I’ve tried to search for the answer, and I’m sure it’s out there, but it just seems easier to ask here:
Can plants grown from feminized seed be reversed to produce viable “female” pollen?
I don’t know exactly what is going on genetically when a female produces pollen and then pollinates another female to produce feminized seeds. Are they exactly the same as seeds that were produced by a male pollinated plant that happen to be female? Does my question even make sense?
Just wondering if there is some kind of genetic degradation if feminized seeds are then used to produce pollen.
You spray female plants with colloidal silver or STS to force them to create female pollen which can than be used to create feminine seeds. Search for either of those things and you fill find many threads to read on the subject.
Yes you can create more fem seeds form an already feminized plant.
The success of those seeds (mainly are they hermie or not) will depend on the female you reversed. If you’re just learning and starting out, nothing wrong with experimenting. The better your female the more likely you’ll have better offspring.
They will not be the same as using a male plant. Fems only have one set of chromosomes (XX). They also will not be a carbon copy of the plant you reverse (like a clone would be).
I think what he was trying to ask, was if the pollen from a reversed female grown from fem seed is the same as pollen from a reversed female grown from reg seed.
Not the pollen, but the seed itself. Is a seed that was produced from a feminized cross (which will grow into a female plant) the same as a seed that was produced normally (male x female) that will ultimately grow into a female plant. Difference being that we know in advance when it is a feminized seed.
Eventually I’ll be going down several F generations of fem breeding. some say there will be something missing from feminized pollen dna, other say it’ll be a tool to help stabilize a line faster instead of introducing males that may add more variation since you don’t really know what the males are like as far as smoke goes.
There could be a loss of hybrid vigour when inbreeding/selfing. Seems like it would be more over several generations though. So if you kept breeding that line, but I don’t think you’d notice a major difference in one or two generations.
The main difference you might notice on the first or second breeding would be the difference in what the male passes on versus what the female passes on.
I guess you could say what it boils down to, is how those fem seeds were created and the parents involved. I’ve only ever reversed reg females and crossed them to reg females. Ideally, you want to run a strain at least once before reversing, to test and see how they perform.
I would say reversing a highly stable reg female and pollinating a stable reg female would produce the best results, imo.
That said, reversing a fem female, and using that pollen on another fem female, will indeed produce fem seed. It’s been done, but I too worry about what’s going on at the genetic level, especially with multi generation fem breeding.
My thoughts were to do this on purchased feminized seeds that were (highly?) stabilized just to be able to create a handful more of feminized seeds. Nothing long term and no breeding project in mind. I’m a beekeeper, and the way drones are produced is pretty mind-boggling (no father), so it got me wondering about the dna makeup involved in “female” pollen.
Anyway, with the info in all the replies, I’m comfortable trying it for my purposes.
though to further questions typically your first gen will have the most similar offspring to the plants you used, once you start going past that first gen then differences and phenos start popping out and it will be up to you to select what you want.
Now all that being said, if it has any hermie genes, albeit hidden and not expressed in the generation your using, by recrossing these same genes you have more of a chance of it expressing. So keep your eyes open on successive generations if you do try it.
So many breeders and clone purveyors say they have stable genes. But if it will hermie from a small light leak, or temp fluctuations, humidity levels or root zone moisture level. Its not stable. Truly stable will only express male flowers via a chemical input.
So, if I understand correctly: the genotype of a plant grown from a feminized seed may not have intersex genes (or it may). It all depends on which genes it got from the two female parents.
In any event, the answer to my question about whether a feminized seed is genetically made up the same as a normally produced seed, seems to be “yes”. It is diploid with the sex chromosomes both being “X”.
By the way, do you have the rest of that article? Or is it from a book?
Half the “elite clones” out there are selfed plants from selfed plants, should be fine. I’m a proponent of regular male/female breeding but it isn’t “wrong” to make seeds how you see fit.
Might have some issues with low vigor, undesirable expressions, or stamens, but then again, you might not.
The further “out” you go with inbreeding/selfing/feminizing, the harder it is to make viable seed, fertility is often reduced.
