There is so much ignorance and superstition surrounding this subject, and the plant in general, that comes out in every cannabis thread. Let’s see if we can end this argument once and for good.
I am a small time breeder working my lines, using standard males and females. My mentality is and always has been about ‘doing it right.’ My goal is to breed slowly and carefully over time, using mostly traditional breeding techniques, to gradually arrive at something ‘locked in’ and stabilized. So this is not some half-ass hack posting this thread and these opinions.
I’ve read countless threads over the years on various forums like ICMag and now OG with people screaming to high heaven about the state of the seed market, with all these pollen chuckers just crossing two random elites and releasing the seeds for $20 a seed. Lots of bitching about hermies, weak and runty plants, etc.
Furthermore the same unscrupulous, self-identifying ‘breeders’ have long been using and abusing CS/STS, and before that was discovered, they were purposely stressing females to cause them to herm and self, resulting in hermie-prone ‘feminized’ offspring.
What people need to understand here is that the problem isn’t feminization per se, it’s that’s there’s so much money (or potential money) in this market that it’s drawn out all the hipster douchebags from the woodwork like cockroaches, in the hopes of grabbing up every dollar they can get their hands on. They all have the same selfish, short-sighted, greedy mentality, with the goal of making money above all else, so they use and abuse any tool or method to put some overhyped junk on the market as quickly as possible.
The common person is unfortunately a total idiot (as the last 2+ years should have proved to anyone, if they was ever any doubt) who has essentially been thrown like a lamb to the wolves into a market that is absolutely FLOODED with these half-assed hipster ‘breeders’, along with the supposedly ‘reputable’ publications which knowingly promote their junk in exchange for their cut of the loot, so it should be no surprise the seed market has essentially become a roach motel of scammers pawning off their hypetrain wares to easy marks, with actual reputable breeders and growers existing over in the margins.
This disgusting state of the market is NOT due to feminization. It’s not due to backcrossing or inbreeding or anything like that either. It’s due to greed and stupidity, plain and simple.
Feminization, backcrossing, etc, are nothing more than TOOLS. Just like any other tool, it can be overused and abused. The skill of the breeder (or other skilled craftsman) comes from using each tool in its proper place, where it’s needed and helpful, and no more. Just as you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to hammer a nail or a hammer to turn a screw, each technique should be used conservatively and in its proper place.
Although I haven’t done any feminization work myself just yet, I do have two silver dollars and a wall wart set aside to create a CS generator for the purpose, when the time comes.
Feminization is a very powerful tool. There is a reason the market for feminized seeds is so big–because they are useful to the end user, whether it’s a small tent/closet grower, a big time commercial grower, or just a noob looking to get started. There are many times I would have liked to have a few hundred feminized seeds that I could sprout in a field somewhere and get a guaranteed uniform sinsemilla crop.
One thing to understand about the cannabis plant is that the sex is NOT determined by X/Y chromosomes, as it is in humans. The evidence should be clear by now that the plant is born sexless, and chooses its sex as it reaches sexual maturity, based on genetic and environmental factors. More stressful conditions are known to produce more males, for example. If a plant turns female, it’s because it’s genetically predisposed to become a female under the given environmental conditions; but one might very well grow the same exact plant under different conditions and get a male instead, or vice versa.
This explains why one can get males from a feminized cross, for example. It might have been two female phenotypes that were crossed and the resulting offspring may have a very high percentage of females, but the genotype of the chosen mothers could be such that under the right conditions, the resulting offspring may choose to be male instead, just as they normally would in seeds from a standard M-F mating.
In order to guarantee all females in feminized offspring, one would really need to use multiple reversed females as pollen donors and/or different females as pollen receptors, and test the offspring of each cross under various stressful conditions to see what comes out. The legions of hipster pollen chuckers won’t do this, of course.
Another factor is selfing, which can ‘cause’ hermaphoditism simply because that is a recessive trait which may lay dormant under the surface, and both dominant and recessive traits tend to be multiplied by the selfing process, so selfing may cause hermies to appear in the offspring for that reason alone. If on the other hand you’re using mothers for your feminized/selfed seed which are highly resistant or immune to hermaphoditism, you should expect that stability to pass along to the selfed seeds.
