A question for breeding experts.

HempKat · Jan 4, 2011

Okay I thought my original question was straight forward and clear but since there has been much difficulty in answering my question and people keep talking about points in the breeding process that come after the point I'm asking about, I decided to reword my original question.

Let's say I have two strains I want to cross and I've already identified decent candidates of each strain to use in making the cross. What guidelines do breeders use to decide which strain gets to be the mother of the cross and which strain gets to be the father? Or do you feel it doesn't matter and you could make either strain mother or either strain the father with the same result?

JWP · Jan 4, 2011

Unless you start with IBL's its bingo i'm afraid :tiphat:

If on the other hand your name is sams and you have massive warehouses to play with then you might be able to wet a few thousand seeds and more accurately predict what your f1's will show..

You could backcross or cube but... Unless you are sure the plant is homozygous in the traits you want to stabilize its a waste of time. You need two alleles of the traits you want to dominate and then you have to hope that the plants you are using or crossing with are at least heterozygous in traits you dont want...

How will you know if the progeny are homozygous with what you want? You really need at least 1000+ plants to have any statistically significant data.

To accurately have what you want in a cross you really need massive warehouses. Everyone else should be open pollinating or you could be killing off something special.

This is why most of the best pot in the world comes from sams work...

spiralofeyes · Jan 4, 2011

It has been my observation that the females primarily contribute the type of flavor and aroma and the males contribute the amount of flavor and odor.

Got it from one of dj shorts articles. Nothing on physical traits or psychoactivity though...sorry.

JWP · Jan 4, 2011

spiralofeyes said:
Got it from one of dj shorts articles. Nothing on physical traits or psychoactivity though...sorry.

hahaha funny stuff :laughing:

VerdantGreen · Jan 4, 2011

im no expert im afraid but this is how i understand it, please someone correct me if im wrong. often wondered about this
from the plant's genome there are a few genes that make/decide if the plant is male or female (or somewhere inbetween) afaik the rest of the plants genes are the same whether male or female - its not like it has a whole different set of genes for male and female expression.
so my logic tells me that the male and female are unlikely to contribute specific traits to a cross - more like they will contribute the traits that they are true breeding (homozygous) for, whether male or female.

that said, there are only certain traits that you can observe in a male, many more traits that we are looking for can be observed by growing, and indeed smoking the female.

VG

JWP · Jan 4, 2011

Yeah thats why sams tried reversing males to see what the female quallities were like. In theory its a brilliant idea. Give it 10 or 20 years and all the best breeders in the world will be doing it.

hashcraver · Jan 4, 2011

I'm glad a waited a bit before asking because I had the same question Hempy.
I have 1 male from the wonder haze and 1 female. I am making beans because those 3 beans that sprouted are the only ones I have of that strain.

After looking at this male plant

I'm a thinking that this male will help make monkey ball type of buds instead of long full buds. I don't know till the finished product is ready and tested but it is sure looking that way from this male.

By summer I should know something of my closet breeding I like to do too Hempkat.

spiralofeyes · Jan 4, 2011

JWP said:
hahaha funny stuff

Huh?

HempKat · Jan 5, 2011

JWP said:
Unless you start with IBL's its bingo i'm afraid

If on the other hand your name is sams and you have massive warehouses to play with then you might be able to wet a few thousand seeds and more accurately predict what your f1's will show..

You could backcross or cube but... Unless you are sure the plant is homozygous in the traits you want to stabilize its a waste of time. You need two alleles of the traits you want to dominate and then you have to hope that the plants you are using or crossing with are at least heterozygous in traits you dont want...

How will you know if the progeny are homozygous with what you want? You really need at least 1000+ plants to have any statistically significant data.

To accurately have what you want in a cross you really need massive warehouses. Everyone else should be open pollinating or you could be killing off something special.

This is why most of the best pot in the world comes from sams work...

Well since I'm not looking to ever sell I'm not majorly concerned about being completely accurate. I'm just wanting to be able to know which plants to pick to have a reasonable chance of having the qualities I'm hoping for.

I don't see myself ever growing warehouses full of plants or ever having more then 100 plants max growing. What I'm wanting is this, lets say I have a strain like Cheese where I really like the taste, smell and high but I'm not crazy about the plant structure and yield. Now let's say I have another strain that does have the structure and yield potential I want. I'm wanting to know do I make the plant who has the structure I want the male or do I make it the female and likewise do I want the plant that has the flavor and smell I want to be the male or the female?

HempKat · Jan 5, 2011

spiralofeyes said:
Got it from one of dj shorts articles. Nothing on physical traits or psychoactivity though...sorry.

Thanks, that's more along the lines of what I was looking for info wise. :good:

DocLeaf · Jan 5, 2011

JWP said:
Yeah thats why sams tried reversing males to see what the female quallities were like. In theory its a brilliant idea. Give it 10 or 20 years and all the best breeders in the world will be doing it.

Its a great idea, especially when you can vaporize the results :yes:

Tom Hill · Jan 5, 2011

I'm kinda 'meh' on the whole male reversal idea, as well as extensive stress testing of females prior to mating. Not because it doesn't tell us anything, but because it doesn't tell us enough. There is a low correlation between phenotypic and genotypic values, progeny testing in the end is the bottom line - so let's just get on with it. Good post VG. -Tom

Unclepeter · Jan 5, 2011

that said, there are only certain traits that you can observe in a male, many more traits that we are looking for can be observed by growing, and indeed smoking the female.

