Cannabis crosses are not F1s, so says science!

Phylos Bioscience:
Currently the way the cannabis industry uses the term F1 hybrid is wrong. An F1 hybrid (or filial 1 hybrid) is the first filial generation of offspring of distinctly different parental inbred types. Cross-pollination involving two true-breeding, or homozygous, parents, result in an F1 generation that are homozygous and consistent in seed form. There are very few, if any, true F1 hybrids in cannabis because every modern variety is heterozygous (highly variable). The Phylos genotype test can detect the level of homozygosity or "true breeding" status in a particular genotype. So far there are no completely homozygous varieties out of the thousands of unique genotypes we have tested on the galaxy. Who will be the first to develop two individual and distinct homozygous varieties and cross breed them in cannabis has yet to be seen.
Original post was from Their IG & FB pages.

My proposal, which is up for discussion, is as follows.



Some definitions to help the discussion:
Homogeneous is used to describe a kind of mixture which is uniform in composition. Whereas homozygous is a term used to describe the genotype of a organism in case of a particular gene, when that organism has identical or same alleles(or copies) of the gene present on both(for diploid) or more (for polyploid) homologous chromosomes.
Homozygousity doesn't have to occur for every single gene in the plant, it just has to be homozygous for the traits you are breeding for, but it does mean that the specific trait you are targeting be identical across all associated diploid genes.



The basis of all of this is the individual chromosomes. Cannabis has 20 chromosomes paired off to make 10 pairs, including the sex chromosome of either XX or XY, which when combined makes up the entire genetic code for the plant. Alleles are the areas on a chromosome that have genes coding for a specific trait. The same gene code across an allele make the plant homozygous for that trait, and if the gene code is different it's heterozygous.

At the level of genetics that most cannabis breeders work at the most they can determine is if a population of plants is homogeneous, or uniform in it's phenotypes for a trait. Uniformity only requires that the population be very similar.

An individual on the original IG post stated that there were a few close to homozygous strains, so I contacted Phylos to enquire about it.
For the sake of transparency I'm including the entire email conversation, but skip to the end for the reveal.

"I was a part of the Instagram comments thread regarding F1 generation labeling accuracy. It was stated that Phylos Bioscience had found some (4 rumor had it) cultivars that were very close to homozygous, but hadn't quite achieved that status yet. I'd like to know what those cultivars are if they exist. I am asking for this information in order to educate members of the Overgrow.com forums on genetics and breeding. The knowledge that there are even a few cultivars that are closer than most others to be homozygous seems to have their attention and they are learning genetics because of it! Thank you for your assistance in this.
--
Thank you,
Sebring"
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"Hi Sebring,

Thank you for reaching out, and for following us on social media!

We've sequenced around 4,000 varieties in our Galaxy, so I'm not sure which those are off the top of my head, but I'm going to reach out to our science team and find the answer for you. I'll be in touch very soon with more information!

All the best,
JEN HUDYMA
CUSTOMER SUCCESS SPECIALIST"
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"Hi Sebring,

Thank you for your patience while I gathered more information on which cultivars we've sequenced are the closest to being homozygous.

Here are links to Genotype Reports for some of those submissions:

Sumatra Tuk Tuk
https://phylos.bio/sims/sample/genotype/egwxej8w

Paraguay 3 1996
https://phylos.bio/sims/sample/genotype/d8v4nn86

Nicaragua 4
https://phylos.bio/sims/sample/genotype/vgqekeg3

Thai Stick
https://phylos.bio/sims/sample/genotype/1oex01dg

Gold Colombian
https://phylos.bio/sims/sample/genotype/y8nq2rn8

These submissions are fairly homozygous, but still vary at around 5% or more of the sites we examine. You can find more information on the sites we examine through the Open Cannabis Project.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

All the best,
JEN HUDYMA
CUSTOMER SUCCESS SPECIALIST"
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The submitters of these strains are David Watson and Ma Dang.

https://phylos.bio/org/7vodyeor/david-watson
https://phylos.bio/org/vpozxpgy/ma-dang

Ma Dang has contact info listed.
D. Watson doesn't have contact info, but I believe he is "Sam the Skunkman" and you can probably track down his contact info. @Sam_Skunkman

Be warned that because both individuals have submitted tons of samples, it's not likely that they have seeds or clones available. Although, they probably know where and if they are still available in the wild.

