Male pheno hunt (?)...

[Bebopman]

Hi... im really new at making crosses. I did a few but im not happy with the results, and i find myself learning that i didnt take the best male of the batch... so... heres my question.


can someone tell me your experiences with seed banks and good males to find???

My goal is not to call myself a breeder or anything but i want to learn and try to have my own stuff so i dont have to buy seeds. I started taking clones a few months ago so im looking forr some cool beans to pop in order to start a "pheno hunt", and find a really good male.. and from there.. start doing mixes.


thank you very much in anticipation and forgive my english, im a spanish speaker.

Cheers.

 

[GoatCheese]

You just want good seed lines in general. If there are lots of nice females in the line then there are lots of nice males too.
If we are talking about trying to pick out the best plants when they are still in veg then there isn’t much difference in picking out a male or a female = a nice plant is a nice plant regardless of sex.

You want:
- nice looks/stature/vigour/flower production

- nice, strong stem rub-smells

- You can get an idea of the resin content by looking at the stems and new leaves/growth tips with a 30x or 60x magnifying loop. You can already see differences in resin content between seedlings on the first true leaves with a 30x loop, so just after a week since they popped out of the ground.

- And you want sex stable plants ..non-hermie. Males have intersex traits just like females do and will start growing female pistils in bloom if they have intersex traits in them

So, in short; you want nice lines in general that are pheno/chemo-typically fairly stable, that are also sexually stable. I’m not too familiar with most modern lines, so I can’t give you much advice which one to go for, but there are lot of unstable polyhybrids out there, so you just have to ask around what are the better ones in general.

 

[Bebopman]

You just want good seed lines in general. If there are lots of nice females in the line then there are lots of nice males too.
If we are talking about trying to pick out the best plants when they are still in veg then there isn’t much difference in picking out a male or a female = a nice plant is a nice plant regardless of sex.

You want:
- nice looks/stature/vigour/flower production

- nice, strong stem rub-smells

- You can get an idea of the resin content by looking at the stems and new leaves/growth tips with a 30x or 60x magnifying loop. You can already see differences in resin content between seedlings on the first true leaves with a 30x loop, so just after a week since they popped out of the ground.

- And you want sex stable plants ..non-hermie. Males have intersex traits just like females do and will start growing female pistils in bloom if they have intersex traits in them

So, in short; you want nice lines in general that are pheno/chemo-typically fairly stable, that are also sexually stable. I’m not too familiar with most modern lines, so I can’t give you much advice which one to go for, but there are lot of unstable polyhybrids out there, so you just have to ask around what are the better ones in general.

Thank you very much! My idea is to chase phenos and have some variety so i dont have to buy different seeds... i was looking for some haze, OG, and some other family like skunk or something i guess and make a lot of crosses that will be viable. Im not so interested in stabilize but in get some cool stuff to look for... and if i like something... stabilize it... but females are so easy to check the traits, but males... thats why i want some info on a strain that produce cool studs for pollinating some other stuff haha


cheer and thank you very much for the answer... and you can recommend what you want.. im all eyes

 

[GoatCheese]

Yea, i haven’t bought or grown any of the modern hype strains, and in recent years I have focused mainly on growing the seeds I have made myself along with my keeper cuts.

Maybe for a Haze hybrid G13Haze from MrNice Seeds. There are great Haze effects on some of them. Check out MrNice Seeds forums for some grow reports. You can get these seeds fairly cheaply at MrNice auction site which you can find via their web site. Even for as low as under 20 euros per pack, so you can afford to get few packs to look thru.

ACE Seeds could have nice breeding material for sativa leaning hybrids and some of their lines have been inbred for some generations but I haven’t grown their stuff yet. But a lot of people like their stuff.
::
One thing you could do if you find bunch of males that look ok in veg but you don’t know which one(s) to pick is..
Take cuts from each one of them, give them a short veg in 1 litre pots of soil and flower them for 3-4 weeks to see what kind of tops/flowers they start developing, cut them down and then flower the male(s) you think is the best and make seeds with it.
Males are just like females in the way that some develop nicer colas than others and some have better calyx to leaf ratio than others.