VG

you can see the floral attributes it brings IMO, but the proof is always in the pudding... what always concerns me is when people never fully flower the "males" out and just go for any pollen... theres not too much section goes on with males IMO..

I'm kinda 'meh' on the whole male reversal idea, as well as extensive stress testing of females prior to mating. Not because it doesn't tell us anything, but because it doesn't tell us enough. There is a low correlation between phenotypic and genotypic values, progeny testing in the end is the bottom line - so let's just get on with it. Good post VG. -Tom

I beg to differ to a degree esp with regards to the reversal of males , but as you know i'm a lil obsessed with them... I line breed all I have.. so I have often thought of seperate male and female populations to make life a lil easier.... but I guess your worry is in polygenic inheritence and what can be left behind etc.. obviously I'm at a loss to start with by only seeing the traits I do in a indoor enviroment...

I'm guessing you feel about the stressing of females because of intersex traits perhaps being present when even selected against?

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jholland/Pubs/Heritability.pdf

(i'm a bit math obsessed too)

purple_man · Jan 5, 2011

in the end, it all comes down to making a testcross and growing out as much of the progeny as possible to get an idea of inherited alleles of both parents. cause even if you do this with a male and female, and you do the progeny testing and you see for example, that the flowering time and structure got passed by the father. if you cross the same father to a different phenotype of the mother, the passed allelles will by different to minor or major degrees, so in my opinion only way to "get an idea" which parent passes what is to make test crosses.

headbutt no1 · Jan 5, 2011

First i would like to say sorry i am cumputer retarded and have no idea how to post a link but if you go to www.soft-secrets.nl there are online issues you can read in the second last issue of 2010 there is a nice piece on making crosses using a set of playing cards as an example hope it helps

Unclepeter · Jan 5, 2011

headbutt no1 said:
First i would like to say sorry i am cumputer retarded and have no idea how to post a link but if you go to www.soft-secrets.nl there are online issues you can read in the second last issue of 2010 there is a nice piece on making crosses using a set of playing cards as an example hope it helps

I can only find the readers wifes bit

Tom Hill · Jan 5, 2011

Unclepeter said:
I beg to differ to a degree esp with regards to the reversal of males , but as you know i'm a lil obsessed with them... I line breed all I have.. so I have often thought of seperate male and female populations to make life a lil easier...

Hey, there you are, good to see you.

The male reversal - don't get me wrong I do see some potential value in it. I guess my ultimate thoughts would revolve around where exactly we were purposing to use the tool. For example if we were in later stages of an effort and wanted to lower the number of males for evaluating the progeny from a number of pairwise crosses - I'd say that it makes some sense. However, if this were being purposed as an integral step each cycle, then I feel it begs questions relating to effort/time vs gain/efficiency (I feel the same in regards to extensive stress testing of females). When we add something like this to a program, we should carefully evaluate the compromises (if any) it forces us to make elsewhere, and try to determine whether or not it's worth it. When I start picturing this male reversal in my mind, it just seems a heck of a lot simpler to let selections revolve around females (who show these traits freely) via line selection, then sneak that Y back in there somewheres if desired. It may be a knee-jerk reaction/statement, but I am sure I would prefer to have a gynoecious line selection program twice the size, rather than make room for a parallel male program. -T

vince514 · Jan 5, 2011

like tom said ..ya gotta test the offspring....selection is Necessary....

best of luck

Baba Ku · Jan 5, 2011

If you are going to breed just to have seeds to grow out, then it is lots of fun to see what comes out of an outcross. And the resulting progeny are going to be basically a mixture of the two genetic maps.
And in my experience selecting from the F1 population, that is made from the original parent selection..or your first batch of seeds if you will...will not produce quite what you may think they will in the F2 generation. In other words the first seeds may produce some big thick stemmed males, and if you choose one of them you may find that there are not many big thick stemmed males at all in the F3. Same goes with the females, they may not produce what you saw out of the mother you chose.

And for this reason it is very important to not cloister the selecting of the F1 parents to low numbers. The very aspects you seek may very well be left behind if you only chose parents that look like what you want. It may well be the ones you wouldn't select that actually pass on the traits you want. So, numbers is the answer in this filial generation selection.
Use as many males and as many females as you can to produce as large a population as you can, trying to insure that you get the genes you want passed on.

Now, once you have a F2 population growing, you are on the way to a more homogeneous selection, and the growing plants can be selected with more scrutiny. The plants will now start passing on the traits we see in the parents, and the resulting F3 will be more predictable.

Hopefully you accept information from other than expert personnel......

VerdantGreen · Jan 5, 2011

good post.

i always use as many plants as i can to make an initial cross or 'preservation' seed run. im my case this is a maximum of 10 plants and thats pretty laughable in expert breeding terms but its still a lot better than just a single pair. if you decide to try and take it to f2 and towards a line you want as many genetics as possible to select from in the future.
i mix the male pollen and then label the females, keeping seeds from each plant separate. still a beginner though. got a couple of things at f2 stage, not being able to grow more plants is frustrating sometimes

VG

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