Why so many regs?

It’s true but it’s a balancing act.

Do you know what a male looks like?
No.
Ok.
Are you in the position to manipulate light cycle?
No.
Ok then just grow auto fems.

11 Likes

This we can agree on. The act of selfing a plant does not increase the chances of a plant prone to intersex expression unless that trait was already present in the genes. I have a pheno of Tahoe x Urkle that I love to death, but she loves to toss nanners. She passes it on regardless of whether I’m selfing or crossing. She is just too good to give up, regardless of her inconsiderate tendency to jizz all over everything at around week 4 of flower… lol

2 Likes

Just my opinion, but I feel like autos are a better as fems. If you grow an auto, there is a potential transplant penalty - autos sometimes get into a funk about being transplanted and then never reach full potential. As a result, many people recommend that you plant directly into the final container (usually a 3 or 5 gallon grow bag, I guess).

So growing a group of 4 reg autos requires a bunch of 3 or 5 gallon bags. With photos, you can let them reveal their gender in a much smaller, space efficient pot and and then upscale. With autos, you want to upscale before they show gender, which is wasteful.

1 Like

I don’t have anything against fems… I had never really considered making fem work for my own gear until recently and that was brought on by how much I liked a specific plant.

2 Likes

Getting a little vial of local hobbyist regs from my grow shop was a really special experience, getting regs from OG members is similar. It was like…wow! Hard to explain, had a human child around the same time.

Sure, you can poison a plant with too much silver and it will freak out and change sex. But having a tent going with a male and shucking seeds is just amazing. To me photoreg “normal” seeds are the backbone of the OGTW over grow the world ethos.

Farmer Freeman EZXY tests make selection a lot easier and to me are worth the money.

2 Likes

How? i reverse 10 females, collect pollen, and then ‘open pollinate’ them with 10 different females,

or i use 10 males, collect pollen, and ‘open pollinate’ them with 10 females

By my understanding, both would be the same in regards of combinations and retained genetic diversity.
If i am wrong then please explain how… we are all of us still learning.
VG

3 Likes

Females don’t have a Y chromosome. Across creautres, critters, and plants males are more dynamic than females. Hitting a female with silver causes her to create XX pollen, does not turn her into a male.

1 Like

very good test for social services, to know if it’s prudent to let her kids ^^

1 Like

I understand that, much more now than before.

2 Likes

For me, and many of us I suspect, the hunt and the work that goes into it is half the fun.

Some people have no interest and just want to crop an ounce or whatever. And that’s fine. I don’t care how my car works, I just want it to go.

Some people just want a conversation piece. My FIL hosts students from around the world and his cannabis plant was a source of endless curiousity. He didn’t give a shit about yield and gave it all to me. It was big too, a 6 footer.

But I prefer regs. They suit me better.

5 Likes

double post

You need different tools in a toolbox for different jobs, I think that sums it up in a nutshell :man_shrugging: nobody wants a box full of hammers, depends on your end game perhaps. Trying to to find a recessive trait ? you might want males that hold all of the genetic makeup and large numbers. Once you’ve found it, you might want to self that to improve your chances of finding it in the offspring ? Something along those lines if I’ve read correctly. Hearing about all the plans to make plants sterile made me want to collect regs in case. Paranoia perhaps. I still have not found the use for autos personally but im sure some have. Here’s a male im eager to see what he will offer to some of my favorites. On the other hand I have 4 fem seeds left of my top fave of all time. I don’t want to introduce anything new into in hopes of more of the same so I’ll self it.

6 Likes

How did you come up with the idea that S1 will be a good bet?

S1 is technically straight forwarded F2. 99.9999/100times this F2 will vary extremely alot, especially in cannabis scene where most of breeders haven’t stabilized their lines.
That means finding a killer keeper from S1 of rare recessive elite cutting is slim to non.

If it is outcrossed, regardless reversed or regular pollination, the genetic of elite cut will be diluted as you said, yes.
But if the elite cut was real rare killer, you are only getting worse quality from S1. Almost 100% guaranteed. While if you look for outcross of rare killer line, you have some chance finding a killer.

Ofc, if you grow S1 of mediocre cutting, you’ have fairly good chance finding a better one than the mother plant.
Don’t think that’s what you would like to do that tho.

2 Likes

That’s absolutely how it works

Of course a y chromosome provides extra diversity. It’s an entire set of genetic code that doesn’t exist In a selfed plant. Not to mention the unique ways that it crosses to the female. Think of human siblings. Same parents, same genetic code going into forming them, yet they can vary wildly in how those sets or genetics express themselves. If you chemically force the mom to produce semen and impregnate herself, you’ve eliminated half the genetic coding that determines the expressions of the offspring. I really don’t understand how this is not readily apparent.

5 Likes

I’ve thought about this a lot, being a pollen-chucker turning breeder, and decided my strategy isn’t going to be choosing males. I have been choosing a large number of males to breed with selected females.

That way, I feel I can improve using the females, but retain diversity with the males. I’m sure that’s slower but at least I’m not filtering everything I haven’t seen from the current generation.

3 Likes

You can cross different females to get the same effect. The cannabis Y-Chromesome does contain more data then the X-Chromosome. But the important data is the autosome part of the chromosome and cannabis male does in fact contain less autosome data then the X-Chromosome. A huge piece of the data in the Y-chromosome is a long chain of a repeating pattern.

What I want to point out with this is that the xx/xx vs xx/xy combinations doesn’t really matter on the genetic level.

It’s also unfair to compare plants to animals due to the massive difference.

Selfing, fem filial, fem out cross, regular filial and regular out cross all have their pros and cons. But I think it’s important when we discuss about FEM seeds that we don’t only talk about selfing and comparing filial crossing to selfing is a discussion on it own, but it really doesn’t have to do with reversing a female cannabis plant and use that pollen on another female cannabis plant.

Pz :v:t2:

5 Likes

I never claimed outcrossing using fems couldn’t produce new variations. The discussion was initially focused on the production of fem seeds, which is usually accomplished by selfing a female thus, less genetic diversity. You can (and I have many times) use females that came from fem seeds for breeding. I was never questioning that.

3 Likes

Also, it’s not unfair in the context of what I was saying. Anyone that has bred a male and female from different lineage can attest to the fact that the siblings can vary wildly in cannabis. Particularly in the F2 in my experience.

1 Like

I would argument for that most fems in the commercial space are not S1s, since it’s much more profitable to reverse one plant and cross it to 20 different elite females. Thus making 20 new strains.

It’s unfair because animals and plants are very different and the majority of plants doesn’t even have a Y-chromosome. So pretty much every plant you eat and have around you are xx/xx.

Pz :v:t2:

6 Likes