Room for amateurs?

[trichrider]

splitting allelles is more correct
the bunch of males in with a select female is ridiculous, what intent does that demonstrate?

do you really want a pro to tell you what they think of that?

I was kinda hoping this was a draw to see who is breeding and to draw them into some argument...but i miss peyton place.

you must crawl before you walk.

besides i was curious about my own experiment.

peace

 

[Arkady2300]

Not to quibble but I would love to elucidate the methodology I use. So okay I have these three winner 'unknown phenos,' From my open pollenation breeding. If I wanted to I could then backcross my winners plants to create a self-similar seed population I just havent found anything worth that sort of concerted effort...


Well all the landraces where made with natural pollination mechanisms.

Well to answer the question of intent. multiple males with multiple females provides the largest sample of genetic material to test for future successful plants, breeding in the largest possible range of expression.

Anywho I feel like I am beginning to threadjack and apologize for my aside. Carryon

 

[chappie]

I guess my quibble would be, how do you know which father is better, and which to discard? I don't doubt that your approach could eventually yield decent plants... but if you have a specific goal, its a roundabout way to get there. Like with baking, you toss in some of this, some of that, sometimes it will turn out ok. But a rigorous recipe, where you tweak only one ingredient at a time, seems it would generate higher quality product much more reliably, and quickly. Although, possibly less fun.

Anyway, no threadjack detected here. Talk about all you want.

 

[Arkady2300]

All the males die after they pollinate.

Okay so in the case of my keeper phenos, I then grew out a plant I liked (it had huge ass Calyxes) and I took all but the Hempiest (first and tallest male to show sex) of this plant and crossed it with the most vigorous of my keepers (which is still impossible to kill while cloning)... If you then cross males from this subsequent generation of seed with that hardy ass cloner in my garden I will eventfully get a batch of seed after quite a few itnerations that pretty uniformly resembles that hardy cloner in aspect. I just hope that the outcrossing provides a better keeper the my hardy little gal. I think that I should be honest and state my most important goal for a plant is vigor, if it does not grow exactly like a weed I dont want it...

And if one of these new outcrossings is a real winner I will start another batch of that seed to cross a clone of the keeper with and start the backcrossing process again or I could outcross it, personally, my decision to become pretty much self sufficient in seed needs was driven out of economic necessity in the beginning now I just like the raw potential of openly pollinated seed.

You also dont have to backcross for uniformity but that takes even longer, more seeds, more open pollinations, and larger numbers of plants looking for the winners. Eventfully you will have a truebreeding stock of the plant with the characteristics you want. I mean think about backyard tomato breeeding.

 

[chappie]

In a controlled breeding program, I believe you would have non-flowered backup clones of each male being considered. Clone your seedlings (with careful labels) and then flower them. You can keep veg*d male "moms" for decades just like females. You can also store pollen for years if you carefully dry and it and store it properly. Dj Short has a lot to say about selection of males being possibly more important than females, and it is of course way harder to select them.

Anyway, it seems like what you are doing works for you, but your approach is probably not up to the standards of seed packs selling for $125 or more, right? I guess by "pro" breeder, I am referring to those who would use controlled/known males and breed with a specific goal in mind (probably other than vigor).

Unfortunately, most of the modern strains come from a handful of original parents. Its quite difficult to do anything other than shuffle the deck or isolate a particular phenotype. I'm very keen on the approach used by Mandala, ACE, Cannbiogen, etc who collect fresh landrace plants and work them into their programs.

This is I think the last remaining area where anyone can have a real impact on the scene. By collecting these plants wherever they may grow, and getting those seeds into the hands of those who will undergo in-depth breeding programs with them, we can perhaps finally hope to have some fresh life blown into the genepool.

Another DJ Short snippet is that Bxing leads to "bottlenecking", although he does it himself.

I'll repeat that your seed self-sufficiency is awesome and I wish more folks did it... but I think it is useful to keep that as a separate concept from breeding proper.

Anyone else?

 

[trichrider]

roger that; over and out

 

[HighDesertJoe]

This is off topic but does anyone know whether the big seed company's are using meristematic tissue culture? to hurry the breeding process.

 

[David762]

I sure hope that there is room for amateurs ...

I sure hope that there is room for amateurs ...

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on amateurs contributing to the breeding community.

As an afficianado and passionate advocate of quality cannabis, I am saddened at the lack of diversity and the loss of exceptional phenotypes especially in the past few years as the scene has exploded. I can see that on the one hand, the war on blandness needs a million soldiers, but on the other, too many cooks in the kitchen and sloppy, uncontrolled breeding is possibly worse than none.

I'm keen to know what the real pros think (and I don't mean the biggest celebrity successes, but rather those who are most key in maintaining the ancient torches).

Should people wait to breed until they can do it justice, with room for thousands of seedlings? Or can someone take subcool's advice and pick from 5 females and make decent strides? If they do this kind of casual stuff, should they keep it to themselves instead of unleashing their unstable stuff upon the genepool?

What are the rights and responsibilities of the amateur breeder?

If this has been discussed, I would appreciate a link because I cannot find much on it.

Thanks for any thoughts... especially rambling esoteric ones!

because that's what many of us are, myself included. Everybody has to start out somewhere, and not everyone has the space (or the big brass stones) for thousands of plants at one go. That being said, I am inclined to agree with you that amateurs shouldn't be trying to compete with commercial breeders -- and certainly not to "unleash their unstable stuff upon the (larger) cannabis gene pool". Honesty and sharing genetics with friends and associates should be meted out with equal measure, but only once (we) have something tasty, not run of the mill, and stable.

Instability, when properly documented, offers a peek into the range of genetics available to tinker with. That doesn't equate to either stability or commercial viability -- that eventually comes with careful selection and backcrossing. There are a number of good texts on cannabis breeding, both free on-line and published.

