Are the earliest pre-flowering plants undesirable?

I'm embarking on my first pollen chuck, having collected some pollen from one male, and I'm about to flower two more males in my tent in order to collect and store that pollen as well.

I've kept pretty good notes on all plants involved, male and female. Some (a couple of MK-Ultras) pre-flowered well before the others, explosively so. In terms of size and vigor, they're well nicer than the other 2 females, which took much longer to show their sex. In fact, I had them in the male tent for awhile before they showed. In fact in fact, I'm still not sure about one of them.

Anyway, does this early pre-flowering imply anything about them, apart from the tendency to pre-flower when exposed to some stress, like low light or being rootbound?

Thanks in advance for any comments and guidance!

My opinion is the males that preflower in veg are iffy, and females
that preflower in veg can be difficult to root cuttings.

More to the story than my simple observations, and other members
will hopefully add to the discussion.

Good thread.

Maybe you can use them to breed with to try to speed up the average flowering time.

Other than that, I can't see anything good with them as later males tend to be better.

Other than the convenience factor, I haven't noticed any correlation between early pre-flowering and quality of product. But then again, it's not something I really pay attention to.

I have always steered clear of early flowering males as a rule of thumb. I also do not like large stud males. I believe these are hemp characteristics! I prefer the apically stacked tightest nodal spacing, smallest (without being a runt of course) and latest flowering males for my breeding. I want the women to be the stars. Pre flowering can also be a condition of blue lighting and phytocrome red and far red response. If there is no red or far red light flowering is not retarded in the plants. It is the dark time that the plants use to signal flowering when they see red and far red their phytocrome helps them stop flowering that is why more dark means flower time to the plants. So if you aren't blasting just blue light in veg then you truly know who are/is the faster/fastest preflowering plant/s you have.

I'm not sure. but at the moment I'm somewhat sellecting against the earliest flowering ones in a cross I made.
my reasoning is that I guess/suspect early flowering(based on the number of nodes present when I first see flowers, not based on time passed since germing) indicates a shorter juvenile period(I'm growing them behind a window, so they're on flowershedule right away from seed, so they don't really preflower but go straight into real flowering).
I'm working with some early outdoorstrains, and last year I had some issues with plants starting to flower right after plantout on guerilla, before the longest day, then revegging(some revegged and eventually reflowered fine, one was a leafy mess I threw in the hashbin, and some stuck to flowering and gave an early mini-harvest).
while the later strains were ok. so I have 2 solutions for that issue: either I plant out the earliest strains later(towards the end of may or in june), or I try to breed a strain that's still early, but with a longer juvenile period so it can be planted out earlier without starting to flower before june 21.

no idea yet if it will work, but that's my reasoning to select against the ones that already show flowers at the 3-4th node.

however it also has it's uses, my experiences with early outdoorstrains is that they consistently show preflowers around the 6th node(can be between the 6th-8th node, but usually I can sex them at the 6th node). that makes it very easy to sex plants before planting out on guerilla, so I don't have to visit to remove males.

I personally exclude males who are too quick.
then I evaluate the remaining males.

i believe early flowering plants show the dominate traits of the plant and the later to show hold the more recessive genes but it's just an observation.

recessive males are the best.

~Papillon~ said:

recessive males are the best.

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citation needed

That is an opinion, not a fact and it is based on ....... what exactly?

The explicit preference to use recessive males in breeding imho stems from a lack of understanding and ability to judge males by breeders who do this. It is the same line of thinking as with feminized seeds.

"Meh, identifying a "good" male requires me to grow out how many generations of progeny? And compare them with each other and make selections and inbreed and LABEL AND CATALOGUE EVERYTHING ALONG THE WAY ?!?! no please and thank you, give me that recessive male or colloidal silver so I can just focus on the female cause the female I can judge muuuuuuch easier!".

Recessive*males are males that have a large number of*double recessive*genes*for the traits most sought after . Ie*aaas opposed*to Aa*or AA.
When males*that have recessive genes for the traits we want passed from the mother, because they are dominant in the mother they will combine*as Aa. 'A' from the AA mother and 'a' from the father, and express the trait you want to see in all of the F1 female offspring.*

Wow, good responses everyone. I'm delighted to have your help!

I'll be using 4 males to pollinate a pair of female clones. The first of the females, RP Skywalker Kush, is my first project. It's an old clone that's been around locally for 8 years or so and everyone loves it, but it's lost its vigor and yield over time. So I aim to breed some vigor and yield back into it, and maybe reduce the long 10 week finishing time a little. The second female, HSO Green Crack fem, is legendary and for good reason. I'd like to bring a little more flavor out of the pheno I've got, boost potency, and bring down the 9-9 1/2 week finish. They're both totally bombproof as far as stress tolerance; with all kinds of hell breaking loose all over the place, I've never gotten a banana on either one of them.