Here’s what a male with nice tops and good calyx to leaf ratio looks like. It's not a huge yielder but it still has nice tops.
This is an Afghan Kush from World Of Seeds:
Flowered in a 1,5 litres of potting soil under a 75 watt CFL light

::

Also, you can actually smoke test males too. The effect isn’t going to be super strong cause they lack the flower and resin production of females, but it is strong enough to get an idea what kind of effect they are going to bring in to the cross.

You can smoke the tops of males in a bong or pipe. the male flowers and stems of the tops are surprisingly smooth smoke cause there isn’t much chlorophyll in them. Cut off and dry the tops, leave small leaves and the younger/thinner stems with them; cut them to small bits and shake of the loose pollen and then just into a bong and fire it up. 3-4 proper lung fulls should do so that you’ll feel a mild effect.
..the idea isn’t to get stoned by smoking male flowers/tops but to get an idea how the effect is like.

 

[Bebopman]

Yea, i haven’t bought or grown any of the modern hype strains, and in recent years I have focused mainly on growing the seeds I have made myself along with my keeper cuts.

Maybe for a Haze hybrid G13Haze from MrNice Seeds. There are great Haze effects on some of them. Check out MrNice Seeds forums for some grow reports. You can get these seeds fairly cheaply at MrNice auction site which you can find via their web site. Even for as low as under 20 euros per pack, so you can afford to get few packs to look thru.

ACE Seeds could have nice breeding material for sativa leaning hybrids and some of their lines have been inbred for some generations but I haven’t grown their stuff yet. But a lot of people like their stuff.
::
One thing you could do if you find bunch of males that look ok in veg but you don’t know which one(s) to pick is..
Take cuts from each one of them, give them a short veg in 1 litre pots of soil and flower them for 3-4 weeks to see what kind of tops/flowers they start developing, cut them down and then flower the male(s) you think is the best and make seeds with it.
Males are just like females in the way that some develop nicer colas than others and some have better calyx to leaf ratio than others.

Here’s what a male with nice tops and good calyx to leaf ratio looks like. It's not a huge yielder but it still has nice tops.
This is an Afghan Kush from World Of Seeds:
Flowered in a 1,5 litres of potting soil under a 75 watt CFL light

::

Also, you can actually smoke test males too. The effect isn’t going to be super strong cause they lack the flower and resin production of females, but it is strong enough to get an idea what kind of effect they are going to bring in to the cross.

You can smoke the tops of males in a bong or pipe. the male flowers and stems of the tops are surprisingly smooth smoke cause there isn’t much chlorophyll in them. Cut off and dry the tops, leave small leaves and the younger/thinner stems with them; cut them to small bits and shake of the loose pollen and then just into a bong and fire it up. 3-4 proper lung fulls should do so that you’ll feel a mild effect.
..the idea isn’t to get stoned by smoking male flowers/tops but to get an idea how the effect is like.

Im getting the best explained method ever with you. Thank you very much for all the time you are taking to write this down and share your experience.

I was checking mainly on the indicas with Ace Seeds, and the sativas the best looking for a pheno hunting i guess is the Nepal Mist. I Thought about PCK but i heard everything you cross with it you get a PCK dominant plant forever haha.. maybe some resinous, medium size structure, and flavors of the Balkh or Kashmir.


I was thinking also a Rare Dankness, Scott's OG.. i've heard you can get some cool breeding material from those males... but even if the best weed i ever smoke was an OG Kush in Utrecht Netherlands, im not too much into de OGs, they're all kind the same... im not saying is not good breeding material, but im looking mostly in other direction... if OG crosses is on the table, i guess Black Rasperry from Bodhi, Archive Seeds, or something like that will make their purpose... but i want something else to work on.

Im not that good to tame some Real seed Co, beans, or something like that... i already thinking on the Mystical Punch from NemeSeeds for the next purchase, but i want something else as i already said.




thanks again and im listen to any other advise... i will check on Mr Nice as well..

Cheers!

 

[MJPassion]

So long as I have a choice, I never use only one male from a particular seed line.
A good looking male (just like a good looking female) is not an indicator of what a particular plant will pass down when using it for breeding.

The more males you use the better your chances of finding something unique in the group.