*If any of this information is inaccurate please let me know and I'll fix it*

I think F1 is just fine when talking about your own breeding, in your own notes etc.

when I get 2 strains, it's hard to know how related they are. for some maybe a lot is known from the breeder description etc, but not for all, so for my own notes I just regard them as seperate unrelated inputs.

however I agree that f1's in weed are not the same as 'f1 hybrids' in other crops. I like it when breeders are open about their breeding program, generations etc, so I won't object if a breeder uses f1 in the description, if it just happens to be a first generation cross between 2 named parents. but they should be honest in what it means, if it's just a random first generation, between 2 not fully inbred lines, or a 'f1 hybrid', an f1 between 2 mostly homozygous inbred lines the breeder created himself.

btw, interesting to see that phylos tested it and says they found no evidence of true f1 hybrids. ever since I had a lecture about it, I've thought it would be perfect for breeding weed, as an outcrosser that's easy to self using sts. but I think I'm not unique in that, it's a pretty easy conclusion if you like weed and hear about f1 hybrids, so I wonder why no one does it.
it would take some years work creating the homozygous lines, so it would be a risk in an industry without cultivar rights where anyone can just steal your work, but f1-hybrids are somewhat protected from that since you're never giving your homozygous lines away, only the heterozygous hybrid offspring. so I think it would be worth the risk for current (illegal) breeders.

anyway, I plan on making one myself eventually(long term, just on my first generations and need to cross in more traits before I'm ready for the big stabilisation), if in the mean time no one with better resources for better selections and testing crossing compatibility takes the risk, I may even get something valuable out of it. and else I still had fun.

Lately found this interview from 2004 with David Watson/Sam the Skunkman from Hortapharm:

"...How did you go about growing pharmaceutical-grade cannabis, which must be standardized to be made into a medicine?

That’s the thing. If you bought tomato seeds and grew 100 plants, they’d all come out the same. But if you bought cannabis seeds on the black market and grew 100 plants, you’re probably going to get a lot of variation. Amateur growers just don’t have a full understanding of how to breed. I had spent years collecting cannabis seeds worldwide. We grew thousands and thousands of those, analyzed them, and selected for the target compounds we really wanted. We grew the plants in a big glasshouse and we also grew outdoors, in secret locations.


[Watson displays a photograph of five acres of high-grade pot, cultivated for seed production, from “somewhere” in Europe.] After we extracted the seeds we wanted from this crop, we burned all five acres. My American friends were dumbfounded — it would have been worth millions of dollars on the black market. But that’s what plant breeders do — we grow 100,000 plants, keep 100 of them, and trash all the rest. I love to kill. I’m getting rid of everything that’s imperfect.

Okay, so you got the seeds you wanted. How did you then grow plants that were genetically consistent — a prerequisite for producing medicine?

Cannabis is normally a heterozygote, which means it has two sets of chromosomes — one from the mother and one from the father, and they vary. Through a proprietary technique we developed called selfing, we became the world’s first breeders to develop homozygote cannabis, in which both sets of chromosomes are identical. We then mass produced plants with just the one cannabinoid profile we wanted. We grew plants that were 98% THC, or 98% CBD. And that’s what Geoffrey Guy [founder of GW Pharmaceuticals] was looking for. He wanted different cannabinoids — THC, CBD, CBC, CBG — which he could then blend in different ratios and explore them for their medical efficacy. We were the only ones in the world who had what Geoffrey badly needed...."

https://www.fastcompany.com/48172/dr-dopes-connection

Very interesting thread...!!!...

Also a great read you posted that link to Guy...!!!...

I don't care what anyone says.

To me an F1 is a hybrid between genetically distinct non-related individuals.

For our purposes, the F1 designation to describe the crossing of strain A with strain B works just fine. We understand the true definition, however for casual purposes calling polyhybrid A x polyhybrid B an F1 is acceptable. No need in getting bogged down in semantics.

djonkoman said:

f1-hybrids are somewhat protected from that since you're never giving your homozygous lines away, only the heterozygous hybrid offspring.

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With the use of STS and selfing, this statement isn't true anymore. You can clone an "F1", feminize it, have it seed itself, grow those out and select for the produced plants that are almost identical to either parent plant used to create it. It takes larger numbers of those S1 seeds to find the parent plants in them, but they are absolutely there.



@troutman As individuals we can do what we like! Many people would like to work in the legal market though and they'll need to know the correct way of identifying and referring to strain genetics.

The legal market is supplied by plants already and according to Phylos none are true F1's.

So are those plants all garbage now?

The market is therefore dominated by polyhybrids and I don't think that will change anytime soon.

PerfectDay said:

My proposal, which is up for discussion, is as follows.

View Image

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I appreciate your desire to bring strict accuracy into the breeding of cannabis but I personally don't think it is that important. Most people are happy to define an F1 as a cross between two distinctly different parental types. The fact that the original parents are unlikely to be true breeding matters little in the context that the term is typically used.

