What's the proper way to do a pheno hunt/seed selection?

Indoor Growing
#1

Hi,

I hope this topic is in the correct category :slight_smile:

I’m about to do a relatively big seed run (100-120 seeds). My goal is to find a handful of the best keepers to continue with. I have around 35-40 seed packs of 5-6 fem seeds each.

I have several questions:

  1. Would you flower the moms (original seed plants) and keep the off-spring for future mothers OR flower the clones? If the former, would you say it’s a bad idea to take the top as a clone, because it’ll reduce the yield and won’t let me see how the plants grow untopped (since I don’t usually top plants)?
  2. Would you start a little bit of each pack and add 1-2 of seeds in each OR start fewer packs fully?
  3. If I decide to start the second half of the seeds, would you do it right after the first run OR wait a few months after I have had some time to properly test the first cohort?
  4. Any other tips/advice?

Thanks

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#2

Depends on how much space you have. I imagine if you’re thinking about doing a 100-200 seed run you have the space for it.

I would take clones of everything and grow out the seed to plant. Easier to toss away the clone/s if you don’t find what you’re looking for. Taking the top from the plant won’t affect the yield at all. That will just cause lower growth to excel

Start fewer packs. Better to get an eye on the phenos that come up out of the genetics

Essentially when you’re doing a pheno hunt, you want to take clones of all the females and make sure you mark everything

Do you plan on breeding or just hunting for the best all around plant to keep in the stable?

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#3

What exactly is your end goal? I’m a bit confused, are they all the same packs and you’re talking about pheno hunting for breeding purposes? I don’t think there would be that much variation in fem seeds to need to hunt that many. Or do you mean they are all different strains and you’re hunting through for different moms from the individual strains?
If they are different strains and your just looking for keepers, I’d run full packs but less strains, every seed you pop will have to be cloned, labeled, and kept in a separate area until you flower the seeds and make your choices.

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#4

All good advice above, about the only thing I do differently is that instead of cloning everything, I just grow to harvest and then reveg the likely ones. All they need is to to be still developing some white pistils and they will reveg, I give them a week of 24h light when I reveg and then just normal 18/6. I’ve also done big pheno hunts and cloned everything but numbers can get out of control real fast and legally here they all count as a plant.

Although selecting by effect and chemotype is of course very valid, I mostly select on morphology and obvious traits at least initially because obviously they are easier to select for.

Also imho, it doesn’t really matter in what order or numbers from which pack you use as it’s all about the selection of the result and it’s a numbers game at the end of the day.

The other thing is that there are different approaches depending on the end goals. If it’s all about preservation, then less selection pressure via more of an open pollination will result in preserving the greatest amount of genetic diversity. If it’s for line breeding then the selection pressure is ramped up. Then it’s a case of plant many, select few.
Sometimes I’ll do a bit of both, line breed phenotypes for a few generations to select out the shitty expressions and then recombine them.

Also it depends on what you are growing, are they stable? Semi stable or highly heterozygous? In some ways for what you are doing you want a decent amount of segregation, I.e. doing a 100 plant pheno hunt for an IBL is kinda a lot of effort for not much point, whereas for an f2 you might need 100 to find enough phenotypes worth persisting with etc.

The most important thing of course is that you observe a lot and have fun🙏

Just my 2c :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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#5

Not going to be breeding, just to find keepers for production. All your advice is what I lean towards, thanks.

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#6

Thanks slain.

All this breeding talk is making my head spin :slight_smile: I know so little about this yet. There all different packs from multiple breeders so variability should be high, stability probably low. I’m not looking to do any breeding/pollination as of now.

I am wary of doing this revegging thing… Isn’t this going to affect the genes in a lasting, weird way?

On another forum, I got the advice of taking clones in the 2nd or 3rd week of flower. I think this might be a good idea.

Some new questions start to present themselves:

  1. What do you guys think about genetic drift? Am I better of trying to stress test the plants by reverting and seeing if herm traits appear?
  2. I need to have plants ready for the 2nd run after the 1st is done… Perhaps I should just start a 2nd batch of seeds before the chop, or I should take LOTS of clones of the best looking plants in flower before they’re finished and just kill some after the crop?

That shit’s getting complicated fast :slight_smile:

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#7

I start to wonder if it’s not better to just do a couple of staggered seed runs, NOT taking any clones and just narrowing the strains I like to work with, and then buy new seeds to do a proper pheno hunt… I should have 2 separate flower chambers so that should be viable.

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#8

Yeah that simplifies things a lot, it’s all just about numbers and selecting the one with the attributes that you like the most. No need to overthink it🙏 If all those packs are different varieties then it’s down to how many mothers you can or want to accommodate and pop the varieties according to that metric.
It’s impossible to say the likelyhood of finding an outstanding pheno from 6 seeds, so many variables etc.

With that many different varieties though you are probably going to have to prioritise and be very selective on what stays and what goes, eat the elephant one bite at a time kinda thing. When I think about it, I have probably kept maybe 5% or less
of the genetics I’ve encountered over the years, the great bulk of varieties end up being meh. Breeding or phenotype selection I guess is a process of elimination as much as one of selection so cull what you don’t like based on your own criteria/preferences and you are on the right track brother👍

Not at all, when cannabis flowers the internode space progressively get shorter as the calyx form, when you flip the light back it just triggers it to elongate and reveg, it won’t affect the genetics in any way.

Genetic drift is another description for mutation. It’s a thing but it’s so rare in practice in my experience its not worth worrying about. I think I’ve seen maybe one spontaneous plant mutation ever, it’s slightly more likely from seed however and they do pop up from time to time but are only very rarely heritable.