Most of the time I collect pollen from several individuals and pollinate individual branches from each female I'm making seeds on. Doing this, I can toss (or pass on to somebody else) any seeds from a male that did not satisfy MY desires. I typically only do open pollinations when dealing with seed lines that are F3 or more down the filial line.

Goatcheese gives good advice for testing your males as well.

Be careful too. Smoking cannabis isn't addictive but making seeds is! Especially if you have good luck in your first couple of tries.

 

[Bebopman]

So long as I have a choice, I never use only one male from a particular seed line.
A good looking male (just like a good looking female) is not an indicator of what a particular plant will pass down when using it for breeding.

The more males you use the better your chances of finding something unique in the group.

Most of the time I collect pollen from several individuals and pollinate individual branches from each female I'm making seeds on. Doing this, I can toss (or pass on to somebody else) any seeds from a male that did not satisfy MY desires. I typically only do open pollinations when dealing with seed lines that are F3 or more down the filial line.

Goatcheese gives good advice for testing your males as well.

Be careful too. Smoking cannabis isn't addictive but making seeds is! Especially if you have good luck in your first couple of tries.

Thank you very much... im geting the idea about not using just one male. i have a little space, but the iidea of polinizing jst a few branches, sound a good idea.. but... in order to pheno hunt, i must open the line genetically speaking, am i right??

i had a lucky lady in the first cross, so i continue with a male of that batch, without many consideration toward other males in that line. I made the Peyote Purple x Sour Power OG and i got a really cool lady, the other 2 where not bad, but clearly not something to keep... I kept the good one, but i made crosses with her "best" brother (or it was on my newbie and humble eyes) with my Silver Fire keeper... and from THAT batch, i got a lot of bad ladies... all with a lot of vigour and productive, but not too much resin or smell (except for ONLY 1 that has a distinctive haze, sweet lime, smell... but its on her 4th week of flowering, so i dont have too many expectations anyway seeing ther 5 sisters flowering)..


thank you very much again I apologize for my rudimentary english.

 

[MJPassion]

Thank you very much... im geting the idea about not using just one male. i have a little space, but the iidea of polinizing jst a few branches, sound a good idea.. but... in order to pheno hunt, i must open the line genetically speaking, am i right??

i had a lucky lady in the first cross, so i continue with a male of that batch, without many consideration toward other males in that line. I made the Peyote Purple x Sour Power OG and i got a really cool lady, the other 2 where not bad, but clearly not something to keep... I kept the good one, but i made crosses with her "best" brother (or it was on my newbie and humble eyes) with my Silver Fire keeper... and from THAT batch, i got a lot of bad ladies... all with a lot of vigour and productive, but not too much resin or smell (except for ONLY 1 that has a distinctive haze, sweet lime, smell... but its on her 4th week of flowering, so i dont have too many expectations anyway seeing ther 5 sisters flowering)..


thank you very much again I apologize for my rudimentary english.

Opening a line up to the F2 generation will allow recessive traits to reveal themselves. It could take several grows to find the real gems depending on the number of seeds you can pop at any given time.
Genetic re-combinations are fascinating to observe.

Keep the best & toss the rest.
Sometimes that's a difficult thing to do with limited space. especially if you are hunting for the effects of the finished product.

 

[troutman]

Opening a line up to the F2 generation will allow recessive traits to reveal themselves.

I've always said the F2 is where a person has to go to find that special plant.

Good Luck.

 

[browntrout]

There is good information from others here, when starting out with new lines you want to grow as many females and males as possible to get an understanding of phenotypes. Stem rub is a great indication for matching phenos, but not the whole truth.

You will want some more stable lines either BX1,2,3, F3+ etc. This will provide more safety in picking a good male if you are unfamiliar with the lines and progeny. Try and find a known breeding line if you can, something that is proven.

If there is a breeder out there you really enjoy and they consistently offer hybrids of a certain strain and the pure line, that would be a good starting point.

 

[GoatCheese]

About recessive traits/phenos..

