Death to the Ruderalis Autoflowering plants

[Grover Sativa]

Morning all,

Sorry I haven't been around for a little while. It's been a busy time and I've taken some time out to keep my mental health good as things starting getting a bit stressful in my life... but I'm feeling great and back to work with a bang!
At the Landrace Team we're concentrating on reproducing as many pure landrace lines as possible, keeping the seedstock fresh and all that stuff.
The guys have collected so many seeds on their travels around the World lately that they've left myself and the other breeders quite a task to reproduce them all. We've steered clear of too many hybrids and creations recently... and I also insist now that I only make hybrids with genetics that we've actually collected ourselves. That way I KNOW that they are unique (and I won't be upsetting anybody, either..) and it should enhance our reputation if we work properly. There is one exception, though...

I've started working with the Iraqi Babylon recently... it's got a great backstory (I'll post it below) and is a great smoke in it's own right... but it has something really special about it that makes it super interesting to me....

It flowers at 18hrs daylight.

That's right, it will start it's flowering cycle with only 6 hrs of solid darkness and it is NOT A RUDERALIS.
This means that it will flower at any time of the year that you put it outside ANYWHERE IN THE US (OUTSIDE ALASKA) and even in Northern Europe (like the UK.) As far as outdoor or greenhouse growers can be concerned it acts exactly like an auto flower once you put it outside. You can get 3 crops a growing season outdoors (greenhouse), with careful planning - yet it has no ruderalis genetics in it.
It also means that you can keep a mother vegging if you keep it indoors under 20hrs light or more each day and you can veg plants to be as large as you like before putting them out to flower.

Personally, so far I haven't spent too much time with it myself yet - but that's about to change. I need to experiment and get to know it and see how it outcrosses, etc... and I'll post my results and experiments here as I go ... but my idea is to outcross it to my favourite pure sativa Landraces to create hybrids that you can start flowering at any time of the year, so even if it takes 4 months to flower you can still finish before the bad weather sets in... plants that you can veg to be any size that you like... hybrids that you can keep mothers plants vegging for clones... and hybrids that will flower whenever you like BUT WON"T HAVE THEIR HIGHS WEAKENED WITH RUDERAL GENETICS. On the contrary, from what I have heard so far, the Iraqi Babylon has a very strong high from the outset.

Will it work? I haven't got a clue yet. Is it exciting? Bloody Hell, YES! Would I ever grow a ruderalis hybrid again if I could grow a Babylon Hybrid? Never - why would anybody? The Babylon solves ALL of the problems of the Autoflower : 1) you can veg it as long as you like. 2) You can keep mothers and use clones 3) It is not a Ruderalis plant and gets you fucking stoned in it's own right so you won't be weakening the highs.

Best of all? It's got an awesome name - Iraqi Babylon!

I'll post a copy of the backstory below (it's on our website for anybody that cares to have a look or buy Babylon seeds for themselves..)

DEATH TO THE AUTOFLOWER. LONG LIVE BABYLON.

 

[Grover Sativa]

Here is the backstory for the Iraqi Babylon:

Seeds were collected by an American soldier stationed in Iraq during the 2004 war.
The city where the plants were growing lies near the Euphrates river. Probably but not sure from Turkish (or Iranian) genetics.

These seeds have been collected in situ in what appeared an obvious crop someone had tended. The seeds were collected by removing a few branches from interesting looking plants. They were collected in 2004, sprouted and kept pure and going until now.

These plants aid digestive distress and get things moving as effectively as coffee.
The taste is earthy and spicy but also hashy, diesel and some coffee.

Iraqi plants show both indica and sativa leaves. Some of them will display purple and almost black (more roasted coffee) colours, especially in cold night temperature. The plants usually take between 9 to 10 weeks to complete their flowering but some can be as quick as 8 weeks. Conical shape with short side branches

A generous yield is to be expected. It delivers a calming and relaxed effect and you’ll feel sedated after a while.

Comments and opinions of a grower and breeder on the Iraq plants:

Iraqi are the first landrace varieties to start showing their sex, and this is super early in the season… so looks like this Iraqi variety carries the semi-auto trait. These are still photosensitive plants that can be vegged longer if you add supplemental lighting, but once sexually mature, they will flower anytime of year when the light is under 18 hours per day (everywhere in the US besides Alaska). The cool thing with the semi-auto trait, is you can run up to 3 rounds outdoor per season under natural light. This also helps lock in early harvests in June-July, before fire season. You can do 3 outdoor harvest per year (or growing season) if you plan things ahead in a careful way.

