[tebos]

Let's assume I have a fast finishing indoor plant, do they finish fast outdoors, too?
Meaning, is it worthwhile to breed indoor for outdoor plants?

(Let's assume conditions/temperature are the same in- and outdoors!)

Cheers!

[psyke]

Not necessarly. The trait for outdoorplants is the critical night length. A superfast 45 days bloomer is worthless, when it starts to flower in mid-september, because it is used to start flowering at 12/12. When you have a 45 days bloomer that starts flowering at 14 sunhours, you will have a early yielder that finishes in late august in 50°N. Thats meant by the critical night length: The hours of darkness needed per day to put a plant into flower.

[mrfrog]

best is breeding in target conditions of course, but the most important thing, imho, is convinience for the breeder, if it helps you maintain larger sample of specimens. Just use common sense. If you want to breed for earliness, try finding the lenght of night where half the plants flower and breed just those. In latter generations watch more plants going to flower early and try if they flower at shorter nights still. Meanwhile other traits can be watched.

I suggest limiting your goals to more specific ones that can be more easily accomplished. Write us what you are after.

Also outdoor - let us know your stance on autoflowers.

[tebos]

Thanks for the input, really helpful so far.

I'm in for a fast flowering outdoor sativa at (psyke guessed right ) 50°N, meaing ~14/10 is probably the target lighting schedule. Starting point will be a Nepalese Sativa because of mold and cold resistance. Not sure if IBL or mixing in another strain (thinking of another highland sativa) is the way to go.

Autoflowers aren't for me, there's always a slight stoney effect.

[psyke]

The Nepalese Sativa might not work alone, because of long flowering time and critical night length adapted to 28°N. It will take years to adapt her. Better take a Bushmans or a Ciskei. This is a Sativa Landrace IBL from Africa, thats suitable for your needs. At least, try a cross with the Bushmans.

Additionally you don´t need to select an breed your F1 and F2 outdoors. You can also breed a F1 indoors, while trying to flower it with a 14/10-scheme. The plants which get into flower are usable for outdoor. Breed them into a F2 and use this one for outdoorbreeding and selection!

[mrfrog]

I would progressivelly lenghten the night lenght day by day,slowly. Cross few of the quickest ones. Keep few seperate lines if possible, or openpolinate. Self to speed up the process. Keep them small - party cups and many, many of them. You do not need a lot of light, quality is not the point, just see how long the seedling takes. At some point you could move outdoors and start working on mold, pest and other resistances. Other traits would suffer.
You can do it and you should try.

[tebos]

There are some Nepalese phenos that do bloom early and are ready before/around October, I know that because a lot of the northern sativas are from nepalese heritage!
The tip with the Ciskei ist great, I wanted to somehow duplicate "Guerilla" from ACE Aseeds (Neplaese x Lesotho), this could be my replacement for the Lesotho then! I'll try both strains on their own and maybe cross them for their different traits.

Really helpful posts, thanks!

my strains never look the same outdoors ive seen different traits come out... environment plays a huge role in traits..

[Lisdexik]

50 N ????

You may want to consider starting with Nep. x BB Indica.... Dj's afghan is recessive for most traits, but often passes early triggered plants.

Even if you match up the right genes, you will have to select for trigger time.

1. Make your cross indoors
2. Sprout F1 seeds on 18/6 (for 2-3 weeks)
4. Once established, reduce light hours by 3-5 min/day or 20-30 min/wk
5. Select plants triggering (sexing) between 14-16 hrs light.
6. Father select phenos with BB indica again (BX1)

Plants from backcross showing desired traits (trigger time) will be an awesome starting point for acclimating your own strain.

HTH

Lis

[Jhhnn]

50N? I'd be studying Canadian & Nordic genetics, figuring out how to get 'em. They've been working at it for a long time. We honor breeders' work in buying their seeds.

I'm not chagrined to stand on the shoulders of giants. They invited me up. We need all the help we can get, particularly outdoors at 50N.

What you want, I think, is called semi-autoflowering cannabis. So long as the day length increases, they veg. Whenever it decreases, they start to flower, even at long day lengths. They supposedly get a much better chance to finish. Never grown any, but they're out there.