What's the point in auto flowers?

Breeder's Lab
#41

Your reasoning has no logic behind it. People never bred ruderalis out of drug-type Cannabis cultivars, certainly not the modern breeders you mentioned. They built their hybrid lines on the work of farmers generations before them.

Also an F20 would be the 20th inbred generation from an original hybrid crossing, not a backcross. And talk about unnatural, Cannabis is an outcrossing species. Such high rates of inbreeding are not normal in Cannabis populations and can lead to a lot of issues with the accumulation of deleterious recessive alleles.

The autoflower gene was introduced to drug type Cannabis for its desired phenotype (day-neutral flowering). Introgressing desired traits from wild crop relatives is par for the course in real plant breeding. They search landraces of crops for disease resistance genes than introgress them into desired crop cultivars. This is no different. This is plant breeding.

You don’t need to reverse rudaralis to breed with it, you could have a normal-sex, autoflower breeding program. That is why, as I said, these are separate issues really. Regardless, like I also said, triggering a fully female plant to reverse sex with an exogenous chemical does not change its genetics; therefor there is no increase in monecious plants compared to traditional breeding.

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#42

Thank u for helping understand that is an awesome explanation

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#43

Because it has specific growing characteristics… Non ruderalis genetics would not flower outside @ 61 degrees latitude without help or light control.

Its a game of compromise, for example: Yield and quality is reduced, but lthe adaptation that does not require definite photoperiods widens the range of cannabis.

#44

Page from marijuana botany

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#45

Would this not potentially happen from these types of plants being interbred an stuff did this not weaken the gen pool that’s what I’m basically wondering to sum up this is where this question arose from

#46

Beg to differ. There are many instances of sex-linked traits passed from one sex that is expressed in the opposite-sex progeny. In humans, male-pattern baldness is the well-known example. Again, having only mapped the cannabis genome in the last couple of years, the state of the science here is in its infancy, and your statement that “males don’t matter” is based more on ideology than biology. We simply don’t know what alleles code for what traits in cannabis, yet.

You seem to know enough about genetics and evolution to wrap your head around this. Breeder selection is the primary evolutionary pressure placed on drug cannabis. So, what is a “fully female” plant? How does one select for “full femaleness”? Is that REALLY what a feminized seed breeder is selecting for?

No, s/he is not. The feminized breeder selects parent stock PRIMARILY based on those individuals WHICH WILL EXPRESS INTERSEXUALITY when exposed to stress, such as chemicals. Therefore, the feminized breeder intentionally, and as a PRIMARY trait, selects for intersexual expression. S/he may select carefully, for those individuals who tend to express intersex traits only under severe stress, but select he does. Any truly “fully female” individuals which do not express intersexual traits under extreme stress will be culled from the program by their very virtue of being unable to form male flowers with viable pollen. Feminizers aren’t selecting for “fully female” plants, they are culling them, because they won’t “flip.”

Therefore, any feminized plant breeding program, by its very nature, will select and breed for individuals with an ever-increasing frequency of intersexual expression in the offspring, by the very nature of the breeder’s selection - conscious or unconscious.

I’ve heard this “fully female” argument from feminizers for years. It’s bunk pure and simple. Sexuality, in animals and plants, is expressed along a spectrum. It is only binary at the chromosomal level. Chemicals don’t change genes, as you said, they simply change the level of environmental stress, which the plant responds to based on its genotype. Those plants with genotypes that favor intersexual expression form pollen sacs. Only those plants which form pollen sacs get feminized. Feminized breeders select for hermaphrodism, plain and simple.

-b420

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Feminized Seeds , Whats Your thoughts!?
#47

Male pattern baldness is an x-linked trait. I stand by the assertion that Y is irrelevant in terms of contributing towards any trait you would be breeding towards in your females. Biologically, they don’t matter in this context.

I can see what you are saying about selecting for intersexed plants. However most, if not all Cannabis is susceptible to sex switching when triggered with certain chemicals (silver, gibberellin, ect). So because of this ubiquity you are not really selecting for the trait by performing this. On the other hand if you are using seed from natural hermies or using weak stressors to induce feminized seed (light stress overmaturation (Soma rodelization method), then yes you are selecting for a natural tendency to herm.

Furthermore any proper breeder should be screening lines based on quality control tests of seedlots for any natural monecious tendencies.

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#48

Excellent that is exactly what I thought about fems @Baudelaire

#49

It’s that “should” part where the slippery slope lies. I’m not willing to trust the species to the better angels and proper ethics of commercial breeders - there’s too much money to be made by acting badly. Every feminized breeder who creates a fem’d seed lot that doesn’t herm “unless stressed too much” thinks he’s dodged the bullet. He’s only put one more nail in the coffin. Two, four, six generations down the road, the chickens will come home to roost. By that time, the original breeder will have made his money, and the new breeder won’t even know he’s working with once-feminized breeding stock. Until he knocks up his elite cut with another three-times fem’d cut, and then balls, balls, balls…Sinsemilla apocalypse.

-b420

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#50

There are already monecious hemp varieties. They didn’t use feminized seed techniques for the creation of those. It’s a natural variation already present in the genus. Your concerns are as valid for breeders using regular sexed seed as they are for those making seed only using female plants. Your complaint is really about commercial breeders cutting corners and is being misdirected towards feminized seed.