If you know the line you’re working with well enough you can actually see recessive traits in the parent plants (first generation/F1) themselves= see parts of the phenotypes it’s made out of, and you can also smell recessive traits in the aroma profile.
..of course you can’t see all the recessive traits/phenos the plant is going to breed but you can already see/smell some of those traits/phenos if you know the line well enough

 

[marijuanamat]

The best male i've ever had the pleasure or breeding with was a single serious seeds chronic. The male flowers on it were all covered in trichomes, and i've not seen a male produce trichomes on this level. I used that 1 male in all my chronic hybrids. By crossing 6 haze fems with the chronic male it took the flowering down from 26 weeks down to 14 weeks and the buds are huge and quite dense. Haze is a weird plant, it takes 6 months just to get to maturity than when i went from 13/11 to 11/13 it started to flower very slowly as i like to keep the timing as close to tropical flowering times as possible. 1 year it took from seed to harvest, so if you ever grow original haze take cutting or 3 of each plant after they'er big enough to take clones and force them to flower. This will show their sex a lot quicker. Check out my seeds at crazy x seeds on seedbay.

 

[PolyChucker]

Picking a male is a crapshoot until you’ve worked the line for several generations, inbreeding the best siblings and hopefully the females keep getting better and more uniform, then you can guess their male siblings are more likely to be good.
I started with some free seeds from a friend that were an accident in his grow room. The seeds are very low quality to start with but I’ve been selecting for frost, vigor, smell and effect mainly and I’m at F3 and the plants are starting to look pretty good. For example, the first gen there were very few with good frostiness like 2%, now most are very frosty, because i selected a frosty plant at the beginning and keep selecting for that - which also helps smell, taste and potency. But I still don’t have the crazy growth rates of most professional strains, which are supposed to be like 1 foot tall after one month (on 24hr light then switch to 18/6). For the F4 I can reasonably expect faster growth and better smell, frost, potency, taste and effect because I keep selecting for those and I have a rating system and the good traits keep stacking up as I go through selection and inbreeding. Recently I got spider mites and noticed about half of them get afflicted pretty bad, and the other half are fine, maybe because they have thick leaves which can also take more light intensity - you just have to be sort of scientific and watch them and take notes and have a rating system in order to make sure you’re headed the right direction.

 

[PolyChucker]

One analogy that comes to mind is each seed is like pulling a card from a deck - if you get a face card let’s say that’s a “good plant”. Each good plant you get, take a clone and keep it in a veg area, but also pollinate a couple buds - I use colored zip ties to show what male pollinated that bud. Then in the next gen, breeding the best plants, you should have maybe twice as many “good plants” but still maybe only 20% of the seeds turn into good plants. Pretty quickly you have hundreds of seeds, and as you sprout them you can try to figure out what turned out the best and hopefully you have a backup clone of that male and female in the veg room. If one of your males seemed to make all the females better, that’s progeny testing and now you know you have a good male. You can keep keep sibling breeding as a general strategy but also backcross to a male or female from earlier if you determine it’s very special. You won’t know it’s “very special” until you’ve sprouted like 200 seeds and watched them grow up.
I would recommend starting with regular m-f seeds from a strain that you like or has good reviews and try inbreeding that a few generations to see how that goes. Professional seeds should already be worked so it should be easier to lock in one pheno over a few generations. Like with C99 see if you can lock in the pineapple smell or something like that. Mr. Greenjeans got a few bagseeds from Maui Wowie and was able to lock in a cherry pheno that he turned into Cherry Bomb, inbred over 20 generations and still supposedly very vigorous. You should try to create something like this or at least go 3-5 generations before outcrossing. The more work you do to your first line the better the outcross will turn out

 

[marijuanamat]

I've been growing and breeding since 1995 so i think i know what i'm doing, i've been running crazy x seeds since around 2003. It's hard to do large grows as i'm in the UK. God willing i'm hoping the law will change soon so i can start running up to 1000 plants at a time indoors and out. I've never used feminized seeds in the past for breeding as they tend to put out a few bananas in late bloom from the plants i've grown out. At the moment i'm working with Zamel x lemon stinky and a (G13Haze x lavender) x (G13Hashplant) and G13 hashplant x lemon stinky which has the most vile aroma i've ever smelt. Heres a few pics.
First the (G13haze x lavender) x (G13hashplant) indoors and outdoors.

 

[marijuanamat]

Heres a few Zamel x lemon stinky.