That’s what I’m getting at with the birds of paradise example though: the females are completely un-extraordinary yet they produce males with incredibly vibrant colors, plumage, and mating rituals. This is a result of generation after generation of selective pressure being applied only to the males. The cannabis parallel would be the best and only the best flowers of each generation receiving pollen from as many males as possible, some outstanding but not absolutely best flowers receiving some pollination, and the least attractive flowers being discarded.
Does it matter what the males look like if all you eat are the females?
You can negate the male entirely and that is easier. Verdict still out on stability. And your stuck with no way to make future seeds without chemicals or outcrossing.
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I don’t think applying a selective pressure on the males as much as we do the females, somehow negates the heavy selecting we’re still doing on the females.
Just have a reason for each plant being there besides 
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You have to select good males to produce good plants! Thats a fact, you cant leave the aspect of 50% of the dna to a wildcard! You have to test your males and you have to test your females. You all just want to take short cuts and trying to get it to work in your head. Well there is a short cut… STS… But this leaves you without males. So If you want males in the offspring and you want to improve the line, you cant neglect 50% of the dna you are working with!
Pz 
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That was unnecessary and rude…
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It’s possible that there’s little impact, but considering how much of the genetic material is shared between males and females, I would bet my money that losing vast amount of information carried by males, early in a breeding program, will have negative effects on females in future generations.
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Yes it will. For every generation you have to do testing for both females and males. Best way of doing this is to take clones of the best females and select your favorite males and take clones of these while also collecting pollen. Test each male on each female and go throu the those seeds to move forward. If you want to make more seeds of a certin combination you got backups and If you like the outcome of multiple pairings you can incross them. This is a time consuming task, thats why people who do this earn my Respect and people who does elite x elite doesnt…
Pz
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Once again I’m going to swim against the current and claim males serve an important and essential, yet unknown, purpose. Something with this gynocentrist ideology doesn’t sit well with me. 
Plus, cannabis evolved from monoecy to dioecy in a sort of fitness move. There must be a reason.
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Yes, you are right once again 
The absolutly biggest advantage is that there is little to none self pollination. Cannabis is notorious for quick inbreeding and without female/male flowers the whole species would be extinct by now. In nature this is a vital function of the plant but in human hands, not so much.
Pz
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Have to disagree with you here. The males purpose is to pollinate females and insure continued evolution within the species, simple as that. Just like nature 
Look at many spider species where the female eats the male after the duty is done… you think males would do that if they weren’t compelled by nature? They have to mate to continue their species, even if after they die. It’s pretty much the same with cannabis except the female isn’t carnivorous! She just accepts his pollen and uses her powers to create new life, the way nature intended.
Like you, I think males serve a very important role in the future of cannabis plants. I think there will be a day and age where all these feminized lines are going to cause problems in the future with genetics, as the absence of male chromosomes will show over time.
The reason is, evolution baby! That’s my two cents anyways… stickin’ to it. 
Hibernate, consummate
Man was made to procreate
My estate, generates
As if my family name was Gates
Mind over mayhem, no mistakes
Lift some weights, eat some steaks
-Xzibit
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Males purpose in cannabis is to prevent selfing. That is pretty much their only role and it have nothing todo with spiders or how birds do their business. Cannabis dna is sensitive to inbreeding so the dioecy plants thrive while the monoecy cannabis plants died because they couldnt compete with other cultivars. Its quite simple. We also know that there are just a handfull of genes thats responsable for dioecy. A monoecy crop wouldnt require alot of mutations to switch.
Pz
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Can you explain why my landrace sativa male threw out female flowers? If his purpose is to prevent that kind of thing, why would he do it? I still stand by what I said: males are there to pollinate females. It’s really as simple as that.
I think the dioecy argument is one which is worth warranting. I don’t have a biology or horticulture degree but I would love to hear from someone who does. Is it proven that monecious plants died out because of natural genetic inbreeding? Cannabis can still have inbreeding problems even as a dioecious plant, so it doesn’t make sense to me?? Landrace cultivars prove that genetic diversity can still be prevalent in cultivars which have only a few relatives on Phylos.
FYI, I don’t want to seem argumentative, my questions and concerns are meant to be purely educational.
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I’m agreeing that males are highly important insofar as they contain a huge portion of the total information contained in a population. Only a small portion of the total genome is different: one chromosome pair of ten, and only one chromosome of that pair is only found only in the males. If a male is being chosen, it seems like. blind selection against the traits in the culled males as they would express differently in a female plant. In other words, if as many healthy males reproduce as possible in a generation, but only the most desirable buds get hit with pollen, then more of the gene pool has an opportunity to express as female, and more traits can be selected for in their desired form.
