Breeding an ultra-stealth autoflowerer?

Hi, I have a few thoughts that I would like some feedback on. The idea I have is about breeding a strain that looks as little like cannabis as possible. One for the guerilla growers, where stealth is of critical importance. If such a strain could be bred, I bet it would sell like hot cakes.

For stealth, small autoflowering strains are the way to go because they are small enough to blend in with the weeds from a distance. So the base for designing an ultra-stealth strain has to come from an autoflowerer. It also happens to allow early harvesting, so there is less chance of them being discovered.

Now that plant size and time frame are taken care of, the next things to look at are the distinguishing features of cannabis that can give it's presence away. They are ofcourse sight and smell.

With regards to smell, perhaps there are already AF strains that are low odour. Maybe this can be improved upon in the future by breeding only the least smelly phenotypes with eachother.

With regards to sight, colas are a distinguishing feature of cannabis but it might be very difficult to alter cola formations without decreasing yield. Perhaps a more bushy phenotype that didn't form one main cola could be selected for. However, when the plants are extremely short, a central cola stands out much less than a central cola on a tall strain. I am not sure whether this trait would be worthwhile changing for a short autoflowering strain. Although it would definately be something to look at improving after the other distinguishing features have been taken care of.

The next and, in my opinion, most important visual traits to look at changing for ultra-stealth, are leaf shape and leaf size. I have seen pics of several autoflowering strains and most of them have large leaves that are a dead give-away because it helps advertise the unique shape of cannabis leaves. They stand out even from a distance. To change this trait, a strain with the smallest fan leaves possible needs to be selected and bred with something like lowryder. Selecting the offspring with the smallest leaves and imbreeding it until this trait, along with autoflowering becomes stabilized. Perhaps someone knows of a strain which has very small fan leaves?

After this, the strain could go onto the next stage of development. Changing the leaf shape. For this, a strain called Ducksfoot, created by Wally Duck could be bred with the developing AF strain. Ducksfoot has webbed leaf blades that look quite different from normal cannabis leaves. This trait could be bred into the developing AF strain and then stabilized with the other new traits.

Pics of Ducksfoot below.

http://www.icmag.com/gallery/data/500/73blades-med.jpg
http://www.icmag.com/gallery/data/500/7adleafs-med.jpg

I would really like some feedback on my ideas. Especially from guys like MDanzig. Maybe you should try developing an ultra-stealth strain yourself MDanzig. It would take several stages of development to breed each trait into the strain but I bet seeds from each stage of development would be very popular. I think there are alot of outdoor growers that are dieing for a strain that looks as little like cannabis as possible. Extremely small plants with uncharacteristicly shaped fan leaves of a very small size. With very low odour and (perhaps, not sure) a lack of a centralized bud formation.


Gunnaknow

Here's an experiment I did concerning autoflower traits. Pure ruderalis seed requires freezing and aging for up to a year to get acceptable germination rates this is a natural defense to prevent seed from germinating late in the season and not getting a chance to finish the reproductive cycle. The sample group in the following experiment was by no means large enough to be conclusive. In the batch of lowryder seeds I purchased I noticed that unlike most seeds lowryder and f1 hybrids made with a lowryder female have to be aged for up to a year to achieve their maximum germination rates. Seeds germinated a week after removal from the parental flower like ruderalis seed germinated sporadically with some of them not cracking until 2 weeks later. The total percentage of those that germed even after 2 weeks of germing was still about 25%. Aging increased the germ rates. After 6 months of aging it went to about 50% and a year of aging 85%. A fresh batch of f1 hybrid seed made with a lowryder female and a blueberry male were put in germ for about 5 days . Those that germed were grown out. The rest that didn't germ were dried off and aged. Among the f1s that germed from the fresh seed none were autoflower, however the ones that were dried off and then aged all were autoflower. Of course the ones that didn't germ got dried off then aged had poor germination rates because they had gotten wet in the first germination attempt. If these results hold true it means that among f1 hybrid seed from a lowryder male every seed that will not germ unless aged will grow into an autoflower plant and could have some use in a project breeding autoflower plants. Male plants are hard to tell if they have genes to produce autoflowering females because many non af strains produce af males. Another thing I must mention is that it is not uncommon in plant breeding for some traits (trait a) to show up another trait (trait b) must also be present. So even if the plant has the genes for trait a unless it has the genes for trait b to be present trait a will not show up. This might (still not sure) be the case with autoflowering and seed that require aging. If a plant has the genes that require the seed to be aged to germinate it won't require the aging unless the plant is also autoflowering. However the autoflowering trait can be present without having the seed aging trait.

I started a similar, less technical thread like this here but the focus was on developing a Front Yard strain.

Neveretheless, 2 more things to consider: so called Australian Bastard Cannabis, or Dizzy, which looks nothing like pot, but is apparently rather weak and requires very high temps. Also, a purple strain will look less like what people expect weed to look like, so that can help.

Maybe consider Biddy Early as the source of autoflowering? It's strong and tasty, unlike what i have heard about Lowryder (but i don't know first hand).

