After thinking about this more, I would think you would see other growth indicators beyond just switching sex or not. For example, if a plant produces an abnormal amount of gibbererellin it would also be very tall and lanky. The harder part will be finding a mutation that acts on only one hormone. Im not sure of a good indicator for those types of mutations though.
As far as I know outside of getting a lab test for parents and making choices from there or in cases of mendellian inheritance its not super easy. You can try your described technique, but I am not sure how well ot would work because Iām too unfamiliar with the method.
I really hate reading sentences like this as I feel it perpetuates and justifies bad breeding practices. Not saying you are doing so at all, but just putting it out there.
The plant is naturally dioecious. Separate males and females.
It is not naturally a hermaphrodite/monoecious.
Humanās have made the plant monoecious, and it requires due diligence to keep it that way.
It is known that the majority of our ādrugā lines have been interbred with monoecious hemp fiber/seed-food lines in the past. Hence the herms showing up in a bunch of lines today. Its not because it just grows that way, its because people fucked it up.
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Do i need to google for you and cite all the articles showing we have, on-purpose, for the last 300+ years, bred monoecious hemp varieties from dioecious landraces in order to gain better fiber production and/or seed-food lines? Articles showing the level of care needed to maintain those monoecious lines. This isnāt some conspiracy or me blaming here, this is facts.
How about the guy taking a drug line and crossing it to hemp just so he could have an ornamental cannabis plant in his garden in the early 1900s or late 1800ās?.. canāt remember off-hand which decade but I can dig that one out too. Here we go:
I understand what youāre saying but thats not completely true @HolyAngel
Cannabis was originally classified as dioecious but it has been a little controversial as both monoecious and hermaphrodite plants are found in natural populations. This implies the plants arenāt strictly dioecious and therefore intersex traits occur naturally.
They only occur in very small amounts, in every single paper i can find. The only true monoecious cannabis are all man-made. They all say the plant is naturally dioecious with male inflorescence only on males, and female inflorescence only on females, save for small percentages of herms in some lines. It takes finding the herms and breeding with them specifically to proliferate it into a more common appearance. Iād have to find the paper again but there was one saying if you took any monoecious hemp fiber line and stuck it in a field for 10 years, youād come back to find true males and true females and only a small population of herms. The plant overall, seems to naturally want to be separate.
I agree with you that the portion will be small, and I think this is just a difference of opinion based on how we look at the populations. My point of view is that if you have a population of cannabis you have intersex traits that occur naturally, even though at a small frequency. To me that makes intersex a natural population characteristic. It gets really complicated because of the sex chromosome inheritance in cannabis and environmental effects on phenotype. But I still think the traits are there; its believed the ancestral state of cannabis was monoeicious so I could see some of the traits still being around.
This convo reminds me a lot of the species concept, there are tons of different definitions of what a species is. @HolyAngel thanks for the great point!
Been growing it for over 10,000 years so humans have damn near always been involved. There might be some actually wild cannabis left in northern China but the rest is likely all cultivated at some point in itās lifetime.
Thereās more to readā¦ canāt find a single paper that says cannabis is naturally monoecious nor ever found naturally in large quantities outside of manmade lines.
Yeah I read that one earlier today. Hereās the actual link
It doesnāt actually talk about anything other than there not really being any testing like that done on monoecious cultivars or lines up until then, and then they test 4 of them. Nothing about lineage, rate of monoecity, etc. that would pertain to what we were talking about. Neat info tho!
In the original question I was inquiring if applying the primary hormones of the opposite sex for reversal could potentially have a use in selecting cultivars for reduced intersex traits?
-This question comes from the understanding that it is genes that are regulating the hormones that determine sex along with the observation that there is a range of how stable or intersex the plants are within a population.
it seems like this would be caused by genes that are regulating the respective hormones.
It sounds like there could be other genes aside from ones that regulate these hormones causing intersex traits.
There is the idea of selecting towards groups of associated traitsā¦ For example. Nevilās haze side does not have intersex Silk does. In theory sele ting towards Nevilās would work. It did in the Alpine 1.0. ~20% intersex to less than 1%
I reverse all males anyway to identify traits so it would not be an additional step for me to identify the most resistant male to the ethylone treatment.
I realize this is an imperfect or incomplete concept, but is there any potential merit to using these observations to reduce intersex traits in a desirable line or is it not useful at all?
It all pivots on the theory that A gene is putting out a degree of both hormones or insufficient amounts of the dominant one. A tool to identify the cultivars that are regulating hormones in clear distinct contrast?..
Another note on ethylone treatment. When I mis a beat in timing. Some will hold pistil production. Other will explosively and aggressively revert back to maleā¦I know my question could be answered with 3 yrs and 5k plants.
I am looking for logic to shoot from the hip. Assuming there is merit. What would be a logical systematic process of using hormone reversal on both male and female plants of a line?
I just saw this question was answered above. Thank you!! I will treat it out further if the opportunity presents. It will likely be one of numerous practices to help the Silk dominant ones if needed
Hermaphroditism in Marijuana (Cannabis sativa L.) Inflorescences ā Impact on Floral Morphology, Seed Formation, Progeny Sex Ratios, and Genetic Variation
That was a great paper! They saw hermaphrodite in 5-10% of all plants depending on cultivar, and that plants made in selfing from hermaphrodite plants vs outcrossed plants are essentially the same in terms of genetic diversity.
My argument to my posted paper not being relevant is that hermaphrodite (effectively monoiecious) plants are very commonly accepted as being naturally occurring in cannabis populations in the community I work in. Just because we refer to something as dioecious or monoecious or outcrossing or selfing doesnāt mean that is the plants only strategy or that plants that do one vs the other arent natural. Its an evolved trait seen in many plant species that helps to ensure reproduction and increases fitness.
It seems like we would be determining the best male itās resistance to ethylon treatment. We would determine the female relative to its resistance to gibberellin
Brilliant @StoneGuru. That would definitely be very useful.
Thanks for distilling the concept down!. It stands to reason that it would be a useful data point. The other factor to account for might be the line as a whole.
For example are the females displaying intersex traits because of the presence of gibberellin or because of a consistently lower ethylone
This could be learned at the same time and conditions of treating both sexes. The entire practice test and then running the resulting progeny to compare to the original population could be conducted in under a year with minimal resources.
There have been numerous times the star of the hunt also had the Intersex issue. Nigerian is a prime example of this.
It has been in play since the beginning and still wins awards and favor to this day. I hope my selections do not have this issue, but I am willing to go the distance on this project.
I was talking with Dwight Diotta, Nevilās lifelong friend. For those that donāt know he also holds and is working with the largest collection of Nevilās Outback Haze. The Holy Grail project and his final haze work.
He sent me this clip. This is the first cannabis seed add that Nevil ever ran. It was in '84. There you see. Nigerian was available before 5haze.
This little tiny clip is so significant. Itās where all of this began. If a 26 yr old Nevil hadnāt had the combination of good fortune to find the best genetics right out of the gate, the knowledge to develop them, the ambition to run with it and the balls to be an international seed merchantā¦none of this would have turned out this way.
This particular work is very significantā¦it really does go right back to the beginning of that journey.
Dwight is on LinkedIn for anyone interested in his ongoing work with Outback Haze
Ooh thatās an awesome find! Makes ya wonder what he mightāve used from those in some of the later work
I briefly had a pack of the outback haze that came in a fancy wooden container, but my buddy asked for them back so I sent them. Maybe one day in the not too far future Iāll get to run some
