two terms are quite used in our community but not often well considered when they are extended to groups and generations, with breeding constraints. The goal here is not to fall in the cascading considerations of the mendel laws, but more to enlighten a bit the terms themselves.
The power of these two terms is their versatility. It can apply to a trait, to a combo of traits, to a specimen, to a subgroup of specimens but also to a whole line in front of another one (outcross or not). Making it highly relative to what you’re considering.
Also it’s picturing more a dynamic, a movement, than a binary status or a strict condition. To keep it simple again, I will use a simple dual notation for the example : D(ominant) and R(ecessive).
They are Big Bud S1 of the same line, if it wasn’t the case this notation will not be relevant.
In watching the root mass, one specimen clearly show a singularity while the others are almost streamlined on the same level of density.
It’s saying, at the level of this trait, that a given density of roots is dominating the line. And that high density root masses are recessives. Because it’s at the level of a single trait compared, we can’t determine the sense of the dynamic. Beware of this trap.
Another layer is necessary to understand the dynamic, and the most useful with cannabis is the global shape. It ask a bit of training, but it will inform you on the sense of the dynamic you’re watching at low level.
If the root mass R is contained in a specimen that show a dominant shape D widely shared, it mean that the dominant phenos are globally slightly drifting to a point by their instability on this trait.
Are the “lesser” phenos following positively the R root mass or the reverse, decreasing globally their root mass ?
You have a large panel of tools to determine this but that mostly consist to find traits that are linked with the root mass condition. The “linked traits” that you’re hunting to elevate the accuracy in selection.
At the begin it’s more easy to handle in keeping the notation simple like the example. Better to cumulate simple notations on multiple traits that juggling with complex ones not yet enough obvious for you.
With enough mileage (personally but also on the line), it’s necessary to give more elegance to this notation and to use different levels.
A very pronounced expression like the 1st specimen on the left, will take more a RR notation.
The 4th and 5th specimen from the left being the less dense, will take more a DD notation.
With cannabis i find relevant to use up to four level of notation per status, simply because the complexity of the final product. We still breeding blunts and their quality of smoke, a quality that is totally artificial just like the hash we make from it.
For convenience, you can mix capital letters and lowercase and cumulate them. For the R it will give then four level of notations : RR, R , Rr, r. That will picture the torque of the recessivity when you need more elegance in your notation.
It’s rarely necessary when the true segregations are still recompiling the genotype, when you still close to the F1. But when the IBL start to be quite advanced, it’s becoming more and more a question of nuances and you need a tool adapted to this level of accuracy.
You can also have specimens representing a blend of the two conditions and that you can note DR, Dr, dR, dr … but i advice you to ignore it until you really need the mendel laws to muscle your selections.
Overall keep it simple and the most natural possible for you, until you feel capped. Then add very progressively a new layer in your method. Don’t rush directly with a full notation of dominances, it ask a couple of seasons full time to be enough in ease to handle nuances without generating your own traps.
Last but not least : to set good habits since the start on this matter. Not like me ^^
By convention but not only, try to always oppose the lowercase and the capital letters of your notation for the trait studied. Blue weed = DD (lucky shot!) , not Blue weed = dd. Think about a light switch.
In using it like me to illustrate the “levels” of expressions, you force your method to use more specialized notations and to be quite off road. It’s not really an handicap, but it’s quite punk and ask more plant tags to blacken ^^ Discussions can quite heated for nothing too on pure theoretical matters if you’re pushing something that break the convention. You’re an heretic to burn quite fast lol
Now sincerely, if you can’t stand like me the binary system and that it slow down your learning curve, just fuck it. Anyway on traits notations i’m quite liberal and i’m the last to get mad when i see an exotic way that make sense.
Sorry, it was useless and important at a time 
It’s quite a ride now. Don’t worry i will not write a wall on chromosomes then to explain you that each time that i open the tent … “i see their code” ^^ And that’s the polemic side of this part of the glossary, it’s narrowed around the practical aspect of the consideration. And cannabis. You can handle this.
As cannabis breeder, what you need to know is reduced to understand etymology of these words and how they are build. No shit.
Homo (same) and Hetero (other) is quite simple to handle. And even if there is a slight variation, if you take the words homogeneous and heterogeneous and start to see the light with the presence of “gene”.
