Hey fellow Overgrowers, in my recent playing around with seed preservation/line working, Ive ran into a really interesting outcome. In short, Ive been playing around with doing seed reproduction of different numbers of the same populations, and have been finding once a seed line is pretty homogenous(F3-F5) it doesnt seem to matter much how many plants I use to repro them.
My main testing strain for it has been Snow Lotus. Ive popped 100+ seeds, keeping dozens of females and males for a true “open pollination”. But also did a repro with the exact seed stock, and only used 12 or 15 seeds. Then ran the 2 batches side by side, and there was 0 difference. Same amount of runts, same amount of great plants. If the tags didnt say what batch, there would have been no way of knowing.
Which brings me to my main question for others. Has anyone found any notable differences doing an open pollination on an already “inbred” line with a large population vs a small population? I know a lot of old heads like Tom Hill swear you gotta have a buttload of plants to not lose anything. Of course, Im not talking about F2s, or stuff with a lot of variation in the population. How many seeds are really needed to preserve a population with integrity? 10 seeds? 50 seeds? 100 seeds? Id love to hear folks experiences with it.
I would say with no experience of my own besides one time making seeds of Moroccan beldia with 4 individuals… I would say 20 is a good number. Some people would say more or less. I think the more, the better for preserving.
Bodhi said this about Watermelon hashplant (18 plants)
You can see it continue some here with 3 different breeders F2s.
and about a smaller BSHB repro
“this seed run was an open pollination of 4 males and 6 females, not alot, but enough to get the job done… a small population open pollination in a tent means your going to mostly the beans made from the first two males that opened… the super quick sativa pheno male… and the fat indica dom male… this line is called big sur holy bud to differentiate it from the big sur holy weed lines by hhf, danbo, and reeferman. everybody that has tried this line has fallin in love with it. im really happy to gift this back to the community. very limited, only 30 packs, then its up to you to make more!”
So also think about what you want as open pollinating means the faster ones get most of the pollen. The later ones which are sometimes more desirable for more cannabinoid production, would be far less of a percentage. You can also do multiple continuous pollinations with some year round sativas as they reflower. I’ve seen people here do that.
You have enough to open pollinate and run lines you select for also.
