So nobody knows for sure if YY is viable, I’d say no, for blah blah nature this and that reasons 
The only person that I know of who selfed males other than to smoke the male buds to test terps, high and potency is sam skunkman. He says he only grew a sample and viability was inconclusive. (Paraphrasing, say whatever about the guy, he knows plants and wouldn’t slice it one way or the other unless it’s solid)
This.
This is something worth exploring.
While this may not be the precise intention of the thread, I couldn’t find any other thread more contemporary for this topic.
Does anyone have any fun facts or ongoing projects of mutants? Strains like Freakshow, Duckfoot, Frisian Duck, ABC (Aussie Bastard Cannabis), Subterfuge, and so many others. I came across a pack of the og Humboldt Freakshow in my local store, and couldn’t believe my eyes!
I’d love to see some of the weird mutants get shared more frequently, since the cost can be so high. It is understandable, since they can take so long to mature and flower.
I play with Thai/Lao minimum 6 months to mature and 20 weeks to flower. That stuff is a pain and the buds mature at different times even on the same branch. Last one I had I got tired of growing it would not stop growing or making buds. Grew it inside DWC the plant was complicated 
Wouldn’t be scared of Freakshow.
Thanks for the support bro.
I have turned out some really nice stuff.
Yes the potency takes some getting used to. The trip can be crazy at times too. But it’s hard for me to smoke anything else.
I like the way it rattles my brain and takes control of my body. You never know where the high will take you.
The other day my wife was smoking that sample of the bbk x lvtk cross. She said knew she was talking to me. She could her hear me. But she couldn’t see me. She was sitting on a bucket right beside me as I watered the plant.
That’s the type of thing that the Nympho does to people. To have a cross do it, is beyond expectations.
Any way brother, thanks again.
Nice analogy !! King Tut…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYbavuReVF4
Yeah it’s definitely possible to find a mostly recessive male that tends to show off only the mom’s pheno. People have found it in multiple lines. But the only way to find that really is gonna be making the crosses and popping the beans to see what comes out.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that the cannabis world is full of old wives tales and bad information.
I’ve seen thread after thread blown up with people crying about the state of cannabis breeding; that everything is a shit show full of hermies and other undesirable traits. Clearly this comes from the breeding methods people are using, which ties directly back to threads like this, where said methods are recommended and propagated to the next generation of questionable breeding projects.
I think “searching for that one perfect male” is the wrong move in most cases. Maybe at the very end of a long breeding project it could be the right move, but not in the beginning or middle of a breeding project. Early on, how can you possibly find ONE male that’s got all the right traits you desire? You can’t even find a female like that, so how can you find such a male? How can you be certain that male doesn’t have some kind of bad trait that will be unknowingly passed along to all its offspring, filling the resulting line full of plants that have a weakness or vulnerability, which isn’t discovered until later when it’s too late?
I can’t prove it, but I think the “cull the early plants because they are junk” idea is yet another bad assumption that results in people unknowingly culling good plants.
It seems clear to me the general way to proceed is open pollination, generation after generation. The breeder should do as little selection as he can get away with, and let Nature do as much of the work as possible.
In one interview, DJ Short said he really likes using male hermies to breed with. I assume that’s not a great idea.
In my own breeding projects, the “foundation” of everything is a strain from southwest Afghanistan which I’ve outcrossed liberally, including some fire cuts that were hermie prone. If you look at the plants in the “Durand project” PDF that someone uploaded to various threads on here, this strain looked a lot like the “narrow leaf” plants shown in there, and is no doubt related. I think the narrow leaf plants in that area have a lot of Persian influence.
This strain seems to have provided a stabilization effect on everything it’s crossed with. So far in all the different lines and generations I’ve worked off these crosses, there have been NO female hermies found, even though I often do put my plants under different kinds of stress, indoor and out.
I’ve got one plant right now that’s over 9 weeks into flower with a couple weeks left to go, which I’ve been manually taking out of the grow room each day after 12 hours and just leaving in semi-darkness in the hallway, since I flipped the room to 16/8 to veg out some other plants. The plant is receiving plenty of light leakage from the room and also in the morning from the windows when the sun comes up, and this has been going on for weeks. There’s not a single nanner to be found on it anywhere.