For “zygote” in the vegetal reign it’s not so hard to handle either but it introduce new words. There is a game i like particularly in the experimental field and it’s the polyploids. You have heard at least one time about it, and it’s generally BS extrapolated from fantasy ^^
“Each its own” like say the mantra of hipsters, but i consider this spectrum of experimentation less pussy that the reversal, that is entirely devoted to fuck up the sexuality of cannabis and to create a mirage at short term.
Polyploids can be a valuable genetic material if you know your shit with inbreeding, and permit to explore and generate expressions that are literally new. Not just variations enough extremes to appear new : like by example the Cheese inside the Skunk#1. Another mirage.
In the church of breeding that you’re reading right now, it’s almost the only case where you’re permitted to think in an absolute way. And this without being whipped with a Jack Herer trunk then rubbed on the bloody wounds with the most hardcore PK of the market. During three days.
It’s my favorite threat with my padawans when they say shit that can lead to limit their potential ^^ A signature of some sort lol
I prevented rightly about the trap, so now i can release the blasphema : polyploids generate true new genotypes, and it’s absolute.
Reversal can lead to think it as well, but it’s not true : it generate a new genotype (for your mapping) but it’s just a phenotype transformed in a genotype, not really a new stuff. It’s the fentanyl of cannabis breeding lol Massively hooking growers-stoners that know it’s bad without the need to have a breeding background.
Let’s make a quick draw to show you now the three main categories that concern cannabis and our craziness to make it more dank than dank : haploid / diploid / polyploid.
Hell i’m quite proud of this one, simple and very dense. Pain is not all the time bad for the brain lmao
Ok, lets go.
It’s how cannabis naturally have sex, the porn game in the pollen tent. Whatever the pollen donor and the pollen receiver are, symbolized by the male’s symbol here.
The yellow ribbon is to remember you than beyond the apparent messy organical structure, there is a strict order of the things in the DNA. Genes have their dedicated space. Just for the sake of the education, just remember it’s called loci/locus and that it’s less complicated that it appear. It’s just the GPS location of the stuff. Not more, not less. In my draw, the vertical position of the genes we will talk about.
After “sex” the ovula of the female finally accept the physical data of the male. This physical vessel is the tube inside the grain of the pollen, that is quite acting like a tap root of a seed physically when it land on the pistil.
It’s quite fast, even with a degraded fertility, it last 3-4 hours only at the moment the pollen land in the pistils. After this, the time for the tube to hit the ovula and the ovula to start to become a seed can be very heterogeneous.
Now take your time and be really focus :
The draw represent the sexual organ of each part, the gametes that are haploid. When there are meeting to form a new diploid specimen later, the prime state will be called “zygote”. Kind of beta version that don’t chosen yet if your bud will taste like the SD or just a random musky weed ^^
Inside the whole horizontal yellow band (the loci, the location) you can see two differents genes linked with traits (latent or not).
The green genes are in a state that will produce an homozygous trait later, there is no margin for the “beta version” to fall in another way, so it just copy to be viable.
The blue and the red genes are in a state that can produce predictable results, but this result is composite. Like a cocktail or i don’t know … like oil and vinegar freshly well shaked. Remember now the Chapter One, got it ? ^^ This state will produce heterozygous trait later.
Stay focus we have to finish, it’s very important for your education and to don’t be this stoner that mix uniformity and stability. And that is thinking that “homozygous” mean stability either …
It’s the exact same concept that the haploid draw, it’s just that you no longer watch the sexual activity but more the romance and where the farmer is working. Because he’s not Neo, he work with traits and expressions that he can manage as an human ^^ And this is where the real power lies.
At the image of these billionaire canadian goliaths, you can be a fine genetician but if you don’t know shit on the plant, how it’s expressing and how it’s answering to epigenetics factors … you’re just unable to produce and create competitive genetics. At most rolling dice in quantitative breeding, being ashamed on regular basis by a accidental pollination of a random guy in a closet lol
It’s the dominating natural state of the cannabis, how the magic happens. And it’s also the finality of your selective pressure when you make your pairings. It’s how it look, even if all about textures, scents, internodes, nutrients uptake etc … for you.
