Breeding standards..?

[Deleted member 75858]

Why don't we hold cannabis breeders to the same standards we hold breeders in pretty much every other field.....I've heard many people say because of the legality and risk but I just can't buy that, it has to be much deeper then that...opinions...?

 

[SuperConductor]

Because most consumers aren't aware of the standards in other areas of agriculture? I bet they'd be surprpised. But it is mainly down to illegality, it can't be easy to breed properly nowadays (must have been difficult in the recent past too). I believe corn breeders select from hundreds of thousands of plants and the strains are stable and uniform as in each plant the same as the next every time can't see happening with cannabis.

 

[IWanaGetHiSoHi]

The weed speaks for itself ... the individual sets the standards ...

 

[indifferent]

It is down to the illegality. Buy some F1 vegetable seeds and observe the stability and quality, compare that to cannabis seeds sold commercially and you will quickly realise what a joke most cannabis seeds sold really are.

Once legalisation occurs, most of what is sold now will quickly become obsolete, no loss because 90% of commercial seeds are junk imho.

People don't realise how good cannabis can be so they don't realise what crap is being sold.

The big problem is that by the time legalisation occurs we will have lost so many genes that it will be hard to create high quality again and will take a lot of work. The original genepools of Mexico and Thailand are destroyed for instance.

 

[amoril]

It is down to the illegality. Buy some F1 vegetable seeds and observe the stability and quality, compare that to cannabis seeds sold commercially and you will quickly realise what a joke most cannabis seeds sold really are.

Once legalisation occurs, most of what is sold now will quickly become obsolete, no loss because 90% of commercial seeds are junk imho.

People don't realise how good cannabis can be so they don't realise what crap is being sold.

The big problem is that by the time legalisation occurs we will have lost so many genes that it will be hard to create high quality again and will take a lot of work. The original genepools of Mexico and Thailand are destroyed for instance.

that encompasses both of the previous answers, and IMO, is the most complete, cause theyre all right

once the market is opened, and free from legal worries, I think the breeding practices will change drastically.

 

[lost in a sea]

you obviously cant be schooled in breeding cannabis, i takes alot of experience to even know why your crossing things together.... if you dont know why, then your probably just making beans for your self.......if your just making em for money,usually from elites, then imo, your a pollen chucker....

pollen chuckers dont do much work, so usually dont charge as much money as say someone like REZ or DJ shorts for example, but its your job as the consumer to check what work the "breeder" has done, and therefore if the genetics warrant the cost....

i dont know where im going with this though, proper wasted

 

[B. Friendly]

we don't want to become homeogeneous either. Plus who's gonna share all their secrets and since it is underground good luck.

 

[amoril]

we don't want to become homeogeneous either. Plus who's gonna share all their secrets and since it is underground good luck.

thats a fair point, about being too homogenous, unless there were a fair amount of options that were homogenous for other traits, in which case, it might be ok

but youre probably right, in that its the variation that often brings about something unique, and memorable. For example, if BOG had succeeded in making a truly homogenous BOGBubble, with no new genetic combinations to discover, then he wouldnt have found Sour Bubble, which many seem to feel is an improvement in several ways from the original BogBubble.

 

[Tom Hill]

I agree but before you guys all break out the pitchforks - the breeding of cannabis is much more complex (mathematically) than anything else you might want to compare it to. How do those tomatoes taste, let alone how do they smoke. I have seen F1's that were like clones and I have seen progeny segregate like friggen octoploids. -T

 

[indifferent]

Hi Tom, first off, you would be in the 10% of comemrcial seed makers who are producing high quality imho! You, DJ Short, Shantibaba, ACE, Cannabiogen, not many others I can think of.

Homogenity has been here for a long time, blame the years of selections made under HPS only in Holland, selections based on vigour, yield, bag appeal, short flowering time, commercial motives. Also, there are a handful of cuts that are in most of the commerical lines - Skunk, NL, Afghani, Haze how many strains contain some of those? They don't start seeds in Holland, just recycle the same old cuts and males.

I know breeding cannabis is not easy, tomatoes are much different, but is breeding cannabis all that much more complex than say, racehorse breeding or orchid breeding?

One of the largest, if not THE largest selections ever done in cannabis breeding was the skunk #1 grow Sam did in Holland in the mid 80s, i think he said he did 200 each of 192 different parental lines to make selections from, by my maths that is somewhere around 38 thousand plants.

38000 sounds a lot, but it's just a decent sized Dutch commercial greenhouse setup and a small number compared to the populations used to breed other, legal crops.

