Hello OG nerds, I have something interesting going on with a plant I haven’t encountered before and of course I thought where better to go to help potentially solve this bizarre riddle, or at least throw around some possibilities.
So I have this plant that I have been working on for probably 5 years or so now, it’s the one in the front:
There is a great deal to like about the plant hence my persistence, but it’s always been a little weird in that even though it’s a regular, only about 1 in 10 plants will end up being male.
The females also seemingly have low fertility, so that even with a male right next to them and much encouragement they don’t produce heaps of seeds, now here is where it gets really weird. I decided to clone a good pheno to try and make some fem seeds just using regular STS, same way I’ve done with different plants countless times. The females had no problem reversing, lots of flowers, but only a tiny smear of pollen produced (annoying but not that uncommon) BUT that pollen is seemingly self incompatible.
It won’t fertilize itself; but it will fertilize another different female variety, though only at very low rates.
Anyone had anything like this before or any who has any thoughts of what might be happening?
Sounds like it could be a triploid… they characteristically have extremely low rates of fertility, whether male or female. If that’s the case it’s probably not a coincidence that you haven’t managed to self-pollinate it; each grain of pollen that meets a pistil has roughly a 1/1000 chance for the stars to align in meiosis and produce a fully functional diploid, as well as a useless haploid. 999/1000 both of them will be mixed up and useless in producing offspring. For a triploid reproducing with another triploid, or itself, you have to get those 1/1000 chances to happen simultaneously… so you’re looking at a literally one-in-a-million seed.
Ahhh cool, so this can happen spontaneously? Thanks man, I hadn’t even thought of that as possibility.
There are a lot of unusual or outstanding traits about this plant, not least of all it’s vigor/yield/size but also a seeming imperviousness to rot despite it having super dense and frosty buds, but also things like branching and leaf count are on steroids. It’s the BFG
Do you know if triploidy can also effect these kinds of traits? As I said there is a lot to like about this plant, but it’s just really hard to make seeds with, perhaps now I might have some idea why!
Thanks man, you have given me much to think about🙏
I’m not the most read on the subject but iirc some genes can have an additive effect. The more alleles or copies of the gene, the more affect it has. I can imagine an entire 3rd chromosome to work with might be doing something for ya
Awesome . I knew OG would point me in the right direction. Any other grow forum and it would have already degraded into a sh*t slinging flame war by now
I’ve had one case of spontaneous polyploid over the years in countless seeds,
and made a few with colchicine, but they look completely mutated different, these ones look mostly normal, but just super juiced in pretty much every way.
So then does that imply here that it might be a thing that you can have an inducer line instead of needing to use chemical treatments to make them triploidy? If so then that’s very cool.
Yeah man, I’m open to all suggestions that could be worth a try.
I have done that before more or less by accident, just by leaving the plants to flower till they die of age; I noticed that both females and males can sometimes seem to desperately make bananas or a few calyx in their death throes, females more than males but they both can do it. I can definitely stress them to try and induce some flowers that way, and at least see what they are like. Easiest plant to clone ever, like 4-5 days and roots so I can make a bunch to try some stuff. I’ll also try some colloidal and I’ve even got some cobalt chloride here somewhere. That’s probably the nuclear option.
Though like I said, lots of male flowers, just tiny amounts of not very fertile pollen and then barely fertile female flowers!
I hadn’t even considered this… maybe there’s actually something to all that advertising about triploids after all. Many genes work by synthesizing or assisting in synthesis of proteins or hormones, and those can indeed have an additive affect if there are more copies of them. Of course, that can also be a negative thing, which the advertising notably doesn’t mention - for example, assuming that herms come from genes producing the wrong hormones, more of those genes means worse herms. Cookies triploids might start herming the moment you get the seed wet, never mind waiting for flower.
You definitely can have an inducer line, yep. Tetraploid x diploid = triploid. In theory you can even get higher numbers of chromosomes, and any odd number of chromosomes - aneuploid, in genetics jargon, literally meaning “not a good number of chromosomes” - will be mostly infertile. I guess, logically, the higher the number of chromosomes the more potential for an exceptional plant - either exceptionally bad or exceptionally good, depending on the parents and luck of the draw. I wonder if, once controlled gene editing is a real possibility, we’ll be seeing septuploid lines with all the terpene-producing and yield genes dialed up to 11/10… Might actually get me to buy new genetics, at that point, assuming they haven’t also added tracer genes to pin down anyone growing it illegally by analyzing wastewater or something.
Hahaha, super precocious hermaphrodites. That would be a fitting way for the cookies fam to end.
Yeah I had loosely read a few commercial seed companies propaganda on triploids and just thought they were a way to keep customers from making their own seeds!
Now I’m wondering if you come across it accidentally and naturally is it still super evil?
Depends if you’re trying to fish for a one-in-a-million seed, I guess. You tell me!
As far as the whole “evil” thing I don’t even see it that way - they’re not going to get rid of regular seeds entirely by producing triploid lines, any more than it’s impossible to find banana seeds. Slightly more difficult, perhaps, but I could probably find them in 10 minutes on Google with a high degree of success. It’s only evil if it’s a conspiracy to stop us all from growing, and it’s unlikely that anyone’s gonna end up caring that much once it’s been legal for a few years. It’s not illegal to grow tobacco or brew your own beer, and eventually common sense will prevail. Gonna take quite a few years of hysterical soccer moms protesting that their kids are high 24/7 from looking at gummies first, though.
. I knew OG would point me in the right direction. Any other grow forum and it would have already degraded into a sh*t slinging flame war by now 
Many genes work by synthesizing or assisting in synthesis of proteins or hormones, and those can indeed have an additive affect if there are more copies of them. Of course, that can also be a negative thing, which the advertising notably doesn’t mention - for example, assuming that herms come from genes producing the wrong hormones, more of those genes means worse herms. Cookies triploids might start herming the moment you get the seed wet, never mind waiting for flower. 
