Where would you start with a test breeding project?

Smoker's Lounge
#81

@Seamonkey84 I had no idea what Do Si Dos was until I smoked it and asked the guy that gave it to me what it was after I was blown away by how good it was. Hence why I’m growing DSD now and why I picked those up. She hasn’t disappointed so far, I actually enjoyed defoliating and smelling some of the plants in my tent so much that I defoliated multiple leaves daily starting in week 3 :rofl: She is simply magnificent to smell in full flower, as is the watermelon skittles and white widow next to her. Can’t wait to have WW and DSD back in the jar and try the WS.

Oh, and there’s a super fruity northern lights in there that smells like a cheese plate with cardamom spiced pit fruits, dried appricots, berries and blue cheese funk and every inch of her is gooey with tricomes, even large stems. Is that always a desirable trait? She’s not durable, but if you treat her right she sure hets gooey :thinking:

Here she is, I can’t quite capture how syrupy the leaves are, when you break them they’re like an aloe leaf almost.

Also, a really incredible phenotype of ILGM white widow auto. I believe I’ve identified four phenotypes in those beans, it’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot from growing them so many times.

image
image1395×1507 470 KB
image
image1448×1480 529 KB

4 Likes
#82

Do you generally not do a lot of training and defoliation?

I must say, I love defoliating regularly to get a wiff if what’s cooking.

At the same time, there’s something to be said about a plant that is low maintenance. Is that something you try to breed for? If you don’t mind me asking, would you describe yourself as having a certain style in your breeding? Certain traits you weigh over others?

Also, if you don’t mind me picking your brain, is vigorous root growth the best sign of a good plant in the first few weeks of a grow? Coming from wine, a large root structure means more concentrated grapes, is cannabis similar?

Thanks, and hope I’m not being too nosey. I promise to buy more of your beans. If you need any overenthusiastic noob testers let me know :joy:

#83

I don’t usually train. I like to see the natural structure of the plant. I sometimes top if I want more beanz - usually would be the second run. I also top if the plant gets too tall.
Large root structure is always better and healthier for general growth and flower. Don’t know if that concentrates all the good things in flower.

In winemaking you want the roots to go down into the soil to bring up minerals and to stress the vine. You also want smaller grapes which are more concentrated in flavor with less water.

2 Likes
#84

True, but the water in grapes is more dependent on when the last rain was and how much rain it was rather than the size of the root structure. At least as I understand it.

Make them struggle in practically solid limestone soil (silex) in the and grow them in the Loire. I need sunshine and Sancerre! :joy: Maybe I’ll do a guerrilla grow in the Loire and see if I can draw that silex into the plant :joy:

1 Like
#85

Well. I’ve seen n heard nothing but good from that lavender frosting. And baked beans are all pretty much all fire. Your end goal. It’s a little deeper than just crossing photo to auto. It must go more gens. Time consuming. And the ruderalis percentage has to be at certain point or you’ll have semiautos. There’s ppl here breed em. Auto x auto is Ok. Because both contain the needed amount of ruderalis gene. But to bring photoperiod fire into the mix you got to work couple gens to get the automatic trait back by being with more auto genes for the ruderalis input. I’m no breeder. Just how I see it.

2 Likes
#86

Pop them Baked beans. There’s fire in there for sure.

2 Likes
#88

Most carbon style filters will not adequately filter pollen as the particles as too small…you will need a high micron HEPA filter

1 Like
#89

I know I’ll have to go to 4 gen’s to make full auto. Im used to it taking 5 years to establish a healthy and full grown reef tank, so 2-3 years for a needing project isn’t a big deal. Thanks for the input!

2 Likes
#90

Thanks man, appreciate it. Btw, the OG just means they were bred by an OG’er. I’ll be working with the PPP for sure, too good of a story not to!

Also, been thinking about some GDP crosses as well, and pink lemonade was one, will hopefully cross well with some of the Mephisto as well :+1:t2:

1 Like
#91

That’s understandable. When I see og, I think og kush.

1 Like
#92

It’s a fun hobby. Here is my auto breeding thread. You may find some useful info here.

2 Likes
#94

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I’ll be taking extensive notes and learning each plant as best I can and trying to achieve a similar result.

Flavor and effect/potency will be weighted heavily, followed by yield and ease to grow, with hopefully some nice showy colors as a bonus. I want what I create to be for the slightly advanced grower and palate but not pretentious. I also want to share extensive notes with whoever wants to grow my beans, only because I’ve valued the breeders who do so.

1 Like
#95

People may not say much, but they are paying attention. I been working with autos for about 10 years now. They have came a long way since the beginnings. The competition is fierce so you have to compete on every level. If there are any shortcomings, you will see it in the many threads that’s all over. It’s doesn’t take much to make a person choose another breeder.

1 Like
#96

@Blu-Tri I don’t know if I’ll take this farther than a hobby. But I can see myself growing old and making seeds and art. That seems like a happy life…

1 Like
#97

Is there a definitive answer on selfs vs. a back cross and the genetics involved? I keep hearing/reading mix things regarding selfed seeds.

Also, genetically, does it make a big differenence wgho the mom is vs. who the dad is. Lets say I cross GDP with Double Grape vs. Double Grape that has been reversed with GDP, is the genetic outcome the same?