On the other hand, I have found approximately 3 male hermies at various points along the way, and always cull them once identified. DJ Short would be disappointed, I guess.
Another advantage of this particular Afghan strain is it seems to have many recessive traits, so it mostly blends in to the background and allows whatever it’s crossed with to express its own traits, while having dominant genes where it counts, such as root and stem development.
With open pollination, yes it’s true that a single seed only has one father and mother, but if the female gets hit with multiple pollen sources, then it will have a multitude of seeds with different fathers. If you then germ those plants and grow them outdoors for example, you’ll see some will thrive out there, some will do OK, while others will do poorly. That’s the ultimate test. Who cares about identifying exactly which father a plant came from? Select the best females, and continue on to the next generation.
I don’t spend much time at all studying the males. There’s no way to tell exactly what traits a male carries, and an “ugly” male just might have some important trait that needs to be kept in the gene pool, like PM resistance for example. I may cull a male or two here and there, but only if it’s clearly weak and inferior in some way; for the most part, I just let Nature do the selection.
For the most part I don’t find most of the literature on plant breeding, especially cannabis breeding, to have been very helpful in doing the actual work. Too much disinformation and bad assumptions out there. The most important thing is to WATCH the plants to see how they develop naturally, gently guiding them in the right direction, and doing slow and careful selection over time to gradually lock in traits.
To be clear, I probably won’t be breeding any Cup winners this way. But I do have good smoke that is slowly getting better and more consistent over time, and I don’t have to worry about hermies, inbreeding depression, or all this other trouble that has slowly wrecked the Western cannabis gene pool
Well said brother.
You touched on man good points. “Better and more consistent with time” is the one they run from because no one wants to put in the time.
The problem is guys are looking and don’t know what they are looking at. Breeders don’t share their technique and explain when and why they use it. Technique and style is what separate the breeders.
Yeah time(and selection) is everything IMO.
We have Classic lines, Elites from herms/bagseed of classic lines, and then modern polyhybrids which look and maybe smell/taste great but aren’t great…
The classics (NL, Haze, Blueberry, etc) are still used against all the modern stuff and elites because they’re still top shelf. They became that way from running fields of plants and picking only the best one’s. Not dude popping a pack in his basement and chucking pollen. Not open pollinating everything. Selection.
If making a selection causes you to notice an issue multiple generations down the line, that is precisely why you need to maintain seed stock and/or parental plants. And why male’s especially and females too, need to be tested before you just start selling beans off. That’s just the way it is without being able to use genetic testing. Once BigAG gets their hands in here, gonna be some crazy stuff coming out.
As-is I only know of Breeder Steve putting in the work currently. Running a ~million plants a year out in Columbia. That’s how you find that special male or female. Sure you can get lucky in a tent, off a single pack. Plenty of good genetics have come from that. But as a generality, field/large numbers, careful selection, and ways to recover from that selection are always going to be the way to go.
Sorry guys i started the thread an didn’t really come back to contribute much. Personal an health resons made things a bit difficult to frequent the site as much as i would of liked. But i was also pleased to see a few good heads here so i knew things would take there course.
Hey o-o welcome to the site, an thanks for contributing an putting some of your ideas forward.
Me personaly i would always say back up your starting stock, so maybe if it was two diffrent landraces your working with ofcorse open pollinate them so you always have those preserverd. But if the goal is to try to preserve something fully intact for the future idealy you would need huge numbers like 1000 females an 1000 males. If your open pollinating 10 or 20 seeds an for example (just to speed up the timeline) open pollinated 10 or 20 plants every year, by the time you got to year 7 that line would most likley have issues an by year 10 it would most likley be a mess an have serrious inbreeding issues. There are methods around this issue but i very rarely see anyone using them.
