[Angel Eyes]

Hi Mike,

I was going to post this question in the Breeder's Forum, but I thought I'd get a more intelligent answer by asking you directly.

I've been doing some basic reading about plant breeding, and I've read that the progeny of a hybrid plant will not maintain the same vigor as original hybrid.

If this is the case, does it make sense for me to grow out one of your strains (White Satin, in my case), and try to create more seeds from a male and female White Satin? Is breeding two White Satins going to create an inferior plant to the original?

Given the thrifty price of Mandala's seeds, I'm wondering if I might just be better off growing your seeds, rather than trying to make my own.

I realize I'm fairly ignorant on this topic, but please let me know the best way for me to go about creating new seeds from the Mandala's that I've purchased, or if I'm better off not breeding. Thanks!

[kush07]

Inbreeding works to better stabilize a strain and helps to make IBL (inbreed lines) and TBL (true breeding lines). Many times inbreeding helps. Many of Mandala's seeds that I grew were already pretty stable and creating my own seed stock from them didn't seem to diminish quality very nocticably. If you want to avoid this entirely you could just clone your plant. A clone has the exact genetic make-up as the mother plant and is also as chronologically old to boot.

Happy Toking

[glock23]

perfect advice there kush! i like to make seeds...what i do is let a male open a few flowers...then chop it. i let the earliest female flowers get fertilized. that way, you get good, useable seeds and lots of smoke too.

[Hunt4Hazez]

Put in some work... Find a viable male (crossing with sevral strains and record results, find one that suits your needs). And also find your favorite female. Cross the two, see what happens. With a little luck you can improve the strain.

If you take a random male and cross it to all your females you may have good results with a few plants, but it probably wont be the same if you know what your doing and do it right.

[glock23]

actually, when you work with the progeny, there's the possibility of finding exquisite genetics. the variety of phenotypic expression increases. grow out a bunch and you might well find a plant better than the F1 generation..that's how the killer moms are found.

[kush07]

When looking for a good male there are many things to take into account. For one, the flower structer of the pods will most often represent the flowers of the seeds produced by the F2 (if inbreeding) or H1 (if hybriding) children. The visible head glands on the stems and flowers are also a good indicator. Many times the first male to show its colors will not be the best of the bunch. Let your males grow out and look at how they develope. Look for characteristics that you find desireable, smell, heigth, structure, etc, and capture the pollen from each male but be sure to not have the pollen become contaminated with other male pollen. This can easily be done by either isolating your known males and putting them in an enviroment with little wind so the pollen may collect on whatever surface you choose to put the on or by putting bags over the male flowers and letting the pollen collect in the bags.

In an Ed Rosenthal book, Ed describes a method for determining a plants sex w/o sexing the whole plant. What you do is take a cutting from your desired plant and place it in a water solution with preservatives such as ST, sugar, etc. in it and force flower that cutting. The cutting should show sex which will, with extremely high accuracy, show the final sex of the whole plant. You can use this method to seperate your plants out early.

Happy Toking