In regards to your diagram, There are a couple of errors I think need pointing out.

1. F1 hybrid AB x F1 hybrid CD will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

2. (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") x (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

Cheers.
.

PerfectDay said:

With the use of STS and selfing, this statement isn't true anymore. You can clone an "F1", feminize it, have it seed itself, grow those out and select for the produced plants that are almost identical to either parent plant used to create it. It takes larger numbers of those S1 seeds to find the parent plants in them, but they are absolutely there.

View Image

@troutman As individuals we can do what we like! Many people would like to work in the legal market though and they'll need to know the correct way of identifying and referring to strain genetics.

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the traits of the parentplants are there, but what you're giving away is not the homozygous inbred parentline. and it won't be mostly homozygous again with just one generation of selfing.

whoever wishes to steal your work, would have to do S1, then selections, self again, again select since it will again segregate due to heterozygosity, etc, for 6-8 generations. they need to do the full work all over again before they have a homozygous line similar to yours. and then they have just 1 parentline. where they to try to take both parentlines out of the same f1-hybrid, they probably wouldn't show as much hybrid vigour in the f1 between them, since those 2 homozygous parentlines are now related, selected from sisters.

in that case it's not really stealing anymore imo(maybe more lack of creativity), with that amount of work you could just as well create your own unique f1-hybrid.

Phylos is the Bullshit Detector of our age, the sword of truth will cut many.

Last year at Spannabis I was with one of the Phylos guys and a well known, respected breeder at the stand of a very popular seedbank. Breeder and Seedbank owner are old friends, but when Breeder asked Seedbank owner for a pack of each of his 30 strains fro mtheir stand beside us, 1K or 2K of cash in hand, he said No. Knowing that Phylos would be analysing them and that their "OG Kush" is OG Kush x White Widow....etc..

interesting thread subbed for discussions

Breeding today is marketing. Elite clones x some good looking male like 99% of breeders. differeces between strains are hard to get cuz they are unstable,breeeding today is mate cut x my male. in other words marketing bullshit. And some breeders say old big companies are rubish but new ones are ok ahahah open your mind...its all clone x male...all hazes smell on ssh,all new strains smell on gass. all of us want to be different but on the same way

Natural high said:

1. F1 hybrid AB x F1 hybrid CD will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

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A true F1 is almost completely homozygous with it's sibling plants, because both parents were homozygous.
This fact is exactly why we shouldn't say non-F1s are F1s. It's the reason H1s were proposed to signify non-uniform multi-polyhyrbids with a high degree of heterozygosity.

Natural high said:

2. (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") x (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

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^This is a good catch, thank you, I'm changing it and reposting!

PerfectDay said:

A true F1 is almost completely homozygous with it's sibling plants, because both parents were homozygous.

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Yes F1 offspring from pure breeding (100% homozygous) parents will be identical in genotype and phenotype. They will however, have a very high level of heterozygosity because each parent was distinctly different to each other.

When we cross two of these F1 together, we will see a high degree of variation in the F2 because:

1. Each gamete only gets one of each chromosome pair, and this could have come from the original pure breeding mother, or the original pure breeding father. This random passing on happens for each of the 9 pairs so this results in a mixing of genotype.

2. Crossing over - entire chromosome segments are randomly swapped between homologous pairs prior to separation, which further shuffles the allele combinations.

Cheers

Natural high said:

They will however, have a very high level of heterozygosity because each parent was distinctly different to each other.

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This isn't accurate for true F1's as each offspring will receive exactly the same alleles for the homozygous traits of it's parents with almost no variation in genotype or phenotype, e.g. AA x aa = Aa for all progeny. The rest of the genome for none selected traits can be very heterozygous though. In a multi-polyhybrid cross, which is what almost all crosses of cannabis are you could have Aa x aa = Aa & aa, which is why some other designation other than F1 needs to exist in order to have it understood by growers/breeders/scientists that there is a greater degree of variability than you would find in a true F1 cross, hence my proposal of H1.

Natural high said:

When we cross two of these F1 together, we will see a high degree of variation in the F2 because:

1. Each gamete only gets one of each chromosome pair, and this could have come from the original pure breeding mother, or the original pure breeding father. This random passing on happens for each of the 9 pairs so this results in a mixing of genotype.

2. Crossing over - entire chromosome segments are randomly swapped between homologous pairs prior to separation, which further shuffles the allele combinations.

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I agree!


