I don’t mean to hijack your thread, but I had a question in another thread that didn’t get answered and it seems related to what you are doing.
Are there varieties that are know to be good for raising THC in what you cross them with? Or is any old high THC variety good enough. Just concerned that some varieties may dominate a cross. Or is this question just not answerable because of all the unknown variables?
If a strain gives it crazy looks, but doesnt make any difference on the effects I will still leave it bred in. It brings me peace, and joy to work with beautiful plants which is enough of a reason for me to leave it bred in.
Give me a second I have to read it slowly. I just got done with two bowls of OG SD & two bowls of Blue Diesel lol
That is outside my personal skill level/knowledge. I am just using strains I’ve personally grown at least twice, and I know bring me a certain level of relief.
I think the simplest answer is that it is impossible for an outcross to alter a specific trait like thc content in a targeted way. An outcross will change every variable. Even dominant traits will be expressed somewhat differently in a hybrid outcross.
If you want to increase thc while maintaining consistency or avoiding unexpected changes, your best option is selective breeding within a line. Of course, inbreeding selectively will also change the range of phenotypical expressions present in the line. But if you wanted to retain the same effect while increasing thc, your best bet would be to select and breed within the line using the individuals that display the highest thc content.
concerned that some varieties may dominate a cross. Or is this question just not answerable because of all the unknown variables?
There are a lot of variables, and that is definitely one of the potential outcomes that you might find.
For home scale breeding, I think of it more as an artistic endeavor. @middleman
Even if we applied scientific method to our projects, it wouldn’t make much difference unless you had a huge plant count, and the observational tools and staff needed to track traits down multiple generations and keep detailed notations.
and to make full use of that information, you would probably have to retain backups of all the mothers and fathers so that you could use them to reinforce dominant traits or bring out double recessive traits.
This is basically what a commercial plant breeding program looks like in the horticulture or agriculture industry.
There are not many people applying these methods to cannabis at this point. Gooeybreeder would probably be the best example within the community.
I think projects of this scale are becoming more common now that the cbd industry is taking off, and now that corporations have access to legal markets in multiple countries. I have read about massive scale corporate breeding programs in some of the latin american countries that have legalized.
It sounds like your saying, home scale breeding is not meaningful, because of this higher level that is possible, yet you say almost nobody is doing it yet anyway? We can compete with the current seeds being sold at astronomical prices. That’s all we need at this point.
There will be bigger outfits as time goes by, but its not always so great. Hybrids, patents, gmos. There’s always gonna be craft cannabis varieties. We just need to be conscious of our short comings, which are plant counts and inbreeding. Sea of green style gets your count up, and you get a good look at bud structure/quality to see whos worth keeping. Obviously you dont get a full look at a regular full plant that run, but I am thinking its worth it for the extra numbers. If you dont have space for tons of clones just reveg stuff. It wouldn’t take a ton of space to make an inbred line for hybrids either.
I think everyone who has the slightest inclination to try breeding should jump in with both feet. Its fun.
@zephyr thanks for taking the time to expound. I appreciate it.
I have a space for the clones, and the breeding I will be running it all in a SOG.
As far as plant count, and size.
Yes I am using a small tent at the moment. I am in a rental. We sold our house, and are waiting for the insanity to die down on building supplies so we can have our new house built on our property in the country. Which includes a multi car workshop that will be just for growing cannabis.
I think the point about home breeding is to choose the recessive traits you want to stabilize carefully, because you won’t be able to do more than 1 or 2 very easily.
Almost no seeds being sold at astronomical prices are really being “bred” by hardly any definition of the word. Cannabis plants can reproduce in nature, capable of making thousands of seeds on their own without breeding. Farmers can grow their cannabis fields for decades, collecting seeds from the best plants without breeding.
I have only seen a handful of examples of what I would consider breeding. The first is making new autoflowers when starting from a photoperiod plant. This requires a minimum of 2 generations to accomplish. However, it’s much easier not to breed them by just crossing two parents that already have the autoflowering trait. The second is hemp, where THC resins are bred out. The third is color traits, and the last is leaf mutations.
There’s plenty of good seeds available for purchase, but I think it’s a mistake to equate breeding with just producing good F1s or polyhybrids. You can intentionally breed strains without resin, and nobody will want them – but that’s still breeding. You can cross two plants and just accept whatever dominant traits they exhibit and get great results – but that’s not breeding.
The important qualities of a good seed vendor are the same as vendors of any product, which is knowledge of what your customer wants (whether it’s you or broader audiences), the basic resources to accomplish it, and by far the most important thing is commitment to quality control. The most successful people selling seeds right now know how to manufacture. They may also know about breeding, but being a good manufacturer and a good breeder are not one in the same. It is not necessary to do any breeding at all to sell into the seed market and have happy customers.
I would say that there is an abundance of people selling in the seed market now that are also not good/rigorous at manufacturing. Because of this, it leaves a lot of people wondering why they should pay someone for seeds at all. What exactly do they do that warrants their price? Good clones are a dime a dozen now. I can drive 30 minutes, spend a few c-notes and come home with a trunk of elites. In 3 months, I could make more seeds from those than I can grow in my lifetime. Most of the seed business is just an artifact of this quasi-legalization.
I don’t know how you interpreted that from my post. I said home scale breeding is an artistic endeavor.
I’m subscribing to this thread because i’m trying to learn about which genotypes or phenotypes are most effective for pain.
So far it seems two definite ones are
OG Kush
Bubba Kush
so it makes me think that maybe the Indicas from Hindu Kush might be good for pain. Also makes sense because some of the Hindu Kush phenotypes can paralyze you such that your muscles will not move for a couple hours at least
not high in thc (depending on selection) but for everything else. deep chunk.