[angelgoob]

Can you make a male flower female buds and test the male.

Or do you go on just smell and time of pollen drop?

[browntrout]

Stem rub for smell and resin is always key for me, then structure/branching. However if I know the line I will take leaf shape into account as well to help determine the desired phenotype.

Usually I will try to determine which strain should be the male or female up front. The jury is still out for me when working with poly-hybrids as to what is right.

[Leptosoma]

I hope this will help you:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=99597

peace

[angelgoob]

bump.

Someone else mentioned this. sounds like fun.

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

[bigbadbiddy]

What I can say is:
Don't do it like me and think you can select a male straight out of veg just by looking at them and doing stem rubs.
Results are .... inconclusive at best.

Once I culled the remaining males, my "keeper" looked less and less great. I noticed smells coming from root balls that I did not notice from stem rubs and they were overwhelming while my "keeper" was just ok in the smell department.

I think males need to be flowered out before making a selection just like females.
Maybe you don't need to let them finish flower but can select after a month or so already. But I would say flower them and compare them then. Not just in veg like I did.


Most people seem to think that males which put on the frost early and often are the most desirable for "our purposes". Note that I didn't say early flowering (as many say those should be avoided) but i say they start producing resin early and a lot. Those combined with dense pollen clusters seems to be what most people go for along with loud smells from a stem rub.
I want to add to the stemrub thing that I find it inconclusive at best also. I have had no smell the one week from a plant's stem rub followed by a loud smell the next and the week after basically nothing again.
It changes over time and sometimes you need to rub different parts of the plant as well imho.

[GoatCheese]

The smell of a seedling from stem rub changes while the plant matures. A plant can be very pure fruity at 30 days of age, but at 60 days+ it can have more spice, skunk or whatever coming thru.
So if the selection is really important to you, allow your seedlings to mature longer.

Also, when a seedling gets root bound in a smaller pot, the smell from a stem rub can be fairly faint. They can have a nice smell at 30 days but at 60 days, if they are stressed, the aroma can somewhat "disappear".

I grow in small cabs/tents and usually veg my seedlings in very small pots (10cm x 10cm x 10cm) till they show sex, so i experience the strength of smell changing all the time. But if you repot them and give them a while, the smell gets stronger again.


Resin production..

If you want to select resinous males and females without flowering them first, i suggest you get a 30x or 60x magnifying loop and look at the globular resin glands on the main stem and leaves; how many glands are there and how big they are. A good place to look at is the "arm pits", or the general area where the leaves attach to the main stem. Also the fresh leaves on the grow tip.

The little experience i have, i've seen that frosty plants show their resin at very young, some even on their first true leaves. Many (most) times if there aren't alot of globular resin on a young plant, the plant won't be the frostiest at harvest time either.

Some plants have smaller resin glands, so don't cull these plants unless you sure. it doesn't mean they don't have a nice frost on them at harvest time, it's just smaller resin glands. But if the globular resin is "far" apart, and maybe not so big in size, i personally wouldn't use it for seed making unless these kind would be the only plant(s) available.


For me, resin production isn't the most important thing. A nice marijuana plant, for me, is a combination of many things. i can give up some resin production for nice taste and effect. Same thing with potency; the strongest plants may not have the best effect.

[angelgoob]

thanks everyone. great info.

goat. yes did you read that thread that said fastest sucks and is hemp (fibre) haha.

smoking some...let's see....kosher kush. but it's not flushed i can tell.

female flowers on males. haha.

I really have to read my breeding bible I have. I lost interest in learning that part for now. I will pick it back up though. All i know is female and male plant = both kinds of seeds. haha. jk I know a little more, been helping people.

The advice I get and others has to be examined. The people asking the question do not give enough info and people have 80 different solutions and they all grow differently. So when someone said just breed collidal females and breed only this way and I've been taught otherwise. Let's just say I hate appeal to authority but what good breeder has no males. LOL. Then later he got burned for that and called a pollen chucker. I made a joke I was one too.

These faster plants do have less resin. I should probably talk a little more about that, so when I come back to this thread I can wonder more on this.

The resins attracts: what?
The seed has energy for how long?
The season is how long?
Does it need protection or can it been half eaten and still produce seeds on a fervent scales, trading off the energy for resin production for other means of surivial?
Or in higher temps does it need the resin to delete cells that are penetrated and could infect the plant (apoptosis) and short season cold weather plants aren't prone to the same warm climate bacteria/viruses/fungus?

It gets the animal attracted with scents. The animal eats and shits out the seed with fertilizer. Now the plant that produces fiber gets tall and relies on plant numbers and height MORE SO, they it's beloved resin that promote apoptosis when cell walls are penetrated and exposed to THC and then it also doesn't need the animals for spreading THAT much?

Damn. So smoking female flower on a male plant. Sounds nice. DUnno if that works a good one though. I will STILL PICK THE FASTEST MALE. while i figure out exactly why the plant chooses that over resin production!

goat yes. I have a VERY cheap laser pointer lens I use for macros. People love the pics. So are so close that newer people or people who haven't read up see them and ask what is it? Then it tell them it's resin glands of cannabis and they have a face of "I believe in ghosts" You know. Anyway 170 pics atleast of resin glands I have, but it's like 6 pics per shooting of one pic. So divide by six and that's the solid number of good pic takes I have.

Now peeps say the resin like smell, isn't indicative of THC, but yeah, it's part of the high. I guess in ways.

Should I expose a plant to prickers and UV light? What would I get?

What would I get if I rootbound plants? Plants like corn that mature faster because they know they'll seed the ground so densely they find they're root zone is small and flower before they use the alotted amount of nutes in the soil for that space? Rootbounding has been known to force flower. Couple generations and you might have the genes working more like tomato plants. My toms flower when root bound or stress.

I wonder what's the best way to stress plants to think the season is ending. Light time manipulation or does it not matter with autos? 24hrs. Or cold? (winter is coming. hahah)

On an ending note my thoughts may not be very CORRECT. I'm using intuition on a lot of things I do. This can make one delusional.

[Arnold.]

You can smoke test males too.

Of course before you had any flowers.

[bigbadbiddy]

Smoke tests of males have been reported to be inconclusive at best as well.
Most seem to agree that while possible and a source of information, it can just as easily lead to a bad selection as it could to a better/good one.
Even if you go the extra mile like Sam and others and actually reverse the males into females, flower those out and smoke them, it seems to lead to inconclusive results as well.

As annoying as it is, for whatever method to select a male, there will be voices saying "yeah but the result was completely different than expected in my case".

Maybe lab analysis will change this drastically.