Something else in o-o’s post that maybe he has not considered needs to be addresed, you mention about if using this one male it may carry issues later down the line in its progeny (of which i would only know becasuse i went to the process of testing that an each individual step) but if you open pollinate that plant may still end up in the open pollination an you would be seeing faults from it later down the line in certain plants yet would never be able to track back were they come from or be able to really eliminate it. This is why you always do 5 or even 10 males as anything could go wrong with one at any point but then you have the next best 4 or even 9 to keep checking. Also yes its true one male will never carry everything. For example it may give the most consitently potent progeny but have lower cbd an give lower yields ect, but that’s the point of targeted breeding an the specific goal you have in mind. Different methods are used for different things an goals an use use the best technique to achieve your goal
Something else i see issues with, how many breeders sell in minimum packs of 100 or 500 ? Almost everyone sells in packs of 10 or at the very most 15-20. Its not really much use buying 10 seeds from a open pollinated line. An im assuming most people buying a pack or two of seeds would at least like 80-90% of them to good plants which requires work. An in a industry now where people are quick to copy peoples work an profit an having multiple different breeders putting out the same thing im sure someone who puts the work in to put out a superior product would probably be more appreciated than someone just putting out a means standard within a strain. Im sure if most people had a choice of having the means standard or something that consistently gives the best of a certain strain most wouldn’t say "but i just want the one that has some crap in there, some average, some good, an if lucky some very good ". But it all comes down to ones goal an what one wants to get out of their work an how much work they want to put into it. So if your goal out of a certain line is getting peak potency, the best it can you have to find the method of doing that an put the odds in your favour of numerous seeds giving out very trippy potent plants.
Brother if you like that gm plant cross it to a sister that you also like. That way you aren’t adding any outside genetics to the cross. That will be the start of stabilization.
Rather you are doing it in a tent or outdoors it shouldn’t matter as long as the breeder is selecting to improve on the cross. Finding 1 decent plant out of 1,000 beans dropped is … ridiculous and wasteful. So what do you do with the other 999 plants. Cull or sell seeds from them?
But anyway….I read where a big breeder said that he knows guys using a 4x4 doing better than many of the other big breeders with 1,000’s of acres of plants.
In my opinion, a fellow can grow as many plants as he like, indoor or outdoor, and if they aren’t worth a flip, they still want be worth a flip just because he grew 1000 of them. Having to pop 1,000 seeds to find a keeper only shows how poorly the plant is bred.
What happens when the entire line is keepers though? If you just want to find the absolute best showing of a specific trait or two, you need luck or numbers to pull it off, and a lot of time.
The classics (NL, Haze, Blueberry, etc) are still used against all the modern stuff and elites because they’re still top shelf. They became that way from running fields of plants and picking only the best one’s. Not dude popping a pack in his basement and chucking pollen. Not open pollinating everything. Selection.
That’s not true. There is no reason one cannot do selection from an open pollination, and there’s no reason a dude in his basement can’t turn out fire.
ChemDawg is one of the most outcrossed cuts there is, and where did that come from?
Open pollination is far superior to the extreme selection methods people use, when the goal is to preserve the genetic pool as a whole rather than just create some one-off inbred fire breathing monster.
If you think the cannabis gene pool is screwed up right now, many of the selection methods you use that you think are so great (like excessive inbreeding) are exactly why that happens.
If making a selection causes you to notice an issue multiple generations down the line, that is precisely why you need to maintain seed stock and/or parental plants.
No, it’s why your main genetic population should be open pollinated, with desirable traits being stabilized in the main population, with heavy selection and inbreeding given only to specific plants to create offshoot lines that are fixed for specific traits.
As-is I only know of Breeder Steve putting in the work currently. Running a ~million plants a year out in Columbia. That’s how you find that special male or female.
No, that’s only one way of doing it. Very few people have the resources to do it that way, and it doesn’t make one better than the other guy who doesn’t have the same resources. Great results can very well be gotten from careful selection of a much smaller number of plants over multiple generations. Stop with the snobby elitism, please.
But as a generality, field/large numbers, careful selection, and ways to recover from that selection are always going to be the way to go.
No, that’s only one way to go.
If your open pollinating 10 or 20 seeds an for example (just to speed up the timeline) open pollinated 10 or 20 plants every year, by the time you got to year 7 that line would most likley have issues an by year 10 it would most likley be a mess an have serrious inbreeding issues.