Wow THCV, that Dizzy (Australian Bastard Cannabis) looks much less like cannabis than even Ducksfoot. I think this is definately the strain to choose to breed with a 100% AF strain like Lowryder, Masterlow or Powerstout. It would make it so much easier to breed an ultra-stealth strain because it would achieve the two main objectives in one go. Reducing leaf size and changing their shape. Hell, it doesn't even have fan leaves, perfect!

I am now convinced that this is the way to go. Thanks for the heads up on Dizzy. The problem is actually aquiring the seeds though. It looks like a very difficult strain to get hold of. MDanzig, I hope you find these ideas interesting. Imagine Lowryder/Masterlow/Powerstout x Dizzy, then stabilized for Dizzy traits and re-stabilized for AF traits. It would be so damn popular with guerilla growers.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1651.html
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1485.html

gunnaknow said:

Hi, I have a few thoughts that I would like some feedback on. The idea I have is about breeding a strain that looks as little like cannabis as possible. One for the guerilla growers, where stealth is of critical importance. If such a strain could be bred, I bet it would sell like hot cakes.
Gunnaknow

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Yeah, I posted up a similar idea in THCV's thread a while back. And I think this a great idea as well. My thought was that anybody that's doing large scale breeding should save the occasional mutant plant that pops up. Then, mutants could be inbred or crossed with some of the strains mentioned above or even traded between breeders for more crosses. I would bet just about anything that this is something that could be accomplished over a period of time!!

Bh

alot of my NL bagseed beans go mutant...

K1, I think that is down to all of the inbreeding that NL underwent to be created.

A for planst that dont look much like cannabis check out ducksfoot and there is a red mutant clone if you can find it.... FOr the autoflowering strains check out greens guerilla gold and he made some nice crosses as well...

looks like Dizzy seeds might be available this year, but who knows. This guy has to let the genetics out so that other breeders can take a whack at it!

http://www . hg 420 .com/showthread.php?t=16493

fix the link when you cut and paste (take out the spaces)

Order some Lowryder or Lowryder crosses and breed them. It will take some time and a few crosses but it's possible to pass the autoflowering trait from LR to other strains. Master Low is an example of one of them. It's Master Kush x Lowryder. It was inbred and backcrossed several times and it has 100% stable autoflower traits. These plants stay at about a foot in heighth and finish from seed to bud in like 60-70 days.

master low, eh? sounds like i may be tryin those outdoor next season!

The Dopest said:

master low, eh? sounds like i may be tryin those outdoor next season!

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Me too!

There's a bunch of LowRyder crosses available from the JointDoctor himself (the breeder of LowRyder) here.

I know seedboutique has a LowRyder category but it is empty right now.

Nontheless, there are some interesting hybrids above, including LR crosses with NYC Diesel, Mazar, Neville's Haze & Santa Maria.

Note that this won't yield any AF plants in the first generation but that the F2's will give around 25% auto-flowerers.

Mdanzig is also doing some interesting work in this area. His MasterLow is apparently significantly more potent than LowRyder and only still around 70 days from seed.

EDIT: After reading Zamalito's post below, my statement re 25% being auto-flower needs to be reconsidered it seems. Z's claims re the aging of seeds sounds crucial info and does not seem that widely known over at highbred.net, which is the online home of LowRyder.

bongoman..have you orderd from them? with a CC? thanks

I know that mdanzig (from og) started working with LR when it first came out(couple years ago?) and was finally able to breed masterlow and powerstout into pretty(if not very) stable strains. If I remember correctly, autoflowering, at least on lowryder, is recessive. It would probably take alot of time, frustration, and hard work to breed the autoflowering from lowryder(I use this because it autoflowers 100% of the time), and the webbed leaves of ducksfoot into one strain. Also, I can imagine that you'd want a short plant, and as far as I have seen, ducksfoot can GROW(but would probably be easier to get ahold of than "dizzy"). Will this work pay off? More than you can imagine.

isn't ducksfoot really stinky during flower? not very stealthy? could be a prob, but maybe not so much outdoors.

Here is your ultimate stealth plant. Have Mdanzig go back and restart his LR and Ducksfoot, Then get hops plant or some pollen from it at least and stablize that strain.

We know that hops can be done:
http://www.highbred.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=710&hl=hops

Now we just need to perfect recessive traits and you can have a plant with a hops growth pattern and Ducksfoot leaves that autoflowers.

Might take you 10-20 generations, but I believe it can be done. Who's up for it?

that post is from sept 2005 dont you think he would have posted again if the seeds germed?

If you look further into the post you will see that the seeds did sprout and that there are pictures of the cross.

Yes, I agree a super stealth auto-flowering plant would be awesome. It takes a lot of work, and Ducksfoot X Lowryder project stopped dead in its track because Ducksfoot is very, very picky indoors. I am now working on Blue Streak, Dj Shorts original Blueberry crossed with Master Low. This will eventually be the best AF strain available.