As a breeder what is you method to your madness what specific trait or step is your desirse we all have a area we take pride in the grow do you work with the male molding him into a desired stud or do you select a female thats the desired fit and finish for a capable male.theres more then one way to skin a cat as they say. I myself like to experiment some people have a goal in mind while others see what happens.
as a mostly outdoor grower I made a cross this year a
-golden touch(chernobyl ‘golden ticket cut’ x king midas) x raw and sour '(sour grapes x (mendo purp x (sfv x gg4)
My intentions with this cross was to get some of the short squaty flexible raw and sour to combat the rigid golden touch that does not like to be trained so during a storm I dont have to worry about limbs snapping
That the lemon lime the golden touch has will pair well with the raw and sour gassy berry taste mmm
I’m a pollen chucker through and through lol.
Honestly the closest I’ve ever came to “breeding” is the few seed runs I’ve done, or as they’re called here preservations.
But thanks to Sebring I will be getting some STS to play with so now I’ll be able to cross different girls I like with each other and see what happens.
But when you only have like 14sq/ft total grow space to play with not really possible to do any kind of real breeding.
Not sure if this is the response your looking for but here goes.
Like @J-Icky, I am a pollen chucker, but I do have some philosophy’s regarding the art of breeding. At the top of that list is the ideal of only using XX females. These are pure female plants that will not herm under stress. Basically they dont contain the “Y” gene, hence “XX” . These plants will only produce male flowers if treated with chemicals. Starting out with xx females of dank strains is the foundation. Very few, if any breeders nowadays dig through lines deep enough to find xx females that also contain traits they are looking for. Research has shown that xx females occur approximately 1 in 1000 seeds, certainly not impossible odds, obviously finding one will require either luck or lots of popped beans.
I also think that vetting males thoroughly is the hallmark of quality breeder. Making and testing crosses before releasing them. Stressing those males to see if they herm, noticing if the males traits are dominant or recessive. This takes time, alot of time !
Personally I try to avoid fems or selfed generations if possible since they contain the “Y” gene. I do have some S seeds in my collection, but wouldnt breed them directly, I would instead use them in backcrosses that would be selectively bred. I have never “reversed” a plant myself and am not against it. However, again I would use the pollen in several bx before using the progeny to breed. A great example of this is the work of @Tonygreen. He has a great thread on here. He has worked the Gorilla Glue line more than anyone, and has managed to stabilize (breed out) the herm tendancies that the strain originally had. His contributions to the community are priceless.
I agree with you the fact that there are several different approaches to breeding. Personally, I love the journey and adventure of making and discovering new genotypes and phenotypes. Every seed is exciting ! Like a box of chocolates. lol !
@Tonygreen has made some magic for sure. Those RILs are amazing!!!
This is a very interesting topic. I will have to agree with many of the folks here that align as pollen chuckers - very few folks globally actually “breeding” even your favorite “breeders”. I think the key criteria that separate breeders and chuckers is genetic testing IMO. Without an understanding of the complete genotype specifically, everything else is merely an observation or simply phenotyping ( the combination of environmental condition and the underlying genetic material). Without the complete genetic makeup of the plant, it is very difficult if not impossible to know what alleles you are actually working with, what recessive traits are hidden due to epigenetics and whether you had a homozygous foundation to make said assumptions on anyways.
Another thing to mention is genetic degradation. Short of running a huge number of plants (2000+) it is very unlikely that you have a complete reflection of the genetics and therefore moving that lineage forward with only a percentage of the genetic material inherently available within the current lineage aka genetic gradation. Continuing down this path may eventually lead to a higher probability of the traits you hoped to isolate in it’s offspring however if these were not the strongest reflections of the cultivars to begin with further work beyond the initial test cross could merely mute potentially key components of the cultivar/cross moving forward.
So how do we as hobby growers without the lab equipment or resources for genetic testing do? Do as cannabis breeders have forever - phenotype, backcross and or recessive in line breeding, not just cross everything we can, be selective and run many many runs to see as many of the expressions as you can before making fast decisions and test the crap out of you crosses or be straight up with people saying this is just a test cross, here is what lineage information I have on the cultivar’s parents, I ran X amount of plants and found this…
There are so many “breeders” out there that are in it for the cash not for the purity of the strains they produce/promote which is why we lose more and more cultivars due to genetic degradation every day. Finding anything homozygous is proving tough for those who do have the time money and resources to breed scientifically as modern cannabis is nearly all heterozygous after years of genetic sequencing of strains that we as growers have all accepted as stable making it X cultivar, when in fact on a genetic level it is a total crapshoot as the approach that cannabis breeders have taking for thousands of years has really muddied the water.
Working a line is the best thing you can do for cannabis and I applaud folks like @Tonygreen that have the stamina and logic to make improvements to a cultivar through the traditional means. I also love seeing folks experimenting and sharing I just wish we had better tools to determine what exactly we are doing as pollen chuckers
Sounds interesting…
Say what? What research? Cannabis is normally XX and XY, females don’t have Ys. Here is a post with info about Cannabis sex.
Dude good looking out. Great find
Because things weren’t complicated enough without the maths. Cannabis plants have at least 5 genders. Lol
https://www.hempbasics.com/hhusb/hh4bot.htm#HH45
It also says the F1 cross of a female and a monoecious will produce femmed seeds; hence the belief that feminizing causes hermies. It apparently does, under very specific conditions.
Wow. Thats a great chart
I believe that cannabis is mostly XY. The XX are pretty rare, approximately 1 in 1000 plants. Good article you linked. I like to learn from as many sources as possible. Ive not read one or two books on the subject, but dozens. Ive read not several articles and posts on forums, but thousands of hours on many many different boards/forums. Its always interesting seeing folks that are learning come through after reading like 1 book and 1 article and try to school the whole community. I love it !
Cannabis is XX-female/XY-male, with other (probably autosomal) genes also involved in sex determination, with more than a single locus causing intersexuality. Hence the heritable degrees of intersexuality. The genes to make the male flowers probably are not even on the sex chromosomes.
Sex determination in Cannabis is X/autosome copy dependant. In this sense, the Y really represents the lack of two XXs to a diploid Cannabis plant. This is homologous to hops sexual determination.
Has anyone try selfing half of a plant with CS or STS so only half of a female plant herms leaving the other half of the plant to reciprocate?
I do that all the time. It is the best way to self an auto.
I see people say you need to cut a clone, and reverse that onto a separate clone, but have never heard good reasoning as to why.