The foundation of my own breeding program is a strain from southwest Afghanistan called Lashkar Gah, imported in about 2006 by Philip Hague aka Tierra Rojo. The “Durand project 2020” PDF that’s been uploaded here is a good read which gives some insight into what’s growing in that area and the traditional breeding processes used. My strain closely resembles the ‘narrow leaf’ plants shown in that PDF and is no doubt related.
I started by outcrossing two males of this strain to various ‘elite’ cuts, many of which were prone to hermaphroditism, and I’ve continued to cross in more hermie-prone elites to the resulting offspring from time to time, while working out lines via open pollination every year. All of this time, having grown out thousands of seeds of these various crosses over generations, I haven’t yet seen the first female hermie appear. Not the first nanner anywhere, despite the fact that I never baby anything and am always stressing plants in different ways.
There have only been three hermies at all, and they were all three males which turned female. These were culled early and not allowed to pollinate anything.
One of these clones crossed to LG was a feminized version of pre-2010 Serious Seeds Bubblegum that I got from a three pack of freebie seed from marijuana-seeds.nl. I seem to recall that clone would hermie a little bit under stressful conditions, but its offspring via LG simply do not. Seemingly the only lasting legacy the feminized genetics left behind is the F1 generation of this cross had a very high percentage of females, and some of the descendent lines have relatively high female percentage also; 72% is the highest I’ve seen in a recent generation of a line I’m working now, although most are more like 60-65%.
With this experience, it seems clear the hermie trait can be easily bred out of a population over time by crossing with the right genetics and working the line via open pollination. The cannabis gene pool as a whole is NOT being wrecked by hermie genetics.
On another note, it’s important to keep in mind that hermaphroditism is a survival trait for the plant. It is mankind who wants dioecious, seedless female cannabis, for his own vain reasons, not the plant. Don’t confuse mankind’s desires and aspirations for what is actually good for the plant, or for the planet.
I’ve also read a lot of “sky is falling” type posts claiming that all of the old cannabis strains are disappearing everywhere in the world. This is bullshit on so many levels.
In the first place, cannabis is an ever-changing plant. It never remains the same from generation to generation. All cannabis populations are genetically drifting over time. All of these landraces that you are bemoaning the loss of were never “pure” to begin with! This purity you seek is a myth; it never existed. Every cannabis plant on earth is a poly-hybrid with all sorts of genetics mixed in, and being mixed in. That’s how it became the #1 most genetically diverse cultivated plant on the planet.
Just look at the Durand Project PDF and see how these farmers are often traveling to different places and bringing back different seeds to mix in with their crop. This is natural and normal; it does nothing but improve the gene pool over time. This is exactly what breeders are supposed to be doing, to make their genetic population as healthy and robust as possible. Cross the seeds, then select the best and reject the rest, generation after generation.
In every part of the world and in every country you have a large number of people who are always going along with whatever the herd is doing, with the prime focus being just making a living from year to year. If the market demands X then a large number of growers will switch to X. But there are always old codgers and conservative types back in the hills who will continue growing and breeding the old genetics. If those guys switch to different genetics then it’s only because the new gear is truly better. If some old cut or seeds are worth keeping, then it will be kept and preserved by these types. Nothing is being lost that will harm the cannabis gene pool at large.
Furthermore just because you or your crew may not personally have access to a certain strain doesn’t mean it’s actually “lost.” Different circles keep different things in different places. Focus on preserving whatever you want to preserve in your own circle and don’t worry about what’s going on in rural Afghanistan; trust me, they got their game on lock, and no hermie feminized genetics from DudeBro Breeding Co. are going to be found there or anywhere other than the overhyped Western market, which is way less important than it believes itself to be.
In conclusion: There is nothing wrong with feminized seeds, and the sky isn’t falling.
Now when it comes to the Lucifer-worshipping types who would very much like to patent and control everything and bring the entire world under their lock and key, that is a different matter entirely. That’s the actual serious threat we face. Those psychopaths need a good strong dose of Natural Selection to cure what ails them.
EDIT: No idea why some fool decided to flag and hide this post.