As an outsider to breeding, I’m genuinely lost at why, if the goal is healthy plants with incredible buds of particular desired quality, does the selection process need to be more complicated than that? What’s the advantage of guessing with males when the majority of their genetics are in the same pool with female plants and have a 50/50 shot of being expressed as female in a single generation, and even higher with continued breeding.
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The difference between monoecy and dioecy plants are just a handfull of genes. This means that the dioecy trait have a high chance of mutation. Herm, monoecy etc etc. We see this in cannabis and its not uncommon in other dioecy cultivars aswell.
You have to take your question to the next level, why is males there to pollinate females, why not use the most common tactic where females pollinate females? You can now see that your answer is too simple and doesnt solve the actual question.
I do got a degree in biology at SLU(Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet aka Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). Im not trying to flex, just raising my hand that what you are looking for is already here 
So to get back to your other questions. In a nature you have a large number of plants. When these populate over time they will not become inbreed because everytime a seed is produced, that seed will always have mutations to it. So the big ger quantity of numbers you got the more mutations that cultivar will produce. So If a plant inbreed to quickly, that mutation pattern cant prevent inbreeding.
If cannabis would self itself to a large degree it wouldnt matter how big the population is, it would die of inbreeding depression. Other cultivars in the surronding would out grow cannabis until it become extinct.
If you got any more questions im happy to answer them as good as I can
Pz out my growmies
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Ive already answered this above but ill try to simplify this. You cant know what the offspring of males will be like. So you can look for clues, like flower formation, stem size, branching, stem rub or male trichs. But even the most incredible male can be a bad breeder. So If you are serious about breeding you have to test every male you think have potential to every female you intend to breed with and look at how the offspring become. Nothing about this method is blind, since you do select. But you go even further and test that you Selection was correct.
As a foot note, you see in alot of serious projects that the breeder uses 3-5 males and maybe 50-100 females. This is because the males have been selected and tested. Testing males are time consuming and thats why its a off ratio.
Pz
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Why have most species on this planet evolved so that male and females come together to create new life? Where is it a standard that females breed with only females?? I’m trying to think across all the knowledge I learned in school and never do I remember hearing that the most common tactic for plants to breed is for females to sex themselves to have sex with other females. Maybe in the plant kingdom, but definitely not in the animal kingdom.
When I think about blueberries for example. I know that blueberries create both male and female flowers. They use the presence of pollinators to carry pollen from one blueberry bush to a different blueberry bush, thus ensuring genetic diversity and evolution through time. Now in the example of blueberries, I would not say that they’re females having sex without the absence of males. No stamen, no blueberries. I’m not a very educated person, but I’ll admit accepting the idea that the majority of the plant world is run by ‘females sexing other females’ is a silly notion. I guess my first question is, do I need to go back to school because I know nothing? 
Another question: Isn’t the fact that cannabis is capable of mutation a good thing? Without it, the plant would not be able to evolve to ecological conditions. Like say, taking this landrace from the Phillippines (Lagkitan) and working it at 47° N and 3300 ft up. Without the ability to mutant, cannabis wouldn’t be able to survive any inhospitable conditions.
Last question: I have to question again, my logical thinking. You’re telling me that plants in nature don’t become inbred because every seed is mutated? I believe plants in nature don’t become inbred because you have DIVERSITY in many different unique males and females. Telling me I can’t inbreed my landrace outside “because nature” sounds like another silly notion. Maybe I’m out of line for wording it this way but it’s the way you’ve said things that make me really go “Hmmm 
”
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That ratio is what I don’t get- if the priority is quality female flower, and there’s no real understanding of genetics until they’re expressed in a female plant, what benefit comes from more heavily limiting the genetic throughout of the male population when that cohort holds just as much valuable information as the female population?
Only working with 3-5 males seems like a huge gamble on one’s ability to predict how desirable traits are expressed in male flowers. Whereas you can test the actual flower of females, males you don’t know how their genetics translate to flower until they’re expressed in a female plant, so why make decisions on genetics at all when obfuscated by male expression? Put another way, if males contain 50% of all the genetic information in a generation, why risk throwing away so much of that without seeing how it expresses in a female plant?
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Well you can just self the female plants to each other If you want to take the easy route. But If you want reg seeds, you have to use males and thats why you got to test their offspring. Because it take so much time and energy to test males you often got a low ratio of males. I mean alot of breeders use one male on several females. This will cause quick inbreeding but its not something that you have to worry about If say, you only want to sell a F1 cross.
Im all for using females only and that how ive done the majority of my breeding. The value of using males in breeding for plants that are taken care of by humans are zero to none. Some will disagree but i think i made the argument clear of the statements ive done above.
Pz
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