[M. Esquandolas]

I'm a pick and mixer searching for my queens. Along the way, I've been making a few seeds from males that strike me as appealing. I ran a Black Widow this time and ended up with a male. The Mr. Nice description says "A highly recommended strain for amateur breeders - the male being preferable.". Well, I'm an amateur breeder and I've got a male. He's very vigorous and tall. Huge but kinda thin and serrated fan leaves. The intriguing thing to me was how slow he was to show sex...by far the slowest of nine different plants. Any thoughts about how to spot a winner early? And also, any information about what a good BW male does in a cross would be much appreciated.

[Sorceror]

I'm not an expert on the matter but I think you won't know exactly what the male passes on until you start growing out the progeny.

I think it was DJ short who said that he discards the males that sex earliest. I think the theory is that wild cannabis is weaker, so the males that show first and actually get to pollinate the females may be the cause.

Mr nice says the males add potency/frost to the offspring, there may be more attributes that I'm forgetting.

[M. Esquandolas]

Thanks, sorceror. That's kind of what I'm going on, and the slow male seems to be what people recommend. I think Subcool says he throws out early males with no deiberation too. I'm wondering what happens if you already have a plant with dense frost (not that I have one in particular yet). Does it still add anything or is its value solely in boosting potency of special plants that only lack a little power.

[M. Esquandolas]

Is it maybe that its only dominant trait is thick frost, while everything else tends to be dominated by the mom?

[Sorceror]

For every characteristic that is controlled by one gene there is a dominant allele and a recessive allele. If a gene has any dominant allele then the dominant trait will be expressed. If there are 2 recessive alleles then the recessive trait will be expressed. So let's say that Frost is a dominant trait and I cross 2 frosty plants together. Both these plants happen to have both a dominant and recessive allele. So when I grow out the seeds, 75% will be frosty and 25% will not be frosty. And if I happen to choose this genotype then I will get the same result on the next seed round. I could also choose one parent with 2 dominant alleles and another parent with a dominant and recessive allele then I will get 100% frosty. But this would not be considered stabilized because if I bred these siblings together then there is a chance I will not get 100% frosty progeny. If I am lucky then I choose a genotype for the parents that that is 100% dominant and I get 100% frosty plants in the next round. This one trait would now be considered stabilized.

Hopefully someone more experienced with this variety could chime in because I'm not too sure if frost/potency is the only dominant trait.

[Sorceror]

I would look into the Punnet square to get a good idea of how many plants you will need to run to find a plant that exhibits all the desirable traits you want.