This exact draw is how the industry start to kick hard actually, atm i’m writing this. Literally crossing a triploid male to a diploid female to obtain a progeny unable to reproduce (to have seeds). It’s as simple that i just describe it, the procedure not and it involve a very high accuracy selection in a high inbred line you know like your own close family.
A polyploid is just a specimen that have more gen in the loci that a normal diploid. Can be a triploid, tetraploid, hexaploid … but for cannabis remember the triploids. The game i like in the experimental field, and not necessary to only beat the fems at their own game. But for the sake of the creativity too.
Don’t fall in the absolutism, dreamer. You need to know the basics before, to know how to push an IBL up to two digits depth, to be enough in ease with the selective pressure of the line. It’s not Las Vegas to play with this AND to keep the dankness of your weed at a time. But don’t sleep either, when some like to reinvent the fire with esoteric procedure mostly build on wishful thinking… other are landing stuff on Mars during this time.
I don’t really have a specific affection for this company and i dodged it, kind of tentative of a white labelish / mogulish / internationalish wholesalish … a chimera that don’t really found its way. But look at this link for the sake of the zeitgeist. It’s a discreet gold rush today, and these smart ass need both : reliable genetics and the skilled farmers that are mastering them.
And since two decades the scene have more produced dreamy hipsters with absolute thinking that a fertile competition.
God, what a ride. You deserve to roll one now and to chill to meditate on this ^^ Twice, do it for two.
If you’re fascinated by the exploration of natural mutations in cannabis, sincerely … don’t read this part. The main subject is all about stabilized lines that can evolve under control, and under the leverage of selection mostly aiming the final product of this plant. And it affect this section, as a preventive presentation.
Freakshow, Duckfoot, Blueberry … i listen. No problem. But pragmatically they are epiphenomenons at the scale of the scene and in the streets there is no riots to get them. I prevented ^^ Jump before it’s too late lol
There is some hope, i’m more laid back when it’s generated on purpose and in a well mastered dynamic. But for now it’s more about the waste that you have on a regular basis for whatever reason, and this unexplained tendance of stoners to fall in love for it before even seeing a flower.
I used almost a P1 mutant to repro the real Big Bud IBL, i enjoyed as hell the “alien pods” seeds found in an AK and i’ve my share of experiments. It’s not binary, but i know the limits and the red zones to don’t itch and it will be more about this since now.
This is the three main styles of variegations encountered with cannabis. This is a clear and straight sign of genetic depression, but not seen as the ones afraid to assume an IBL and finding all excuses of the world to don’t confess it. Who care sincerely, if you make top notch weeds no one care about how you are driving your genpool.
So yes, this is a bad sign in any case. In this new era it concern mostly the progeny, the release, but not only. It can affect also a mother plant badly renewed and maintained. And it’s a very bad new as well, for now the “regeneration” sold by tissue culture fans is mostly a wishful thinking. It’s technically possible, but ask expensive procedures that make them hybrids and no longer the initial plant it was. With its obvious consequences on the final product.
I separate it from the spectrum of the mutations on purpose, but it belong to the same mutagen mechanisms. The ones that fuck up the accuracy of your mapping and of you selection, even if you do the job heavenly with well known genetics.
Why the fuzz specifically about the variegations, because it’s a generic reality now. If you’re interested in breeding, you will eat more seeds than the average. And on the panel, you will quickly see the general shitshow intensity. You have to compile with it, be patient and clean the stuff among a few generations. Most of the time 2 to 3 generations is enough to regulate this with a strict hand and copious arrays of seedlings.
Discarding drifted specimens will have more positive impact than to be frightened that inbreeding will increase the phenomenon. It can happens, yes, but if you use only variegated phenos … increasing the chaos and its unpredictability ^^
So beware, and change your priorities to adapt to the dark ages. I listen the argument of the one in the back of the room : “i prefer a variegated pheno that produce a good weed than a clean one that produce an average weed”. We don’t speak about the same subject. I’m talking about breeding, not selecting in one shot a mother plant to clone, for your blunts.
Last but not least, depression is not a question of length or of age of the work. You can directly generate depressed phenos the next generation with the reversal by example, and even more in using directly a S1. Something i will be forced to do soon enough, to show that it’s not a binary religion. Keep it for last resort solutions, and be prepared to handle it in selection with the right strategies. And clean the mess after you, the global genpool will thank you in bonus to have more accurate results the next steps.