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#51

I don’t smoke monecious hemp. I do enjoy the seeds, toasted in my granola. That’s my point - moneciousness is easy to produce in cannabis. Dominant, nearly exclusive, dioeciousness is hard to preserve in cannabis populations. Feminization threatens it, greatly.

Good debate though, appreciate your thoughts and tenor. Go build us a 30% THC auto now. That tastes like a tangerine, matures in a 3-day window and grows exactly 5 1/2 feet high. The (venture capitalist) people demand it!

-b420

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#52

Out of 42500 plants at the grows I have been to this year ~8 males/ intersexed individuals were seen. So over 99.98% female. Seems like a pretty low threat to me.

30% THC? brah, it’s all about the terps anyway. I want to get that 15% or lower terp-happy skittlz into Auto.

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#53

sorry to conflate the issues of fem seeds and autoflower. It’s funny because they are separate processes, yet my reason for not liking them is the same.

I don’t care what’s possible when modern laboratory techniques are applied to cannabis breeding and propagation. I’m growing plants in accordance and harmony with my own attitude toward nature and my position in nature as a human being.

I’m never going into business to make cannabis seeds or flowers. I’m growing medicinal flowers to fulfill my personal needs. I don’t want to grow plants that I feel have been manipulated in an unnatural way. It has to do with my own heritage and also the historical legacy of cannabis as Justin says.

I’m not saying “it’s best” to never use chemicals to stress plants, or propagate asexually via tissue culture, or to breed in ruderalis or hemp characteristics that humanity just spent millenia breeding out of the species. I’m saying it’s against my personal philosophy. Who cares? I don’t give a fuck if you care or not. I’m buying seeds from people that share my philosophy.

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#54

We survived the flame wars of the early age. We set the seed wars to rest. The next war will be the legal war and it will be ugly.

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#55

I’ve had the same discussion with MountainOrganics (@MountainOrganics on instagram), and he gave virtually the same answer as you.

I understand where you’re coming from and can respect that. I just am personally more swayed by (and enjoy) a logical argument.

Cannabis is an amazingly plastic and diverse genus. I am excited for all of if its possibilities.

On a side note, my entire personal seed collection is regular seed, and I seek out regular seeds for breeding stock. They are disappearing fast. Last year I bought Skunk # 1 from Flying Dutchman. Now I am having trouble finding regular seed of it from them, I think they stopped releasing it. It’s only feminized now. :sunflower:

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#56

It costs about $2 in electricity a week, to pull the shading in my greenhouse twice a day. No need for growing leafy, low THC, ruderalis-hybrids that nobody wants to buy or show off.
Not sure why anyone’s goal would be to grow low grade leaf-buds, when you can grow photoperiod high-grade for pennies more per ha.
Also :point_up: if you are growing a mega-cash-crop, you will get herms if your are running thousands of auto-fem seeds rather than tested photoperiod-cuttings.
Unless you are growing in a cold climate without light-deprivation, autos are useless.

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#57

it’s my understanding colloidal silver does not stress or change the dna of the plant so as long as you’re starting with stable genetics you’re not polluting or weakening the strain and not introducing hermaphroditism…

“Colloidal Silver works by being composed of particles so small, that they can easily pass through the plants cells. Once the Colloidal Silver particles are in the plant, they bond to the existing copper molecules. Normal female cannabis plants, use these copper molecules to produce the hormone Ethylene, which is what “tells” them that they are supposed to make normal female flowers (calyxes with pistils). When the Colloidal Silver bonds with the copper molecules, this is inhibited and the plant instead produces pollen sacs.
*Note: These are still female flowers. Just female pollen sacs. Not male flowers.”

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#58

You assume all autos are leafy ruderalis pheno. They are not that way anymore. There are nuggety, comparably potent autoflowers.

$2 of electricity to pull tarps… How much does that greenhouse and those tarps cost and all of the related maintenance and labor?

Yes, you have to go through and look for males at least once during the season in early flower, Herm rate is extremely low. There are benefits to having a seed grown crop over cloned crops. Improved disease resistance, for instance, can easily make up for the slight variation or quantity of low quality plants you will get compared to clones.

Even if you have a long season, Autos can have you harvested before fall rains come (an issue in the PNW), reducing loss to Bud rot.

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#59

Cool, post a bud-shot.
…and my greenhouse has paid for itself 1 million times over. Before even growing cannabis in there. How much is some clear-poly where you live??

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#60

Its fine if you don’t believe me, that’s the majority of American growers right now. But like I have already said, autoflowers can outcompete light dep on the low-end flower and extract material market, especially for distillate and edibles. Elite-clone photoperiod flower production will still be happening in light dep.

Some autoflower plants are perfectly acceptable to be sold as nuggety flower alongside photoperiods, a problem is variation from seed. You have to go and high-grade a field to get those nice flowers out. The fact they exist only means the breeding can and will move that way in the future. Imo, to say they have no purpose is very short-sighted.

Maybe poly is cheap, but nothing is cheaper. The potential scale is different as well.

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