I think S1’s are technically sexual reproduction, since it’s done by forcing the plant to express as male via application of silver or rodelization. I think S1’s still generally aren’t good breeding material because, unless it’s a S1 of an IBL, it’s not going to be much more stable in terms of recessives than a F2… which is famously where the freaks come out to play.
I think so? Chapter 3 FSC-506 MSc.(Ag) Hort) Fruit Science Sub Breeding of Fruit Crops This is the closest thing I could find to a clear reference to clone degeneration that wasn’t about sci-fi, or other cannabis forums asking the same question. I was going to discuss it further, but it turned into another three pages and I figured it would be better not to hijack the thread too much.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that the “Blueberry” I got from that friend of a friend, after a decade of taking clones of clones, came out terribly for me. Northern Lights, fresh from seed and grown with the same techniques and equipment as the Blueberry, came out great.
According to that paper, mutations in clones are possible but unlikely; it does seem like it would take more than 20 crops or so to accumulate that many. That being said, every time a plant grows a new cell there’s a tiny chance for a mutation… but still, it’s more likely to happen from disease, and that’s probably what happened in my case. I don’t know what kind of growing environment he kept, I’ve never met the guy; but I’m fairly sure he did a lot of cloning. If he didn’t clean thoroughly even a few times, that’s a very simple explanation, much simpler than stacked mutations. Anyway, apparently it’s actually not 100% reliable even if you do have a clean room; without a clean room, it starts getting less reliable.
More proof that the real way to preserve genetics is to work them through line breeding to an inbred and consistent state. No small task by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems over and over like the best way to truly preserve something you love. The problem being, from what I can see, that the journey to that end has a million steps and any misstep along the way could ruin what you’re attempting to achieve. Probably why clone culture is so prominent and inbred seed lines are so hard to come by right?
This conversation is fitting for a little project I have in mind. Is there a technical definition for inbred line. How is it differentiated from taking a plant to whatever generation?
I have a plant I want to stabilize / replicate but am not sure what path to take. Current plan is throw darts and see what sticks.
Yeah I was thinking I’d self it and back cross it and see what’s closer for starters. I’m really pretty clueless about all this. Couple hours of research should set me straight though.
I’ve never heard a designated description (doesn’t mean there is’nt one) but I would assume you could consider a line “inbred” if you can identify a specific number of phenotypes that it’s seed would produce? Ideally there would only be one, but I would assume if you could reduce it to only 3-4 phenos overall you could comfortably call it inbred.
This is just me shooting from the hip here if someone knows better and I’m wrong please for the love of god correct me!!!
Depends what definition you’re using. In cannabis, it’s often considered an IBL at F6 or so, i.e:
That’s usually around F4-F6, at least obvious phenos. There are a lot more variations that we just don’t test for and thus can’t selectively breed for, I’m sure. For other forms of life… there’s a slightly more rigorous definition:
Not sure if this helps but I found it interesting. I’ve heard several times over that selfing is not the best option for breeding but I first came across the term Single Seed Descent recently from a post by Diggy Soze with a video he posted on cannabis breeding.
The relevant part of selfing to increase homozygosity starts at 1:39:25
Two weeks this thing should look pretty smokeable I wager. I’m not backing off my pink starburst nose…but I do detect a deep, latent sweet watermelon thing that I don’t recall from the seeded plant. Maybe I was just sniffing it less at this stage last go. Maybe it smells different sensi.
These buds are much denser than I was expecting. I guess that makes sense it did put out ~5500 seeds.