The boys: 2 BG C99 Due to being an idiot, I managed to kill a whole closet of young plants (C99 did NOT appreciate being sprayed with spinosad) and these two males were the only survivors. Of the 5 males that came out of that pack, some were huge and showed sex very quickly, while these two stayed short and squat and showed sex much later. Perhaps luckily, the squat, late showing males were the survivors. I've collected pollen from one, and I'll start flowering the other tonight along with

2 THSeeds MK-Ultra I grew some MKU about ten years ago, and it was some of the strongest weed I've ever smoked. It put down seasoned farmers like they were amateurs. It had a borderline scary, speedy, just blistering high--right up my alley. The females were totally uniform and had a weird, drying housepaint kind of smell. Decent yield, 8 week finish. I gave the males to my neighbor, and it improved everything he crossed it to. So all these years later, I thought I'd incorporate it into my first chucking project. These plants show more variation than the ones I grew before in shape, growth pattern, and smell. (I speculate that they are from Euro stock, rather than North American, and therefore there may have been some fuckery with the line on the Euro side of things over the years...?) Anyway, one of the two males preflowered quite early and the other, which looks very very different from all the other plants from this seedpack, has taken all of my meager expertise to sex. And I'm still not 100% sure.

So it sounds like I may have lucked out with the C99 and only time will tell with the MKU.

Stim--that's interesting, it sounds like you're saying that a bit of red light in veg will help reduce the danger of plants starting to flower, which happened to my MKU when one of my bulbs blew and light was suddenly reduced. I have T5s in my veg closet that run 24-7 (for various reasons 18-6 is just not practical for me), and the bulbs definitely favor the blue spectrum. So--if one or two of the T5 bulbs were replaced with one(s) that favor the red spectrum, my plants' phytochrome system would "see" the red light as a signal to stay vegging?

djonkoman--neat, I never considered what node they preflower at vs time since germination. I think this is a very useful way to look at it, and it will inform my thinking about the subject in the future.

Argo--I have some early preflowering males and some late, so I will be keeping a close eye on the progeny for who passed on what.

Thanks again for your help, y'all, I feel quite honored.

DeMonet, are you referring to males that show signs of sex early or auto flowering males, there is a huge difference...lots of plants will show sex at age of maturity, not necessarilly a bad thing....I however would not use the autoflowering males unless you wanted offspring that do the same

Hi Blind Joe Death. I'm a real big Fahey fan myself...

I'm talking about plants (male OR female) that show signs of sex early, in the veg room, as compared to others that show their sex later.

It's been on my mind since I had a couple MK Ultra females straight up start to flower in veg, apparently in response to low light stress and/or being rootbound. After I fixed the light and repotted them they exploded with new growth--weird, reveggy sort of growth, with single- and trifoliate leaves. They're slowly snapping out of it.

Weird as they are, I'm just gonna flower them as is, because I need the space they're occupying.

Should I expect them to take longer to finish than they otherwise would?

I like females that sex early because then I know they're females. Males that auto flower or flower early at a small size usually get chopped. I'd have to get a nice smell. Besides I like fresh pollen I'm not going to save pollen from a scraggy half-auto male for a month and a half until the females catch up.
I like big vigorous males but they must have the smell and branching. Crossing vigorous x vigorous is a good rule in breeding. If it doesn't reek it gets chopped.
Breeding isn't as tricky as it used to be because everyone has access to potent ganja. It's easy to get good seeds. There are always better and worse plants but you'd have to try hard to pick bad plants. I have my personal preferences in females but it's been a while since I've seen a real dud.

DeMonet said:

Hi Blind Joe Death. I'm a real big Fahey fan myself...

I'm talking about plants (male OR female) that show signs of sex early, in the veg room, as compared to others that show their sex later.

It's been on my mind since I had a couple MK Ultra females straight up start to flower in veg, apparently in response to low light stress and/or being rootbound. After I fixed the light and repotted them they exploded with new growth--weird, reveggy sort of growth, with single- and trifoliate leaves. They're slowly snapping out of it.

Weird as they are, I'm just gonna flower them as is, because I need the space they're occupying.

Should I expect them to take longer to finish than they otherwise would?

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These sound like they were auto flowering not just showing sex early...I wouldn't expect them to finish later than they normally would...stress is a good way to test the mettle of your plants and usually these types wouldn't be good canidates for a breeding project...not for me anyway

yes the bit of red retards the flowering process caused by darkness
good luck to you

DeMonet said:

Stim--that's interesting, it sounds like you're saying that a bit of red light in veg will help reduce the danger of plants starting to flower, which happened to my MKU when one of my bulbs blew and light was suddenly reduced. I have T5s in my veg closet that run 24-7 (for various reasons 18-6 is just not practical for me), and the bulbs definitely favor the blue spectrum. So--if one or two of the T5 bulbs were replaced with one(s) that favor the red spectrum, my plants' phytochrome system would "see" the red light as a signal to stay vegging?

djonkoman--neat, I never considered what node they preflower at vs time since germination. I think this is a very useful way to look at it, and it will inform my thinking about the subject in the future.

Argo--I have some early preflowering males and some late, so I will be keeping a close eye on the progeny for who passed on what.

Thanks again for your help, y'all, I feel quite honored.

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