Can anybody tell me a good way to get more familiar and more educated in basic breeding practices? Without starting in one long and complicated/dry book.
I’d like a good way to digest a bunch of entry level info and then move on from there.
I’m thinking of how I got into home brewing beer. I didn’t know anything about it except the tasting part. heh heh. A guy I befriended at a local pub was an IPA fanatic like me. His brother was home brewing. They were both older than me.
Well his brother died unexpectedly and one day he came to the bar and dropped a Home Brewing for Dummies in front of me. He wanted me to learn how, cause his wife didn’t want it at their place.
It was the best way for me to feel like I wanted to go further, and I did. But that book really put the curiosity in me, without much time invested in it, and after that I dove in hard and got on a forum and sought out all the info I could. I even started growing hops.
It was simple and mostly concepts and made it easy to know I wanted to learn more. Maybe a Breeding for Dummies… I hadn’t though of that until just now. Maybe I should check…
Start with non Cannabis plant breeding. Treasure trove of information there. Cannabis is filled more with “broscience” than with genuinely good information.
After I typed that I almost was going to say the same thing based on my limited knowledge.
I’ve been making seeds the easy way and haven’t even grown 99% of them yet. And, I’m not likely to get into serious breeding, but I love understanding things as much as I can. I haven’t tried on my own to learn it yet. Mostly get stuff from here but it usually leaves me with questions.
@nube recommended to me to look into corn breeding maybe start there. The idea with studying dog or corn breeding is to learn the concepts that can be used in cannabis breeding, not the exact science of cannabis breeding. It’s a framework that helps you understand how genes or traits are passed on.
I think the take away is to do what you are suggesting, while theoretically (maybe) possible, would be extraordinarily difficult and take selections through massive numbers of plants to actually achieve the results you are saying you want. It also would possibly be only part of the way there, never actually getting you all the way to where you want to go.
The way you are suggesting doing it, by crossing to a plant that shares very few or no traits with yours, rather than making your goal easier may make your goal significantly harder(see the post about what Chimera has to say for the why).
You would probably be better served to find a mate that shares some of the same traits you love in the sport you are trying to turn into a seed line. Better yet even if it has some traits that you think could improve your cut that you are trying to turn into seed.
If you want the exact same thing, or you want the easy way, clone it. That’s what that does. If you want to try to capture its best attributes, while maybe improving on some of its less desirable ones, breed it……but getting where you want to go likely won’t be an easy road unless all your desired traits are dominant.
Take all this with a shaker full of salt because I’m no breeder, just a nerd and gardener.
how true - one can breed changes in/out of a strain or if you REALLY like a spacific strain there are a few “admendents” one can use to bring out terpene’s/essential oils that you like or one to increase your yields
yes ! soil - using admendemts can help if not growing organicly ref: tricontional is a natural plant grow growth stimunlator which you can make by brewing alfala meall, kelp, huminc acid and enzymens or buy Mammonth P (24hr brew) one can’t change the erpenes but one might bw able to enhance a strain specific strain profile (Terpinator (in flower only)for terpens increase, essential oils and purpinator ( last 4 weeks of flower) for added color) +oils sorry go going off subject matter (ref Blu-Tri)
. Prolly more straightforward and good money lol…