As soon as it's legal, people could work with hundreds of thousands of plants and in a few years could do more good work than was done in the last 30 years of underground breeding.

Even more important is that breeding requires the sun, only under the sun does cannabis fully realise it;s potential for production of many of the constituents substances - the flavonoids, terpenpoids, carotenoids and accessory cannabinods plus others. Indoors you are not getting a true expression of the genes which is always going to skew your selections. You must always remember than phenotype = genotype + environment and indoors, the plants that perform best in terms of vigour, health, growth are those which are putting more energy into physical growth than they are into production of the goodies I mentioned. Make you selections based on performance under HPS and you end up reducing quality in favour of yield and adaptation to indoor conditions. Inevitably, this has lead to a reduction in quality of all the indoor bred lines that haven't been worked under the sun for a long time, if at all.

Finally, one big thing that i am eagerly awaiting after legalisation is that all the fake so-called breeders who rip everyone off all the time will be driven out of business. Some sickening examples of the way these people work:

** Bought some bulk seeds from some guys in Spain who are knocking out loads of fems for various companies and sold them for 160ukp a packet with some made up tale of how it was bred. Exact same seeds are available from another company for a quarter of that price.

** Took a classic strain, made f2s and claimed they had bred it themselves from Haze Bros Haze an an Heirloom sativa from Michoacan. When called on their BS started issuing threats to out the real identities of people online.

** Fell out with their breeder who then left, taking his parental stock with him. Bought in bulk inferior seeds made outdoors by a guy who has good outdoor growing skills but very poor breeding abilities and sold them in the same packets as their most famous cup winning strain. Still claiming to this day they sell the original and their new breeder likes to tell tales about his boss strain hunting the parents in the early 90s in Brazil.

** Bought seeds from the ex-wife of the original breeder, moved to another country, claimed he had bred the strain himself and sold it to unsuspecting Dutch businessmen for a LOT of money.

** Entered a 20 year old Haze hybrid cutting in the HTCC, won first prize then got on stage and made a passionate speech about having bred the strain from landraces in the middle of the jungle in some exotic country.

** Crossed a bagseed from some buds bought in the GHS shop to a male that wasn't selected, was merely the only seed that popped and sold the seeds for a huge price then made up a story about breeding it himself from Jamaican and Laotian sativas.

** Sold all the stock of a very popular seedline, contacted the breeder to buy more, was told no more were being made so got someone to make f2s from the last few original seeds and sold them as originals.

** Had a white supremacist junkie make f2s of all the sensi seeds strains then sold them as originals. (karma got this dude though)

** Selfed a cutting well known for it's ability to turn hermaphrodite and sold the seeds claiming he had carried out proper selfing techniques that ensured no hermies, even posted pictures of the mother cutting clearly showing male flowers on her and when people spotted them claimed his selfing techniques would mean none of the offpring had any male flowers.

** A grower decided to get into breeding and made some seeds, posted amazing pictures of the mother plant to create hype, then proved he while a great grower, was no breeder as the seeds he produced were very pale and immature, sold them at a high price claiming they had great germ rates. Sent in a second batch of seeds that were even worse and the seller finally refused to sell them.

** Sold seeds of a line they knew often refused to flower, when hundreds of complaints came in about huge plants that would refuse to flower and just kept growing they ignored them and just changed the seeds being put in those packets with no acknowledgment of the problems or mention of the change in the seeds sold under that name.

Those are just off the top of my head, all of those would wind you up in either court or jail in any legal industry.

It's just my opinion, but apart from Tom, DJ, Shanti and a very small number of others, most people involved in the seed biz are outright fakes and fraudsters, many of them are very unpleasant characters with zero ethics, but you would never know it from their public persona. One guy has spent 20 years growing his hair long and not washing very often just so people think he's a true eco-hippie. Truth is, he's nothing of the kind, just a guy who chose to follow a career of fakery and fraudsterism but can grow decent pot.

Things need to change, but they won't until the legal situation changes.

 

[englishrick]

tom is spot-on about the math,,,,,

but i think you guys might be under estimating indoor hydro,,,,,,,,,growing in tents is the future,,,,,,,,target inviroments make a big difference

Candidate solutions to the optimization problem play the role of individuals in a population, and the fitness function determines the environment within which the solutions "live"

 

[indifferent]

Indoor hydro is crap, growing indoors will die out as soon as legalisation occurs.

There is no comparison between an indoor chemically fed HPS lit plant and one grown under the sun in the dirt.

It's like comparing a fine bottle of wine with a can of Special Brew, they will both get you drunk but one has a world of flavours and tones, the other is just some cheap crap to get you drunk quickly.