 

[Grover Sativa]

Now some cynics will say that is just an Autoflowering Ruderalis that a farmer somewhere in the Middle East has crossed with a hashplant sometime... and I couldn't say how this plant has been created through the history of it's time (how could I?) but I've created quite a few 'Early' versions in my time, by crossing Auto flowering plants with Photo sensitive plants. The Auto trait is not dominant in the F1 generation. The plants are photosensitive but the auto trait still has an effect - it makes the plant flower a little earlier and a little quicker (a bit like the Babylon) BUT when you go to F2 about 25% of the plants take the auto trait from both parents and will be Autoflowering.
This does not happen with the Iraqi Babylon. Every generation after every generation keeps the Early flowering trait. Autoflowering plants don't pop up. It is stable with it's 18 hrs flowering trait (although, like many Landraces, there are many phenotypes, flavours, aromas, colours that you can find in different plants, they ALL have the same 18 hr flowering trait, every generation)

 

[Chuck Jägerschnitzel]

That does sound promising, however the idea that autoflowers are weak because of the ruderalis aspect is the conventional wisdom from 10 year ago. Since then they've all been bred further and further away from the original ruderalis with only the autoflowering part of the ruderalis genetic pattern retained. Modern autos are all probably less than 0.01% ruderalis genetically, they aren't weak at all.
I've been trying out photoperiod plants that flower with short nights for a long time too and breeding them doesn't seem to be as straightforward as retaining the ruderalis' autoflowering characteristic is, not that its hard, its just more vague, works by trial and error instead of by Punnett square rules. For example last year I grew out 18 Swazi BX2s that had been bred with Swazi BX1 males which started flowering with nights about 9 hours long and I ended up only getting one plant that flowered with short nights from the BX2s, the rest all started flowering either with 10 hour nights or with 11 hour nights like the original Swazi does and I'm not sure why its like that. I kind of like the predictability of the recessive autoflowering trait even if it involves extra generations of inbreeding because I know whats going on and its easy to make a seed batch that has the autoflowering feature in every single seed. I don't know how many times I'll need to inbreed early flowering Swazi backcrosses before every seed produces an early flowering plant, hopefully I'll find out some day, with enough trial and error.

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[Cvh]

I think the Moroccan Beldia strain was also known to do this. And I have heard from others that many other middle Eastern also has the potential to 'autoflower'.

To my knowledge, autoflowering isn't an exclusive Ruderalis trait. It exists too in landrace strains just as you found an example off.

 

[Grover Sativa]

That does sound promising, however the idea that autoflowers are weak because of the ruderalis aspect is the conventional wisdom from 10 year ago. Since then they've all been bred further and further away from the original ruderalis with only the autoflowering part of the ruderalis genetic pattern retained. Modern autos are all probably less than 0.01% ruderalis genetically, they aren't weak at all.
I've been trying out photoperiod plants that flower with short nights for a long time too and breeding them doesn't seem to be as straightforward as retaining the ruderalis' autoflowering characteristic is, not that its hard, its just more vague, works by trial and error instead of by Punnett square rules. For example last year I grew out 18 Swazi BX2s that had been bred with Swazi BX1 males which started flowering with nights about 9 hours long and I ended up only getting one plant that flowered with short nights from the BX2s, the rest all started flowering either with 10 hour nights or with 11 hour nights like the original Swazi does and I'm not sure why its like that. I kind of like the predictability of the recessive autoflowering trait even if it involves extra generations of inbreeding because I know whats going on and its easy to make a seed batch that has the autoflowering feature in every single seed. I don't know how many times I'll need to inbreed early flowering Swazi backcrosses before every seed produces an early flowering plant, hopefully I'll find out some day, with enough trial and error.

​

Of course you are right - Auto flowers are much better than they were and I don't smoke strong weed anyway.... but this is how the market understands things and from my own experience, the high is slightly better with the photo period parents (if only slightly) but of course, you are right - there is nothing wrong with a good Auto... but the Babylon is better..

