Choosing seeds to sprout-mature vs slightly immature

We all have a bias towards sprouting large dark brown tiger striped fully mature seeds. I've wondered whether this makes a difference, if the less mature, whitish seeds produce plants that are just as good. I decided to pay attention this year and record what happened. This isn't a scientific study but it is my observations.

I found the less mature seeds were more likely to sprout seedlings with defects. Problems pushing out of their seed shells. Often the first couple sets of leaves would be deformed and asymmetrical. Germination rates were fine but slightly lower then from the fully mature brown seed.

Once the plants grew bigger, developed their 3rd, 4th, set of true leaves they were normal vigorous cannabis plants. Absolutely no difference in development or growth rate. I'm sure other people have tested this before but I couldn't find any sources, it seems like something so basic would have been discussed more often.

My takeaway is that I'd still rather start from fully mature seed but it doesn't make that big of a difference. If you have very few seeds of a strain and they are borderline mature you'll want to baby them, maybe give them some help cracking out of their shells.

As far as seed size goes, the best reason for a bias towards larger seeds is that larger seeds will produce larger bracts which will contain more resin glands per bract thus more resin. Large seeds are more likely to be from Afghan dominate plants, more oily fuel smell and wider leaves and chunkier buds. Smaller seeds are often from plants with narrower leaves, or plants with purple colors and fruit/sweet vs fuel/skunk. This is a huge generalization and can be proven wrong plenty of times but it seems to be the overall trend.

Interesting, thanks for sharing
You will enjoy this article.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...nt-day_Genetic_Diversity_and_Future_Prospects

I grew some really nice plants from my Sweettooth f2's that were pale white seed. I was curious if the whities would sprout and produce good plants. They were so good that I never got to the more mature, darker seed.

I guess its time to do a litte test I'll check out the little ones first.

Oops I made a typo, wrote 'I found the less mature seeds were more likely to produce plants to sprout seedlings with defects.'

I meant to write 'I found the less mature seeds were more likely to sprout seedlings with defects'. The birth defects like half-formed or asymmetrical leaves. Not that the plants grown from the immature seed would produce a next generation of seeds with these sort of defects. I went back and corrected it.

Another factor in the first couple sets of asymmetric seeds may be the trouble the plant had breaking out of it's shell. Sometimes when you have to help the plant break out of it's seed coat the first set of leaves will turn out weird. It's a problem because the plant gets off to a slower start then it's siblings. Otherwise it's perfectly normal.