There's a whole generation that has barely any idea of what high quality outdoor cannabis can be like and that is sad. You simply cannot produce a product with the same levels of terpenoids, flavonoids and other goodies indoors using existing techniques. That may change one day when we have better full spectrum lighting, but don't hold your breath waiting for anything that can compare with sunlight.

Back when weed was largely grown in 'sweet spots' perfect for the production of high quality cannabis with fully realised terpenoid profiles you really could experience a whole range of different psychedelic experiences, nowadays 90% of buds are homogenous High THC varieties but when weed was largely produced in Thailand, Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, Hawaii and the other 'sweet spots' it wasn't just high THC you could experience, it was all about the other cannabinoids, flavonoids, terpenoids etc. I mean, who would want to smoke boring stuff like Cheese if you could still buy Thai Sticks, Malawi Cobs, lids of lumbo and ears of Afghani Black hash?

The only way weed has improved is in taste, and that is purely because the imported outdoor classics were often not in primo condition by the time they reached the end user. In all other regards, it's gotten a lot worse. Looking in a seed catalogue now is like walking into a fine wine shop and finding the shelves stocked with alcopops and Blue Nun.

This is what cannabis should be like imho:

 

[bageled j]

^^^^^^^^love it when people speak the truth
anyone that thinks ID can compare with OD just hasnt tried good OD.plain and simple

 

[Tom Hill]

Hi Indifferent,

Been saving up I see

No, sincerely, many thanks for including me in said company.

I believe true homogenity in something as complex as cannabis is rare indeed.

Like breeding racehorses, yes, like breeding working dogs or humans for character, yes, like orchids, not so much. I am familiar with these things and know unequivocally that when orchids take a turn for beauty, compromises are made, just as the AKC has absolutely ruined working dogs in my country. We compromised flavor for travel, yield for effect, effect for yield, good working character- a drive to hunt prey, for a nice sloping backside at the big beauty show.

Yes, the breeding of cannabis is incredibly complex, far and away beyond what most folks would like to compare it to. Do race horses or working dogs pay off in spades percentage wise? Do we expect 50%+ of offspring from the fastest horse to spank all comers? Only a fool to math would.

Lots of stuff I skipped over but made me smile. Biglove. -T

 

[englishrick]

imo, damage and contamination to the final product is hard to avoid with OD,,,,,,,,

breeding inndoor`s,,,,ie,breeding in a "niche enviroment" is a whole other debate,,,,,,,...........imo the best method for breeding is undoubtably Multi-optimization couppled with repair cycles,,so indoor breeding has a real place in my plans,,,,,,,HPS systems are crap,,,LED`s are gona rule the day soon,,,

what do you guys think is gona happen when LED breeding becomes a reality?????

 

[indifferent]

Sorry if my last post was a bit narky, not in a good frame of mind at the moment.

Possibly the best way of explaining about old OD classics is to list the top 5 things I;ve ever smoked (excluding hash):

1. A small Malawi Cob, bought in Bradford, Uk in 1994, this was the last cobs to hit the UK probably and was ultra rare as late as 94, this was a 8-9 inch long cob, the outer skin was very thick so that I thought it was like a big seed pod. The weed inside was nearly black, smelled like mushrooms and compost, taste was a throatcatcher and made ya hack a bit but fuckin hell, I remember being laid on the rug on the floor and absolutely unable to get up and go for a pee, nearly wet myself. Listening to deep dub on my old record player through these huge speakers i got out of a junkshop i felt like my chest was expanding and contracting with the bass notes, this kind of experience is unknown to the modern toker.

2. Lemon Thai. We used to get this lowland Thai that stank like lemons and catpiss, smoked some with a girlfriend and we ended up running round a cornfield naked just rushing like hell from the experience of sun and wind on your skin. Made you feel 100 feet tall and if you looked down at your feet they looked tiny and a long way away. I remember it also made your hands look huge and orange.

3. Zimbabwean wild weed. When I first went to university I played rugby and my fellow second row forward was a huge farmer's son from Zimbabwe. He went home for xmas and brought me back some weed from his farm, they didn't grow it, it grew everywhere wild, he just ripped the tops of some plants growing next to the track to his house, laid em on a rock to dry and brought em to me. It was brown/black and smelt like a dog in heat. I remember eating two whole 12 inch deep pan pizzas with fries in one go because this stuff gave you incredible munchies. You legs wouldn't work very well either, they were like spaghetti. The high came in waves and had no ceiling.