 

[Grover Sativa]

That does sound promising, however the idea that autoflowers are weak because of the ruderalis aspect is the conventional wisdom from 10 year ago. Since then they've all been bred further and further away from the original ruderalis with only the autoflowering part of the ruderalis genetic pattern retained. Modern autos are all probably less than 0.01% ruderalis genetically, they aren't weak at all.
I've been trying out photoperiod plants that flower with short nights for a long time too and breeding them doesn't seem to be as straightforward as retaining the ruderalis' autoflowering characteristic is, not that its hard, its just more vague, works by trial and error instead of by Punnett square rules. For example last year I grew out 18 Swazi BX2s that had been bred with Swazi BX1 males which started flowering with nights about 9 hours long and I ended up only getting one plant that flowered with short nights from the BX2s, the rest all started flowering either with 10 hour nights or with 11 hour nights like the original Swazi does and I'm not sure why its like that. I kind of like the predictability of the recessive autoflowering trait even if it involves extra generations of inbreeding because I know whats going on and its easy to make a seed batch that has the autoflowering feature in every single seed. I don't know how many times I'll need to inbreed early flowering Swazi backcrosses before every seed produces an early flowering plant, hopefully I'll find out some day, with enough trial and error.

​

I also found that playing with the early flowering plants was a little trial and error but you can get results with a lot of work.... eventually..
Using the Iraqi may very well make my life much much easier... and you can't Veg an Autoflower as long as you want and you can't keep a Autoflowering clone mother... the Babylon is better (potentially)

I'll keep you informed of how it all goes and we can bounce some ideas off each other - but why not give the Babylon a try? We sell the seeds in their pure form at TLT - and I'll make sure that anybody who buys a packet of Babylon gets a few free Tropical Sativas (Thai x Jamaican - or pure Jamaican) for free in order to make some crosses and try something different (and great..)

 

[Grover Sativa]

I think the Moroccan Beldia strain was also known to do this. And I have heard from others that many other middle Eastern also has the potential to 'autoflower'.

To my knowledge, autoflowering isn't an exclusive Ruderalis trait. It exists too in landrace strains just as you found an example off.

Yes, we have found other plants in Iraq that also have the early flowering trait yet maintain photosensitivity - the Babylon is the best of them, however..

 

[goingrey]

While a thread about an Iraqi landrace could be interesting...

1. This is the wrong subforum for it if it is not an auto.

2. The hyperbolic title is nonsense. Early/semi-auto strains are relatively common, especially from northern outdoor breeders, and were around long before the Lowryder revolution. Yet autos still reign queen, or at least have their place. Often the early strains are difficult to keep around as a mom because they want to flower not just at a certain daylength but also if rootbound or pretty much any slightest stress. And while autos flower at any daylength, they also veg at any daylength, so there is less or even no need to veg them with artificial light.

 

[Grover Sativa]

While a thread about an Iraqi landrace could be interesting...

1. This is the wrong subforum for it if it is not an auto.

2. The hyperbolic title is nonsense. Early/semi-auto strains are relatively common, especially from northern outdoor breeders, and were around long before the Lowryder revolution. Yet autos still reign queen, or at least have their place. Often the early strains are difficult to keep around as a mom because they want to flower not just at a certain daylength but also if rootbound or pretty much any slightest stress. And while autos flower at any daylength, they also veg at any daylength, so there is less or even no need to veg them with artificial light.

Lol - everything about seeds is hyperbole on the internet - you know that! but from what I can tell you CAN keep the Babylon vegging as a mother... anyway, I make no apologies for my excitement - it's just my personality..

I'll keep a grow diary from the Babylon in the correct place.

 

[Sasult]

NIce to see another simi-auto out there. I first heard of them from Dubi. He might be a good person to talk to about the tricks of growing them.
Getting outdoor sativas to finish up here, has me interested in them. Look forward to the grow diary. It would be great if you could test the rootbound thing, it is a trait of the others I would like to see a way around.