I like to show these ones because it’s extremely rare to find someone that actually understand what it is, even if this person just passed a dozen of walls of text to explain you the life in advanced genetics with obviously zero experience on this matter ^^
To be fair, they are all polyploids experiments. And i will reveal you what it is in bonus ^^
- The first on left is two specimens perfectly joined and in symbiosis, coming from a double ovary phenomenon. An african landrace.
- The second is a male of 11 days from seed that is already flowering, he thrown pollen at 20. A simple skunk.
- The third is his sister, flowering as well at the seedling stage but at 25 days from seeds.
These experiments were done on high pressure IBLs, and on lines specifically prepared for this. And it’s not DNA engineering or whatever look cool, just traditional selection a while ago “that don’t see the code”, with the step inducing polyploidy just before.
This digression is necessary to explain that even with a top notch lab and sequencing behind, the game stay the same : you roll dices without really knowing what you will get exactly. And what will survive past the germination as well. At most you can reduce the spectrum of the material you use to generate mutants, to increase the chances that the subsequent mutations go in your sense.
But as breeder, you need reliable patterns to map and to use. And mutations just break them suddenly.
A lot of things can be done with mutants in very specific and advanced contexts, but this is also a waste of the genetics you’re using or even generate sometimes. It’s very important to make the difference.
Listing mutations is impossible, it’s virtually infinite. The genotype is using it to evolve when in front of a dead sentence in general, but also when an exogenous dynamic apply a strong influence on a DNA not planned to react.
It’s not always easy to detect at the start, but generally a mutant is quite triggered early. You will have weird shape generally linked by an obvious lack of vigor. The code is fucked, the plant have more useless informations than useful ones to grow or to handle its functions : the concept of waste apply to the DNA itself, so the cleaning in culling them ^^
The reverse happens also, even if much more rare, with extreme vigors and/or resistances. In this case it’s always interesting to map it to find the linked traits equally extremes, but also those extincted to permit this. Just in watching the sisters and the brothers of the freak, aside.
So even if the subject is a complicated matter and that it can lead to advanced manipulations, take the habit to clean your genetics from its waste. Mechanically it improve it (its potential), and in jumping in the breeding game you will have more than your share of mutants. You will be quite immune fast against the “it’s fun” or any FOMO syndrom.
Dang this one look quite hippie but i like it for the subject, with a mnemonic wink on fractals that is quite spot on i find for phyllotaxy.
For your concern, it’s quite easy and fast to present the equation. Not big deal. But if i do it directly, it’s an open door to bad interpretations with leveraged worries. At the point that you can cull specimens for the bad purpose.
Be patient, it’s not really hardcore to handle, and worth the ride to give you the keys of the safety. Before the simple, but very important, advice.
First you have to integrate in your mind something very important to read cannabis plants for breeding purpose : the leaves and their sequence are the infantry of its growth. The military metaphor is very important to get for your selective considerations.
Cannabis is not a mammal, there is no possibility to move to increase its survival chances. And anything threatening its force of inertia can be a death sentence. It’s constantly the war for them, and they use their DNA as a quite aggressive counter-mesures.
In red, the step A is the moment before engaging a lateral domination and to take the risk to get more photosynthesis : it’s the state when the solar panels are qualified “sessile”.
In yellow, the step B is the moment just after in the juvenile sequence. After have “checked the hostile ground” and when the plant engage the resources necessary to deal with more light. Its perimeter of action is growing. For this, the plant need to elongate a risky business : an exposed and fragile highway, an artery, to exchange vital stuff with a specific layer of the trunk. It’s the state when the solar panels are qualified “petiole”.
Even if the hormonal blend stay primitive at this stage, it’s already driving this dynamic. Each step i’m describing progressively in this section can be considered as the degree of maturity of the vegetative growth, until it’s enough complex to be ready to flower (naturally or artificially) and take the lead of another hormonal dynamism.
It’s quite strain-related, but if your young plant is tall and keep its leaves close to the trunk … she already try to tell you something ^^
This is the second sequence and the repetition of the first sequence in term of “military goals”. The plant test in real time if an exposure of its most important parts is a reliable strategy : the ones sexualized that will permit to spread the genotype. The ones that fill the blunts too, but don’t tell her ^^
The primary leaves are already using the DNA datas to reach their top productivity with photosynthesis. The efficient point. It’s not linear, among the nodes they have all their times and the function change among the age of the individual state.
