I want to talk about how to correctly label seeds. I notice a lot of breeders are mixing up the placement of the parental lineage. Female side of the cross always goes first, then the pollen donor, and so on. Like if Northern Lights is the mother and Haze is the father you write it like this.
NL x Haze. Not Haze x NL. It should always be like that even when you’re writing out a long label with many different strain names all together. If you’re labeling the male side of a cross then you would still write the mother of that male first. It’s very simple once you understand the placement. I see it happening all the time even with established well known breeders. It upsets me so much that I don’t buy beans labeled like that. I totally cut out some breeders that do this. I know it’s a small thing but I feel like if they can’t get that right I don’t have much hope for their genetics.
Another thing that is starting to get my attention is the use of F to describe a pure landrace or pure old heirloom variety. To me F1 is the first generation of a hybrid cross and every generation after until about the 9th is F. But after that it should be considered a P pure variety now. In a similar class as heirloom and landrace at that point. So why would we label a pure landrace or heirloom crossed to itself F1 or F2? Seems like P1, P2 or something else would be a better way of writing it.
I appreciate your irritation but I write out these words extremely often and I will resort to whatever shorthand I wish to make my life easier.
What is easier to the breeder isn’t always the most accurate description for everyone else
I feel pretty close to the same way. Maybe not about the not growing them out or buying them part, but yeah. Certain breeders you just have to know that that’s how they do things, because everyone else is doing female first, male second. Nevil was bad about placing male first in some lineage’s. He himself wrote it in the Seed Bank Catalog as Haze x NL5 when that was Haze was a male (A or C) and that NL5 was his clone only female. Then other breeders perpetuated his naming of those crosses.
I feel you, there should be a labeling way that should be followed especially for new growers it can confuse the f out of things when they are attempting to breed. I have always been taught to label true Landrace as L1/2/3/4 whatever, and Heirloom the same but with an H but I’ve since abandoned this concept as it confuses people. But now that I’m back to full on breeding mode I may take up that method again and just explain when used in parantheses
I was raised to go by “ladies first” so I find it a no brainer to remember.
I’m indifferent to the placement so long as accurate lineage, sex, and provenance is clearly and adequately noted for whatever varieties are in the pedigree. Much love
For landrace/heirloom strains, I’m not entirely sure I see the point in L1,2,3/H1,2,3; they might be the first, second, or third generation you’ve grown out, but theoretically they’ve been undergoing open pollination for years, so the seeds that are “L1” to us are L20/30/40/etc in terms of how many generations of open pollination they’ve undergone.
But for my personal increases it’s very important to keep track to distinguish, I have strains I’ve already done adages on 3 times over the last 20 years so it’s definitely necessary for my breeding program especially as I’m working with others as well.
I would think there shouldn’t be much difference between the L1 and L2s. Your first open pollination being the 21st round isn’t likely to change the strain much after the first 20 rounds of open pollination, in the wild, and if you perform some selection of individual plants for mating, a filial cross (F1/2/3) seems more appropriate as a label.
I think we need another way to describe every outcross or in-cross as an F. At the very least something to differentiate between a hybrid cross and an inbred line. If I just go out into the bush and grab some wild plants. Grow them at home and make seeds. Those can now be called F1’s? I like the H, L, and P options but if it’s just a few people doing it. That could be confusing as well.
To each their own, being taught this way over 20 years ago and practicing it since in our circle it’s definitely not gonna change. If I knew previous adages/repros perhaps but who TF knows so we keep track on our own and pass that knowledge on to others if shared.
Ya the F has become very widely used and can become confusing to some. It would be cool if there’s was one universal language but even some of the best mislabel or have in the past…… that’s why I always try and document any additional steps in any breeding I do and even add anecdotal observations as well of each line and their traits. I’m a documentation DIE-HARD. I have boxes and boxes of books /notebooks /binders etc. and my little pocket books that go everywhere with me. Just my way but it’s proven to be extremely helpful more times than I can count.
F does have a specific meaning, though, any two parents that are genetically different (they don’t have sibling or parent relationships to each other) are your parent strains P1/P2, their offspring is the F1, and anything called an F2 should be a filial cross, e.g. both the mother and father of an F2 strain should be F1s with the exact same parents P1/P2. F3s should be the offspring of F2s with the same exact selections of F1s as their parents. People just get loose with terminology, but filial crosses are well-defined because of conventional plant breeding.
In any case I would definitely not use P1, P2, etc. to describe an inbred line because that’s a notation used for parents in plant genetics:
I agree with you if you are gifting and/or trading, but if your business is selling seeds and I’m spending money, I prefer detailed, accurate descriptions.
The idea is to be as accurate as possible without having to take up a huge space on the label or strain description. As a breeder it’s very important for me to know what the sex of the parents were. If I’m acquiring new hybrid varieties It will make the difference between using the genetics or not for me. I think P is better used for parents too. Some people still use P as pure so it’s something to be aware of. And then there’s the odd breeder doing their own thing like the guy from Colorado Sativas calling his regular crosses S1’s. I actually don’t mind that because he explains his labeling system up front and it’s not an issue for me. I would however change it back to the standard labeling if I ever reproduce his work. I’m a very detail oriented person and I think it’s important to document as much as we can for future breeding purposes.
Would anyone here pay $350 for a fem 13 pack of these? This is the only description. I scribbled out the breeder because I don’t want to single anyone out, but how is this good business? I don’t have any idea what either of those parents are and it’s not my job to research them. There isn’t even a picture!
It’s like someone trying selling me a computer with no information on processor speed, RAM size, hard drive capacity, etc. It’s mind boggling.
It instantly makes me worry about being scammed. Or I feel like I’m not in the club and should already know what those strains are. More often than not it sends me searching the internet for info on the parents. Usually about a 50/50 chance I can even find out accurate info about it. What a joke
If you research the breeder (which I did) you realize he is reputable and probably known for absolute fire. The issue I have is he is not making any effort to win my business. When you sell clones for $10,000 each, a seed business is probably pocket change, but the arrogance and price annoy me. The Dutch do a way better job of marketing in my humble opinion. The old Dutch adage was “Guaranteed to find a keeper in every pack.” Granted, that can probably be said about most crosses, but it gave you a warm fuzzy.
I’m guessing compound because of the Pavé? That’s more than I’m willing to pay for seeds so I’d never buy that pack, but I sympathize with the sentiment that some breeders build up such a name/reputation that people will buy seeds off nothing more than Instagram shots and the assurance that everything the breeder makes is “
” or whatever.