Idk, some people seem to get a way bigger percentage of hermies than I ever have, so I can’t explain what that is about but I have averaged about 4-5 per hundred plants, give or take a few. Just keep ur eyes peeled and accept that you will miss a few nannas occasionally, such is life.

Also it’s not the case that hermies will inevitably produce more hermie seeds despite what ‘stoners lore’ claims.

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#9

You can take cuts from all your plants and put them in the fridge for 4-6 weeks then just clone the ones you like. Save a ton of time and cloning supplies.
If one of the ones you like doesn’t root then you can reveg.

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#10

Great, I will consider this. Would you take the clones before or after flip? Will doing it before exacerbate the stretch?

#11

Thanks slain, I appreciate the thoroughness.

It seems revegging is pretty common practice. I was even told it might have the advantage of throwing tons of branches so you can easily give the plants an optimal structure… If so, I will definitely try that, even though keeping 100 stumps until harvest is dried and weight will be a bitch :slight_smile:

Thanks again

2 Likes
#12

In practice though you won’t need to keep anything like that many because you will be able to
cull/select based on obvious and visible characteristics.

Keeping clones in stasis in the fridge is a great idea too. I think I’ve seen somewhere here on OG that you can keep them for six months
like this.

3 Likes
#13

Greetings @lush,

You have gotten some solid advice above along with plenty of options to consider. So I just wanted to add a perspective from 20,000 feet so to speak.

Breeding is hard work that requires meticulous attention and a clear goal. It has all the normal problems of growing along with the complexity of pollen collection and storage, military-grade discipline in segregating your horny Males from your fecund Fems, and the patience of Job to see the process through to the end. And then, you have the pleasure of shucking piles of seeds! (worst job in Canna IMHO :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:)

Not trying to be a downer, it’s well worth the effort and a worthy goal, but I’d suggest that you start small and see if it’s really your thing before you go big time. Consider the smallest subset of the project you envision, maybe three or four plants and take them through all the steps of growing, cloning, collecting and using pollen, and the recordkeeping to track everything. And don’t forget to ensure you have some sensi bud for your own use when it’s over.

Even that modest start will keep you busy till Fall, and by then you’ll have all the answers you need to plan the big run you envision.

I just spent over a year on a complicated multi-stage breeding project. It was a success, but I wish I knew then what I know now.

Just my $0.02.
Best wishes however you proceed,
-Grouchy :v: :green_heart:

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#14

Not doing any breeding Grouchy, I’m not ready for the deep waters yet :slight_smile:

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#15

I’ve dabbled in this over time. In fact, I’ve been running the same Thai Stick seeds for years now and I want to say I’ve gotten to an F4 generation simply because I needed more seeds. I’d simply make more seed by chucking some into a 5 gallon and letting them pollenate. I suppose it’s important to note that this Thai stick has very little variation in the progeny. Seems like there are two main phenotypes; a turbo long flowering ‘sativa’ bud looking one and a much shorter flowering one that has chunkier buds which still aren’t dense. It’s mostly sativa but the offspring usually only express in those two forms.

I personally live for the reveg. It’s so much simpler and effective than trying to balance so many clones. After I’d make a batch of seeds, I’d usually sow quite a few of them all in a large pot together. I’d flower them rather quickly so they don’t get huge. I was just looking to get plants that would indicate the quality of their flower so yield wasn’t a priority.

I was really looking for a shorter flowering cut the last round. The long flowering pheno from the Thai stick I had taken for 6 months previously and couldn’t see myself doing it again. It yielded well but… 6 months of flowering is crazy. First and foremost I culled all the males. I also kept a journal of important dates to make it easier to see which ones are flowering slower than others. I culled any that hadn’t set flower by the time 50% had showed flower. This got rid of the long flowering ones.

As others have mentioned, you need to have something in mind to find. Especially in the case of multiple seed packs, you’re going to have HUGE variation to look through. For the Thai stick, they seriously all smell the same and there is very little variation throughout them. Going into multiple seed packs, I think I would literally write a single page of what I was looking for. Of course, there may be some that pop up that you didn’t plan on keeping.

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#16

In your guys’ experience, is the difference between grow pattern, flowering time etc. between a seed plant and a clone of the same strain that significant? Should 2 runs be plenty enough to make a final decision on whether something is worth keeping?

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#17

I think they all grow the same. Clones just don’t take those 3-4 weeks to get big because they’re starting big. Otherwise, they grow identical.

It can take a while to really dial in a certain plant to it’s full potential. I think even in poor conditions you can get an idea of what it’s capable of and decide from there. The longer I do this, the more I realize that each cut has it’s own preference on feed.

#18

It’s called monstercropping. :slight_smile:
:guitar:

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#19

Also, in my research on it, while cannabis does spontaneously mutate like all living organisms, there’s a large history of forced mutation in hemp and cannabis genetics, using colchicine and other things historically, including radiation and extreme UV to break DNA strands, and more modern mutagenic chemicals. See: DJ’s Blue lines and whorled phyllotaxy/runting, G13, the Chems with their variegation, etc. I would also say the practice (justified!) of hunting out “sport” phenos that have mutations such as choking themselves with resin (G13 famous for this) and then using them as elite clones or breeding stock probably also adds to the mutation rate in modern cannabis genetics.

All this to say that I agree with @slain that you don’t have to worry about genetic drift or mutants, if they appear it’s the genetics not you.

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#20

I was watching a video with somebody who seemed quite knowledgeable on the topic recently (some sort of consultant for large ops). His opinion was also there is no genetic drift as such, but prolonged neglect and bad care for the moms can make it necessary to refresh/rejuvenate them.

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