4. Mexican. Purchased from an old lady selling watermelons at the side of the road somewhere in Merida. Had to pull off the road 10 miles later cos the white line in the middle was waving around like a piece of string and everything had distortions like heat haze rising off them. Spent that night sat against the door of my room scared alligators were coming to eat me. Intense auditory hallucinations, paranoia so bad you wanted to get on the next plane back home.

5. Indonesian. I had a friend who used to import furniture from Indonesia, as the profits on that business got harder to make he started including a few keys of weed in each container load of furniture. It looked like shit, green and leafy, but not at all compressed. Smelled like Chinese Green Tea and tasted like smoking grass (the stuff cows eat). Was very unimpressed till I stood up and tried to leave the room. Spent 5 minutes trying to find the door handle and got so confused had to sit back down, collect myself and try to remember what it was I was just doing. Friends thought I'd found some old acid blotters and had been greedy and eaten em all myself. Spent a long time staring at the palm of my right hand because all the little lines and wrinkles had formed an animation of a sailing ship in a storm.

 

[indifferent]

Hi Indifferent,

Been saving up I see

No, sincerely, many thanks for including me in said company.

I believe true homogenity in something as complex as cannabis is rare indeed.

Like breeding racehorses, yes, like breeding working dogs or humans for character, yes, like orchids, not so much. I am familiar with these things and know unequivocally that when orchids take a turn for beauty, compromises are made, just as the AKC has absolutely ruined working dogs in my country. We compromised flavor for travel, yield for effect, effect for yield, good working character- a drive to hunt prey, for a nice sloping backside at the big beauty show.

Yes, the breeding of cannabis is incredibly complex, far and away beyond what most folks would like to compare it to. Do race horses or working dogs pay off in spades percentage wise? Do we expect 50%+ of offspring from the fastest horse to spank all comers? Only a fool to math would.

Lots of stuff I skipped over but made me smile. Biglove. -T

Actually, not been saving it up, I've felt this passionate about the loss of great weed varieties ever since I stopped being able to buy them about 10 years ago! So I started trying to grow the seeds I'd saved from the weed and I grew some huge beautiful bushes with no buds on them! lol Maybe if i'd lived in California, Spain or somewhere with a good climate I'd have had a happier experience, but I'm at 56.4N!

So I grew out some things that were supposed to be similar - Mexican Sativa from Sensi, Durban Poison from DP, Thaitanic from TFD. Did i find a nice Oaxacan, Durban or Thai? Nope, I found some nice stuff but nothing particularly memorable.

Homogenity in cannabis has been produced because the same parentals have been combined over and over again. I don't know how horsebreeding works, but if you had a stud and a stable of strong mares, would you have that stud impregnate all of them? That is pretty much what they did in Holland, they used the same Skunk #1 male on loads of female cuttings.

Here's a good game to play to kill half an hour. Have a look at the offerings of the Dutch companies and tick off all the strains that contain Skunk, Haze, NL or Afghani #1. How many are then left?

Anyone got a time machine then can lend me? Set it to the Central Valley of Oaxaca, spring 1967 for me cos I'm crap with technology. I'll send it back to ya and stay behind in Mexico for a few months then have a drive up to Monterrey to catch Jimi and Owsley Stanley with a few pounds of Gold in tow. Shit, I could spend the rest of my life just wandering round Mexico smoking all the heirlooms.

 

[Tom Hill]

I think we all are in the same frame up in here. But the bottom line is that what some guys want will never ever happen. It's like asking why Strawberries or Sugar cane etc aren't propagated from seed. The answer is always the same.. Because the genetics involved are extremely complex. Yes, border-line miracles will happen, but let's view them as such, and not be so naive as to expect them everyday. The other thing is that while there are known homozygous sources out there and it would be easy peezy for a guy to deliver exactly what folks may expect by utilizing them, many simply refuse to, and much prefer pushing rocks uphill in a hopefully admirable quest to develop something that may indeed qualify as new. -T

 

[englishrick]

Actually, not been saving it up, I've felt this passionate about the loss of great weed varieties ever since I stopped being able to buy them about 10 years ago!

yeh man,,,,^^^^ THIS is the big problem,,,,,,,,,,as of yet the only way to maintain the "current" population is to make clones, free from infection clones will last years,,,

seeds are just like hopes and dreams, they offer infinite possiblitys,,,,,,,,,,

imo ,creating longterm soloutions to target enviroments is the key to being an awsome breeder,,

 

[englishrick]

cannabis is a constituant medicine,,,,,imo it is very dificult to test the high when the experiment is not controled,,,your age might have been a massive factor