As an example, I might have purchased 20 seeds of 10 different commercial cannabis cultivars to experiment with, with one of the ideas in mind of isolating desirable (heady) sativa characteristics, and another of isolating desirable (taste | smell | flowering time) indica characteristics. Strong personal preferences in breeding might even turn into a strain that others might express interest in. My personal ambitions regarding cannabis genetics would seem to rule out sensemilla for commercial purposes for an extended period of time, but that's only me (=no space, and no big brass stones).

YMMV

 

[ganjasuiteseat]

t

 

[Campfire]

I'm reviving this because I want to learn about good breeding myself. I've got some top genetics, and I don't want to screw them up. Therefore, being new to breeding, I need to know of a solid book on cannabis breeding that explains its terms and methods in a clear, simple way, without having to reference a botanical dictionary every other sentence.

ANY SUGGESTIONS?????

 

[Maria_Vanessa]

I'm reviving this because I want to learn about good breeding myself. I've got some top genetics, and I don't want to screw them up. Therefore, being new to breeding, I need to know of a solid book on cannabis breeding that explains its terms and methods in a clear, simple way, without having to reference a botanical dictionary every other sentence.

ANY SUGGESTIONS?????

Just to add my two cents, I don't think you really need a book on cannabis breeding. Just think about all of the "pro" breeders that maybe didn't have books, but just a desire to breed and ae successful and respected now. Thousands of years ago, while the men hunted, it was the women who gathered plants, berries and bred them for food and fiber. You can pick up technical and scientific information as you go along.

In my opinion, the only information you should know now or have on hand is the sexual reproductive system of a plant and you can easily look them up on Wikipedia.

Most importantly, write down your observations. Take pictures and document everything that you see. If you have any goals, write them down. You may want to brush up on the Scientific Method to make sure you have your information and details in an easy to follow, step by step process so you don't get sidetracked.

 

[chappie]

Campfire-

Marijuana Botany by R C Clarke is great. DJ Short's book has a little info, too. Most of it is available online in the form of articles if you search enough.

 

[inquest]

I would recommend for your first run with these genetics to forget about selection almost entirely and open polinate. Dont use mutants like are found in DJ's gear and dont use hermi's caused from low amounts of stress. If you fucked up the grow majorly, like PH way outta whack or nutes were or your power was off and on for a week or more, then I wouldn't stress over hermi's. Just remove them in a later grow.

Doing an open will save as many of the limited genes you've spent a good deal of money on. Once you've decided to start selecting, find a list of traits(there's plenty on line or in the MJ growers handbook), rewrite it putting your most important ones at the top. Circle the top 4-6 and pretty much forget about the rest. You have alot of work ahead of you. During your grow you can start to group/label which ones have the traits you've circled. At this point there are about three commonly desireable traits hidden from you: Potency, Type of high, Length of high, and Taste. At harvest dry them all seperately and over the next few weeks smoke the shit out of 'em! You'll find the ones you want to keep smoking. Dont just keep the great ones but the pretty good ones, too! The more parent stock you keep the more of those original genes you'll have to play with. Label them all and seperately store them, in the freezer maybe.

That's the old school landrace style of doin it. As you repeat this your plants will become more and more uniform. It does take time but it shouldn't "bottleneck"on ya for a long time. Oh, and try to keep your male/female ratio 50/50 even if ya have to reverse some fems to get it. This preserves the maximum amount of genetic info.

p.s. If you find a problem in a line you decide to follow in this scheme, you can always back up a generation or two if you dont plant all of your seeds. Save extra seed!!!

 

[Nor'Easter]

I admit I did only read your fist 2 short paragraphs but agree totally! I think there is far too little variety and too much emphasis on a few seed strains or clones, when we should be trying out all that cannabis has to offer and then selecting what is best for us but all the while assuring quality pure lines and hybrids are not lost. I think the emphasis is too much on trends and fads and not the good of the cannabis plant and its biodiversity as a whole.

 

[inquest]

@ chappie... I find when I go through the "real" breeder descriptions of their strain offerings is mostly "we crossed this mom with that dad." So it seems on the face of things that they did some pretty heavy selection of a very few parents through a few generations to get a relatively stable mom and pop that is then cloned and used to mass produce identical F1 seeds year after year until they lose the clones for whatever reason. This sounds like money before preservation to me. The opposite of the subsistance farming practiced for thousands of years that gave rise to "landrace/heirloom" crops. Which are quickly dieing out... Personally I'd be more inclined to call someone doing the open pollination thing a real breeder before someone more commercially minded..... Then again, they may be using the income from sales to fund preservation or other advancement projects. So, far be it from me to point fingers. All depends on where their heart is....

 

[softyellowlight]

@ chappie... I find when I go through the "real" breeder descriptions of their strain offerings is mostly "we crossed this mom with that dad." So it seems on the face of things that they did some pretty heavy selection of a very few parents through a few generations to get a relatively stable mom and pop that is then cloned and used to mass produce identical F1 seeds year after year until they lose the clones for whatever reason. This sounds like money before preservation to me. The opposite of the subsistance farming practiced for thousands of years that gave rise to "landrace/heirloom" crops. Which are quickly dieing out... Personally I'd be more inclined to call someone doing the open pollination thing a real breeder before someone more commercially minded..... Then again, they may be using the income from sales to fund preservation or other advancement projects. So, far be it from me to point fingers. All depends on where their heart is....

That's the difference between a cross and an inbred line. Crosses allow a lot more variety to choose from in the F1 seeds than you'd get if they narrowed the line down and sold it as an F2, F3, etc. that had less variation in phenotypes expressed.

 

[Campfire]

Thanks, everybody. Got some reading to do.