#98

Honestly, I would start by finding stable genetics and creating some F1 Hybrids. Strains like Northern Lights, Afghan, Herijuana are stable broad leaf varieties, Then cross these over some of the more stable/potent heirloom Sativa, like Thai or Malawi or Panama…. Ace seeds has some awesome genetics for these. As said, keep your stable varieties pure. The F1 approach is used frequently, most bhodi seeds for example are F1’s, With this approach your pure strains become tools, it’s even possible to make a 3 way F1. Results are much faster and require much fewer breeding plants to get a satisfying result imho.

2 Likes
#99

@slain You don’t think that’s for a more advanced spot than where I am? I feel like what I’m doing is building on good work and will yield results sooner, but what you’re saying doesn’t seem to jive with that.

I could see how building something more from the ground up would be more satisfying, like rebuilding a car from scratch. But I feel like I just want to mess with the engine suspension of an already good chassis. Starting where you’re talking add months or years into what I’m wanting to do?

Thanks, interested to hear more details!

1 Like
#100

Well personally I think it’s simpler for a number of reasons:

  1. If you have stable IBL parents then an F1 cross will give you progeny that exhibits the dominant traits of both parents and does so In a generally reliable and repeatable way.

  2. An F1 will exhibit heterosis, so called ‘hybrid vigour’ due to the dominant alleles of both parents overriding the recessive ‘weaker’ alleles often present in any inbred line. I’ve found the great the difference, the greater the vigour, try mixing a pure Afghan with a good Thai, or even a haze and see what happens, you are likely to get a cross that exhibits a blend of traits and grows like a mofo.

  3. If you start with IBL’s then you don’t have to do the work yourself of inbreeding to f12 or so. If this is not done to at least F6 then there will be a huge number or variations in any cross and that means a lot of pheno searching to find “the one”. Also in order to stabilise anything without ending up with depression you need large numbers of plants to select from; like hundreds, You can of course self a plant and keeping the parent recurrent, inbreed in a quick and dirty way, this is the fastest way to get reasonable stability, but the risk of inadvertently making recessive deleterious alleles (traits) dominant is higher with this approach. That said, this is a good approach if you are careful and keep seeds from each step and is much faster to end up with something semi stable.

  4. What I would typically do if I want or need to make something new is to identify a list of traits that I want, starting with solid structure and roots, good strong stems, Then things like growth rate, flowering time, disease/pest resistance, flower structure for the intended grow environment, i.e flower density is a negative for outside in a lot of the world etc. I would also be selecting for aroma and trichome development…I look for plants that start trichome development as early as possible, preferably on the pre flower calyx, the sooner they start the longer they have to accumulate.

  5. If you go down the route of stabilising something, how will you establish what the dominant and recessive traits are? What method will you use to stabilise a specific trait? Sometimes the simple rules of Mendelian inheritance apply, where traits are simple. But what about complex traits? These are far more common and how will you know which alleles are involved and how can you transfer a trait derived from a multiple alleles?
    Typically the answer would be, you grow a field of them and then through sheer weight of numbers somewhere amount the thousands of plants you ‘might’ find the exact combination you are looking for.

All of this is but a small number of considerations. If you go the F1 route, you can work out dominant and recessive traits pretty quickly, what you see is what you get more or less. It’s possible to spend a lot of time and end up going backwards with inbreeding, with F1’s you get the results in one fell swoop.

5 Likes
#101

That’s great, and well explained to someone who only took one genetics class in college. 4 and number 5 reaffirmed my thoughts and what I’m looking to do. I’ll be playing a numbers game, it just won’t with with the same seeds to start out with. I’ll keep popping regs until I have some good donors to start, but what you say makes a lot of sense and it wouldn’t surprise me if I end up there as I dig into the history of strains and the typical traits of certain regions and types.

Until I get there, is there a good cheater guide or chart as to the genealoy to a certain point in history?

Also, just so I make sure I get you… By starting with something stable I’m narrowing the possibilities and making it more likely to get the result I want, rather than searching for a needle in a haystack with a wider pool of traits?

1 Like
#102

Our very own OG is full of such useful information, the amount of knowledge and skills here are phenomenal and far more expansive than any book I’ve found.

Have a browse in the grow faq, it’s full of gems like this:

Exactly my friend, a line is stable when each of the progeny has the same alleles at the same loci…. When you breed with lines like this, you have known and consistent variables, meaning trait selection is easier Otherwise you end up in effect playing with variables about which you have no idea, any kind of whack stuff could and will come out, you may have some variations that produce very few trichomes for example, I have seen this numerous times from the dankest gear, most everything else is there, just hardly any resin glands🤷‍♂️

Of course it’s a double edged sword because not all ‘whack’ expressions will be bad, some may be amazing, but let’s say you get one in 50 that is exactly what you want, next round you will need 50, and perhaps you get 2 or 3 that don’t get culled and so on…. Pretty soon if you are not careful it’s easy to bottleneck this way, small numbers and heavy selection pressure etc, this all your eggs in one basket approach is not ideal and likely will make it difficult lock down traits imho, bigger populations are always better, but of course this is difficult in a grow tent…

2 Likes