On a side note, I'm dragging some very enlightening discussion concerning the topic from the Overgrow forums to here.

deep_rob said:

so if I throw 2 landraces together i still say f1.. mex x vietnam is f1.. but what about a hyrbid x land?
ie: my NL#2 x sinaloa mexican.. was the first generation of this cross considered an f1? or an h1?
BTW, im so glad i didnt do my website or print packaging yet, so i have time to change all the text to h1, lol

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Anything other than a cross of two homozygous, for the selected genetic markers, strains would be an H1 cross. As there are no documented homozygous strains, all strain crosses would be considered an H cross, until homozygous strains are created.
*Genetic markers are the sites on the chromosome where traits are determined, so the terms marker and traits can be used interchangeably.

deep_rob said:

actually thats a bad exmaple, because nl#2 that i used was the f3 from nevil, so its an ibl at that point, or in the least, its getting close to being considering an IBL.. that raises anther question.. would an IBL hybrid line crossed with an IBL landrace equal f1? ie: SPG x Malawi..
and would an ibl hybrid line crossed with another unrelated ibl hybrid line equal f1? ie: SPG x SK#1

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Same answer as the previous example, H1 rather than F1.

Worcestershire_Farms said:

If we cross Gold Colombian with Sumatran Tuk Tuk does this still not result in an F1?

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Gold Colombian x Sumatran Tuk Tuk would still be an H1.

Scissor-Hanz said:

"My confusion is that observation of uniformity seems to be effective enough to inbreed lines capable of showing f-1 hybrid vigor in their progeny, without going to f-20 and beyond and then confirming through a geneticist?

....I'm wrong to assume there is room for slight genetic variation within a population? "

I'm not yet convinced to want to change established scientific notation.

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I can say that homozygosity in a gene line has it's advantages, in that every seed breeds completely true to it's parent, however, it also brings it's own inbreeding detriments as well as it can have detrimental genes locked into it with no heterozygous genes in it's offspring to allow for adaptability to changing environments.

Just because all known cannabis strains aren't homozygous doesn't mean they necessarily need to be. We have already overcome much of the need for homozygous strains in the commercial industry by making such wide use of clones.

As I eluded to, there is absolutely room for slight, or even moderate, genetic variation within a population, if you have the resources to run a bunch of seeds, find a great clone and use it to share/produce your stock.



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Another thing I'd like to point out, because I think it's being taken defensively, while I believe it is meant more out of respect and deference towards the wisdom and expertise of the cannabis grower/breeder.



The scientific community has in effect stated that cannabis is a special plant, both in it's use and in the practice of breeding it. Past and current cannabis breeding has caused cannabis to not fit the old nomenclature regime, probably because it's versatility and usefulness!

The scientific community is basically saying "You cannabis breeders have created this new thing that we want to assimilate into the old nomenclature system, but we need you to name it something that isn't already being used by the old nomenclature system". This is cause for celebration, not alarm. Scientists want to work with us as peers, that's a genuine honor being given to a community of people that have traditionally been outcasts of our greater society.

I wrote: Yes F1 offspring from pure breeding (100% homozygous) parents will be identical in genotype and phenotype. They will however, have a very high level of heterozygosity because each parent was distinctly different to each other.

PerfectDay said:

This isn't accurate for true F1's as each offspring will receive exactly the same alleles for the homozygous traits of it's parents with almost no variation in genotype or phenotype, e.g. AA x aa = Aa for all progeny. The rest of the genome for none selected traits can be very heterozygous though.

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I'm struggling with whether you fully understand what the terms homozygous and heterozygous mean.

Homozygous - both alleles are the same for any gene loci, eg AA, or BB

Heterozygous - each allele is different for any gene loci, eg Aa or Bb

Thus homozygous AA x homozygous aa = heterozygous Aa

Cheers

Betterhaff said:

Cannabis is an interesting plant. I put 2 and 2 together and got a 10.

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That’s funny, because I took 2 to the 3 and got a 99.

Natural high said:

I appreciate your desire to bring strict accuracy into the breeding of cannabis but I personally don't think it is that important. Most people are happy to define an F1 as a cross between two distinctly different parental types. The fact that the original parents are unlikely to be true breeding matters little in the context that the term is typically used.

In regards to your diagram, There are a couple of errors I think need pointing out.

1. F1 hybrid AB x F1 hybrid CD will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

2. (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") x (H2 polyhybrid "AB x CD") will not result in uniform offspring as each parent is has a high degree of heterozygosity.

Cheers.
.

Click to expand...

I’ll add to this...
Ain’t nobody CREATING “landrace” genetics either... especially from polyhybrid breeding schemes. HEIRLOOM maybe... but not landrace... As a matter of fact... the term “landrace has very little to do with homozygous individuals. Landrace varieties tend to be extremely heterozygous. If they weren’t, they would become extinct in short order.