No, you won’t. Cannabis is not an obligate outbreeder like many other plants. 30-50 plants per generation (including males) is enough to maintain a population indefinitely, as long as you don’t bottleneck the strain by doing excessive, heavy selection, but use open pollination instead to keep maximum diversity.
Something else in o-o’s post that maybe he has not considered needs to be addresed, you mention about if using this one male it may carry issues later down the line in its progeny (of which i would only know becasuse i went to the process of testing that an each individual step) but if you open pollinate that plant may still end up in the open pollination an you would be seeing faults from it later down the line in certain plants yet would never be able to track back were they come from or be able to really eliminate it.
The correct approach is open pollination with very careful and gentle selection over multiple generations, rather than heavy selection over a short time frame as most do. Selecting one single female, then crossing it with one single male, then thinking you can just “test” the line over a generation or two to check for all desired traits, is exactly the wrong approach. You cannot test for all possible deleterious traits that way, and even if you could, it would be too much work. It’s much better to just open pollinate for generation after generation while applying gentle selective pressure under various stressful conditions to gradually reduce the number of plants carrying the negative traits.
Its not really much use buying 10 seeds from a open pollinated line.
“Open pollinated” DOES NOT mean “no plant is the same.” There are breeders all over the world (like the Afghans) who have fields full of open pollinated plants that show a high degree of uniformity. That comes from gentle selection over many generations; not from growing out a million plants and just selecting one, as some claim is the “only true way.”
If you just want to find the absolute best showing of a specific trait or two
But that’s not what I want.
It came from bagseed at a deadshow… it’s what I classified as an “Elite”
Open Pollination only lets me NOT know who the father is. So I have no way of knowing how to reproduce anything that may come from that.
Preserving != breeding
Breeding should have a purpose, a goal. If you just wanna preserve a line than sure, OP everything and call it a day.
Again, so I have no idea how to reproduce anything. Or a huge amount of clones and labels while I take every male to every female and try and track things.
This is exactly what I mean when I think breeding. I AM trying to create specific offshoot lines that are fixed for specific traits. Again, open pollinating would be something I’d do to preserve a line, but not to breed with it. You’re not improving the line by open pollinating, at best you are maintaining it. If there’s a male causing deleterious issues in your OP line, now you have no idea which one caused it so good luck fixing that. Heavy selection does very much have the possibility to ruin the line completely from choosing that wrong male from the start, and that’s why most don’t do it. But no risk no reward.
It most definitely can. With some luck and/or time. You only need one or two plants to do anything. Whether you go through thousands to get there or not doesn’t matter. But the general idea is, the more plants you can look at, then the better chance you have of finding what you want sooner rather than later. That’s all I’m saying. None of those classic lines were just grabbing the first plants that came up, or all of them, and breeding with them all just because. All those guys talk about heavy selection to pull out those original top shelf lines.
Do you have sources for that? All I can find and have ever read has said that Cannabis, like most flowers, are obligate outcrossers. They need to be outcrossed in order to improve the line.
and pg 42 of Robert C Clarke’s Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany
Also, I don’t mean to come off abrasive or rude. I love a good convo ^^
This was an interesting read…
" The drawback to line breeding for stability when selecting for production cultivars is that, as a varietal becomes more uniform through inbreeding, it becomes less heterotic (vigorous). This effect is referred to as inbreeding depression. The most efficient way to intensively inbreed a plant, while retaining a degree of genetic diversity in the population is through a generation of selfing target plants, followed by a generation of open pollinating target plants. This type of recurrent selection has been characterized as the most statistically efficient form of inbreeding (Allard, Robert W. Principles of Plant Breeding. Wiley 2010)"
Wow, lots to unpack here.
Let me have a few cold ones and spark one up 
Ryan Lee has said this many times over.
The way I see it, inbreeding a line is a useful tool to create a mostly homozygous line for further breeding. One would then use those IBL as a tool to create new and interesting hybrids.
agree with that. Inbreeding, whether it be in a line, an inline cross, a backcross, or an open pollination, all have their use-cases.