Sorting Through A Bunch Of Seeds In A Small Space

Let's say you had a two foot by four foot tent that you could dedicate to this project. And you also had hundreds of seeds.

What are some methods you could employ to germinate and sort through as many seeds as possible to a. eliminate males, and b. find the keepers. Ideally without going through the whole flowering process.

And how do you eliminate plants before flowering, what is your criteria? Ever keep runts or anomalies/weirdos? Tall, short, thin leaf, wide leaf- do you use any of these to decide what to keep? Other?

Are there any things you can do to young plants to get them to yield more information, in terms of sex or quality?

Any tips on choosing keepers and eliminating the ones that are least likely to give you your desired results?

Kevin Jodrey talks about this on his youtube channel.

There's a lab he uses that he send them samples when the plants are just a couple weeks old that gives him the profile numbers he judges the plants on. Iirc, the numbers they can produce are sex, THC, CBD, and quite a few terpenes. But I haven't watched the video in a few months.

He says it makes sifting through seeds a shit ton faster because he can look at specific things and decide which plants are going in the direction he wants and should continue to grow those plants out, and which ones he can cull because they don't have what he's looking for.

He's doing this on a massive scale though - several thousand seeds at a time.

Ya the science is amazing and getting better all the time.
The problem with that is cost. It's going to be coming down, but can still be a burden when running big numbers.
Last I checked it was at least $20 bucks to test a seedling for sex, times a thousand plants and that is getting costly without checking for THC, CDB ratios etc.

Still if you are breeding for certain traits it can take years off the process.

Peace GG

gorilla ganja said:

Ya the science is amazing and getting better all the time.
The problem with that is cost. It's going to be coming down, but can still be a burden when running big numbers.
Last I checked it was at least $20 bucks to test a seedling for sex, times a thousand plants and that is getting costly without checking for THC, CDB ratios etc.

Still if you are breeding for certain traits it can take years off the process.

Peace GG

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Even with economy of scale, I'm guessing Kevin is writing checks with at least 4 zeros on it. But hey, if you find the next "it" strain, there's all that money back plus.

When he finds that road kill skunk, game over man!

Can for sure use Phylos testing to find the sex of fresh sprouts, if you can afford it, and you are limited in space it seems like a good option.

Can also test tissue for THC/CBD/Etc.., but I think you need a database of tests to compare it to. The amounts in a vegetative plant are so small, you need a lot of data to see an outlier, afaik. Nice tool for a big outfit to use, can help find better males before testing progeny, but a bit much for smaller operation. Also the tests are just data, they have value surely, but there are many things they do not test for, or do not understand. Some fantastic cuts, may test as average, while some of the outliers may only smoke average.


One thing to think about, is growing smaller populations over a larger amount of time versus a huge population in 1 round. As in, test 20 new females, 5 flower cycles in a row. Each time, including the keeper clones from the previous tests so they can grow side by side with the new populations, versus having 100 females to choose from all at the same time.

I just finished a round of 80 females in a 22'x24' room. Plenty of space, but still it is hard to select the winners, you can very easily make a hasty decision to later regret it.

Some traits stand out, and can be selected easily. Then you will get multiple plants that are very very similar, sharing the easy to spot traits, like bag appeal, calyx ratio, smell, flowering time. Although some of these twins, may smoke better, clone better, veg better. So you need to keep clones of each of them, and run them a second, third time, before you start to intimately know them. Out of 80 females, I narrowed it down to 19 keepers after 1 cycle. After processing, I noticed a couple I may have tossed that should have gotten a second chance. As well, I kept at least 5-10, that if they don't have stellar smoke reviews won't get a third chance.


The larger the population, the better odds of finding something special, and better odds of making a mistake or loosing something in the madness. So to me, to get the best of both worlds, multiple rounds of smaller populations. You get more time with each plant, and the stress and work load is lower.

I do some culling before flower, really depends on what you are after. You could cull runts, slow vegging, finicky plants if you are after something more commercial viable. Although if you are looking for the highest quality you may want to flower everything just in case.


Mr^^

Thanks Everybody, and especially MedResearcher, because that's more the kind of advice I'm looking for, as opposed to sending off samples.


How about scratch 'n' sniffing them? Any point to that when they're in pre-flower? What about stem color? Just spit-balling here, all comments welcome!!!

There are all kinds of things you could look for. It really depends on your goals.
If top quality smoke is what your after, then smoking/ingesting the product is really the only way to truly test it. Find cultivars to your liking and keep those. After you have found those keepers you may notice that a certain leaf shape or other growth characteristics point to those keepers. But I think it's hard to do it the other way around. Also you will never really know if better ones were culled if you never tried the finished flower.

Peace GG

Jellyfish said:

Thanks Everybody, and especially MedResearcher, because that's more the kind of advice I'm looking for, as opposed to sending off samples.


How about scratch 'n' sniffing them? Any point to that when they're in pre-flower? What about stem color? Just spit-balling here, all comments welcome!!!

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If you know the pedigree, then decide on your goals and
pop the seeds you deem first lot.

If you have a large scale grow buddy, maybe he can help with your project,
but failing that, I see no short cut other than pop, veg, take cuttings to flower,
make selections based on the cured yield, lather rinse repeat

I've been working a breeding project for a few years
and have gone through maybe 50 or 60 seeds.

But I flower my gear to make selections, an old fart,
I have time to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I hope you find the quick, easy solution, and share it with us, that would be great.

Start them in flats or Solo cups from 12/12. You will be able to get enough to determine the best of the bunch and to set aside for a proper look. As you cull males and runts, keep rotating in another flat of Solo cups. All you need is t5 or led.

12/12 from seedling sift {Def veg for 2 weeks, far less stretch}, then reveg'd all the goodies. Easy

I don't understand, Dr.Young. Could you please clarify?

Dropped Cat said:

I

But I flower my gear to make selections, an old fart,
I have time to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I hope you find the quick, easy solution, and share it with us, that would be great.

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I'm an old fart too, and I'm not looking for a cheap, easy anything, okay? I'm just greedy, I guess. I already have four or more keeper strains, but I just love popping beans!

I also have about half a film canister of some bag seed of the best tasting lemon weed I ever smoked. I would love to hit the lemon lottery on one of those. I've popped about 15 already, nothing lemony so far. Cheers!

Jellyfish said:

I also have about half a film canister of some bag seed of the best tasting lemon weed I ever smoked. I would love to hit the lemon lottery on one of those. I've popped about 15 already, nothing lemony so far. Cheers!

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I hear ya.

I'm sitting on Serious Seeds AK47 and Sensei's Black Domina from 2005ish.

I'm waiting to pop those until I can have the space to do a seed run from both sets. Then on to sifting. I'm looking for the cherry pheno from the AK and the Lady Domina from the BD. The genes should be there from the age of the packs I have.

You can test for thc / cbd at home with cheap kit and time, sex and genotype testing isnt accessible to the little guy for cheap yet.

How is it possible to project dependable cannabinoid numbers based on vegetable analysis? Has this been backed up by analysis of mature bud? How reliable IS this?

Its as reliable as your ability to read blobs.

I don’t think highly of my ability to read blobs, now that you mention it....

Well, if you can't read blobs, what are you even doing here?

Jellyfish said:

I don't understand, Dr.Young. Could you please clarify?

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I'm doing the same as him with my reg seeds.

Pop your beans, then plant the sprouts in solo cups. Put them under 12/12 lighting right away. When you see female flowers, keep it. Kill the males. Switch your lighting back to 18/6 and they're go back into veg.

Easiest with 2 tents/closets.