Inefficient solar panel one day, efficient solar panel the next day and complex food tank the other day. The term “day” is relative, it’s not three days for each node lol even if at juvenile stage and with very vigorous lines it can be literally the case.
When the primary stems are on the path to the effiscience, what i call “secondaries” shoots appear at the intersection of the nodes. It’s in fact auxiliary meristems but stoners will find you pedant as fuck to use this term ^^. Find your way to bastardize botanic terms lol, whatever is the reason.
Keep it in mind to better respect what you’re seeing : it’s already at this stage 4 stems splitted in two functions. And already two bracts on each side announcing another critical function, a third one, the flowers. All of this in less than a half-centimeter space. This plant is just as beautiful than fascinating. And a very rich playground for freaks with a certain sense of the details ^^
Not my favorite expression of the secondaries, very much NLish, but enough ridiculous and lanky to picture well this incredible stage.
After all the stages during the war for survival and its micro-steps, all the secondaries become true individual plants. It’s mesmerizing for me. They are so much efficient at this stage that if your remove it from the trunk, the DNA will figure out how to make it fully autonomous in switching the residual hormones contained in the chunk. Beyond the cloning process, the magic.
But when the plants start to generate its own clones attached to the trunk, mostly on lower nodes, it’s also the time when the phyllotaxy change radically at the upper level. And that the apical meristem start to build and stack a structure that is in fact the backbone of what we call the “main cola”. The central bud, where the caviar of the plant is ^^
Why all these descriptions until now : to make you realize how important is the nodal game for the whole plant. And how much diversified priorities are attached to it. Then how strong in considerations is the sequence of the phyllotaxy itself, that also follow the same military tactic than a juvenile seedling.
Let’s just present quickly the expression itself in a simplified way, before throwing the final point.
If talking about auxiliary meristems make you pedant for stoners, needless to say that to qualify the phyllotaxy this way … you can give them the envy to burn you alive. Just the term phyllotaxy by the way lol
Still important for you in private to understand the right quality, i don’t throw it for the sake to look smart. Thank me later during your further researches, they are leads on themselves on various subjects.
And it’s an oversimplified version that concern only the conclusion and the trick that it represent really : the health of the plant.
When cannabis build its structure, mostly in veg, it have to use the “opposite” phyllotaxy. For an annual it’s important to optimize this stage to gain time and efficiency. It’s the also the sign that everything is fine.
When some parts are filled with high rate of hormones to be ready to flower, it’s switching to an alternate pattern. It concern both the upper side of the trunk and the secondaries.
The difficulty for the fresh meat is to recognize when this switch belong to a normal behavior on its supercharged lenght : good health
And to recognize when it’s way too soon to switch or when the length in question don’t have any reason to switch : bad health (genetic one, overall one, both at a time or one of the both cascading on the other).
Don’t worry, i’ve some photos to help a bit. But when you’re in front of the plants, it’s far more easy to catch when you know what to hunt.
Bad new on the two specimens, but at a different degree.
On left a specimen totally fucked that switched to alternate phyllotaxy almost directly, yelling at you “let me die”.
On right a specimen with a reduced problematic, almost a gentle warning. The problematic being the proximity with the first nodes (vertically counted from the soil).
I’ve never understood why it’s complicated to handle at first glance. It doesn’t matter if the plant show a weakness in front of a factor, or just express a weak DNA. Phyllotaxy is really a hard sign that something wrong happens and that the DNA can’t stand it. In a way or another, that’s not a reliable plant to reproduce.
On left, a specimen that feel good and show it with its phyllotaxy. Straight, just at the point before to switch globally (trunk/secondaries) in alternate phyllo.
In the middle a plant that just start to use the alternate phyllo on the higher nodes, then on right when it’s becoming full throttle to prepare the main bud formation.
The bonus : i told you that this plant is incredible right ? To flower she use various phyllotaxis that are not necessary the same from one strain to another. It don’t belong to health, it’s really a floral trait on its own.
@LemonadeJoe A pioneer is born tonight in term of wall of text.