 

[Grover Sativa]

I love Autoflowering plants - they suit me well (especially when I'm in the UK)
I'm not sure if they reign Queen - feminised plants do (and I can understand why)) - I agree that they DO have their place, though, especially in industry but even though Autos have improved greatly over the years there has always been a perception that the ruderal genetics hold back the effects of the resultant hybrid (even at Ace they describe their Auto as being strong 'for an Auto', which says it all...) and it's hard to argue that there are only 0.1% Ruderalis genetics left in the hybrids... I never found breeding that simple! I certainly never found it possible to bring just a single trait forward from a plant (such as the Autoflowering trait) without bringing forward others too - they seem to come in 'groups' (you can tell that my degree was in Maths and not genetics or plant breeding as I can only really talk about my experiences or observations - and I'm sorry about that...) but I figured that maybe creating useful hybrids with a plant like the Babylon can move the perception of Autoflowering style plants away from all of the stuff associated with the ruderalis genetics.... but it will take a bit of hyperbole, luck and hardworking to get there...

I posted here as I thought that the growers most interested in the Babylon would be the ones who liked Autoflowers, too...

I also want to add that we have loads of great ruderalis lines that I can't wait to start experimenting with ...
ROMANIA PRAHOVA, ROMANIA DOBROGEA, MOLDAVIA, TATARSTAN, KAZAKHSTAN, CRIMEA, UKRAINE and a few from Russia. I have nothing against the ruderalis auto flowering plants at all - they have some great traits and I love them but the best thing about the Babylon is that it is NOT a ruderalis... if you get my point..

I'll put my hands up about the Hyperbole, though...

 

[Grover Sativa]

NIce to see another simi-auto out there. I first heard of them from Dubi. He might be a good person to talk to about the tricks of growing them.
Getting outdoor sativas to finish up here, has me interested in them. Look forward to the grow diary. It would be great if you could test the rootbound thing, it is a trait of the others I would like to see a way around.

I spoke with Luis about Early flowering plants many times - he crosses Autos and Photos and uses the F1s as earlies (as I describe above..) Very similar to how I made the Early Kalamata at TLT..
Unfortunately Luis and I fell out because he gave me some private genetics from Oaxaca (in exchange for my KohChangMeao (Double Thai), I think... as he lost the Double Thai genetics and I had kept them going for over 10 years and several generations.. BTW Double Thai is amazing - it's easily my favourite modern Thai) and I used them in a VERY limited edition panama red/haze hybrid (Oaxacanamahaze) which I sold 2 packets of to a friend...but I sold him via the TLT website for safety and as they are set up to receive money and send seeds, etc...and the guys posted a description on the website - so it looked like it was on offer to the public... Luis was NOT happy about that (rightly so) and I thought he over-reacted (which he had) and didn't react well to his anger (nobody would). The truth is that I regret the whole thing and I do miss his wise conversations. I loved Luis' excitement for the plant and generosity with his time. We all make mistakes, I guess - it's one of the reasons why I only make hybrids with genetics that I KNOW are unique now.. the whole episode came at a really bad time in my life and I NEVER want to go through that again... maybe the passage of time will help smooth things over...but I doubt it - he was pretty pissed off with me...

But I appreciate your heads-up, Sasult... what have you noticed about the root-bound trait that I can look out for and maybe help you work something out?

 

[djonkoman]

...and breeding them doesn't seem to be as straightforward as retaining the ruderalis' autoflowering characteristic is, not that its hard, its just more vague, works by trial and error instead of by Punnett square rules.

haven't been active much online lately, but still lurk some and this is right up my alley.
punnet squares is really basic stuff, you can only really apply that well to single gene cases. But there's still a lot of theory out there to predict what you could expect in this case, it's just a bit of a different method and way of thinking.

this would relate to methods to select quantitative traits, i.e, traits that are not simply ' it is there or it is not', but have a range.
such traits usually are determined by a combination of multiple genes, each individually could be dominant/recessive/codominant (and there could be epistatic interactions between different genes), but you can skip looking at individual genes and just look at the larger picture.

generally what you would expect is that a cross of line A and B would have an average value in between A and B, but the individual plants of the cross would fall along a normal distribution (as in, the statistics thing).
trouble is, by selecting those outlier plants the next generation won't immediatly all flower that early too, you will shift the average value towards earlier (well, assuming decent heritability, which isn't always sure either), if you're lucky you will imediatly shift it by a big amount, but you might just be making the average a little bit earlier each generation, so you'd have to keep up selections for some generations (and not loose too much genetic potential along the way).
if you look up methods for breeding quantitative traits there's all sorts of strategies others have already come up with to deal with this.

so in a way, that quantitative trait breeding stuff is more intuitive since it's just what you would expect when mixing 2 lines with the result ending up in the middle.

however, best case for further breeding would be 1 gene with a strong effect on when flowering starts, since dealing with 1 gene instead of many is much more convenient going further.
so, if you suspect you might be so lucky that you've found such a gene, you could do more punnet square sort of analysis, you just have to look through the 'noise' from all the smaller effect genes and look if you can still determine a pattern where offspring plants split up into distinct groups, not following the expected normal distribution.
but, you will have to consider this hypothetical gene might not be recessive like autoflower. and it's also possible the trait (early flowering) is due to an epistatic interaction, i.e. you need 2 (or more) genes to work together to get the trait. so this would also change the ratio's you look at, punnet squares still aply but it's not 1/4 vs. 3/4 in f2 like a single recessive gene, but for example 1/16 in the f2 (in case of 2 recessive genes needed together).

for example, I think I may have found such a gene, which I think originated from hfh super07. I'm not 100% sure because of low numbers of plants I grew out in some generations of this line, but I suspect I'm dealing with 1 gene with a co-dominant allele causing early flowering.

and for the epistasis thing, I've found a smell originating from rsc manipuri which surprisingly to me inherits very predictably, as in that exact smell comes through predictably in a certain ratio of the offspring plants when crossed to something without the smell every time.
but the ratio is not 1/4-3/4 in f2 (it actually comes through in f1 already too, besides the different ratio). from the ratio of f1 plants that get the smell, my best guess so far is that it might be an epistatic interaction between 3 or so dominant genes.

 

[Chuck Jägerschnitzel]

Yes, that early flowering tendency is lot less distinct of a genetic feature than the autoflowering one. I've given up on trying to analyze it, the hours of night needed to trigger flowing is a continuum or something like it, so I figure it has to be more complex than just one gene. So rather than try and understand exactly whats happening, I just decided to go with the old fashioned technique of breeding the good ones together and hoping that I get good results next year. So far, after years of trying to get a plant thats mainly Swazi, but flowers early, I seem to be finally getting some good results this year with the early BX1 female x early BX2 male. I already have two very early males separated out and I culled another early male that wasn't quite as early as the first two, now I'm just waiting for a female, theres preflowers showing on most of the plants, but they're not big enough yet that I can say gender for sure on them.

 

[Old Piney]

Yes simi autos over Ruderalis anytime here's my Morrocan Beldia lat year pictured August 29, at 40degrees north latitude I've also had old-school, Duch Durban poison just as early

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[indica193]

I also want to add that we have loads of great ruderalis lines that I can't wait to start experimenting with ...
ROMANIA PRAHOVA, ROMANIA DOBROGEA, MOLDAVIA

I'm from romania, can you tell me more about these ruderalis seeds ?
Maybe it's just hemp grown for seed (that happens to flower fast), there are other varietes grown for rope etc.

 

[need4weed]

This is a really interesting topic, although I've never been into autos or grown them, I'm interested in the whole concept. I've alway been interested in how modern breeders creat these auto's. I'm wondering what strain they are using these days. I'm subbed to this thread, keen to see where it goes with the early flowering strains. Dr greenthumb uses an early Iranian for the base to his early strains. Then you've got Mr nice who've used early queen etc

 

[NordicGenetics]

Semi autos or very early photos is somewhat of a special interest and subject for me. I own a nordic seedbank that specializes in exactly that. I would be interested in studying the subject much more in depth if it wasn´t for prohibition still being a thing here in my country. We have a lot of these semi auto/very early photo strains in Denmark, because the hippies of the 60/70´ies went down to the hashproducing countries like Marocco, Nepal etc. and brought home both hash and seeds with them. Many of our best outdoor strains comes from these very old seed lines, and have been bred for mould resistance, earliness and potency all the way back to the 60-70´ies. Many of them have semi auto qualities and they start flowering shortly after summer solstice, and finishes somewhere around start august - end september. The only problem is, like Goingrey said, that you can´t clone them and keep them indoors as mother - even under 24 hour lights, you can still risk them starting to flower, maybe because of being rootbound or other stresses.

 

[Mr Jay]

You are describing a sensitive photoperiod plant, not an auto. A true daylight neutral plant will flower under 24 hrs of light, anything else is not an autoflower. I'm not at all trying to say what you are doing is not awesome, because it is awesome, but you are just making a photo sensitive early flowering strain.

It is not accurate to call this an autoflower.