How do you choose you breeding males?

[BAKED_BEANZ]

It's all about how they blend together.
Some traits are dominant an some recessive.
A lab test can tell you certain things like cannabinoid ratio's
Which can help but you still need to grow the progeny out
To actually see what's what.

too true ,

 

[sadpanda]

Reversing the male and smoking it seems a brilliant idea,cheers

how do you reverse a male to a female??? i know colloidal silver/STS/GA etc work at forcing a female to produce male pollen, but i haven't heard about it working the other way before (but having said that i haven't heard of anyone spraying males with it before!). I dont think i'd want to smoke a reversed plant though after absorbing all that i threw out reversed plants (after seed harvest) when i last did CS, smoking didnt seem an option lol

 

[englishrick]

oviously 1:1 mating evaluation is the final word, but lab testing and tagging , data sheets and quantitive analasis should be done and kept in this day and age, unless its impossible to do so,,,otherwise its just low jack an fun chucking anyways

 

[superglue]

how do you reverse a male to a female??? i know colloidal silver/STS/GA etc work at forcing a female to produce male pollen, but i haven't heard about it working the other way before (but having said that i haven't heard of anyone spraying males with it before!). I dont think i'd want to smoke a reversed plant though after absorbing all that i threw out reversed plants (after seed harvest) when i last did CS, smoking didnt seem an option lol

ethylene

 

[sadpanda]

superglue: ooh cool! that makes sense i guess (as colloidal silver and all those are "ethylene antagonists/inhibitors" or whatever). I guess this is the plant equiv of giving a male human some estrogen.

But is it safe to smoke or consume an ethylened plant???

Like all hydrocarbons, ethylene is an asphyxiant and combustible. It is listed as an IARC class 3 carcinogen.

^ suggests that consumption of an ethylened plant is NOT SAFE, unless somehow all the ethylene has been removed, and as it's been absorbed im guessing you can't just let it sit and evaporate away

but it does seem like a great way to make seeds from clone-only males!

 

[englishrick]

this is why id rather do feminised breeding,,,you can smoke the pollen donor safely and its still possible to acquire a "male" from feminised seeds making it possible to bring it back to a regular m/f seedline,,,i seriously dont understand why breeders dont use feminised breeding exclusively when working a line towards its final

 

[luvaduck]

testing only way to go , you can have 100 males your never going to know who,s holding the goodies .

This is true, one can stem rub and reverse males, but what counts is the genetics held in the pollen.

 

[sadpanda]

this is why id rather do feminised breeding,,,you can smoke the pollen donor safely

i guess its safe to smoke plants drenched in colloidal silver - surely not STS or GA though!, but when i did CS they looked like shit afterwards and because they offered so much in the way of pollen they didnt offer much bud to smoke anyway lol, so i didnt see them at all suitable for smoking. but thanks to that i still have some feminised C99 seeds made from GN03 collection mother! but i only have like 4 left so i intend to do another CS feminising the next chance i get to grow! (a year or two away)

 

[luvaduck]

But is it safe to smoke or consume an ethylened plant???^

The bananas we eat are ripened with ethylene...

 

[sadpanda]

luvaduck: hrm, true! i forgot ethylene is a gas, i was thinking of it as a liquid like colloidal silver etc, but that would be ethanol, drinking alcohol. hrm!

 

[englishrick]

i guess its safe to smoke plants drenched in colloidal silver - surely not STS or GA though!, but when i did CS they looked like shit afterwards and because they offered so much in the way of pollen they didnt offer much bud to smoke anyway lol, so i didnt see them at all suitable for smoking. but thanks to that i still have some feminised C99 seeds made from GN03 collection mother! but i only have like 4 left so i intend to do another CS feminising the next chance i get to grow! (a year or two away)

bro,,in feminised breeding projects ,,,,,when smoking the donor you clone and flower a different plant,,ya dont smoke one you spray ,,you use 2 proven clones that you have already seen full flower previously,,thats how you choose it to test in mating

 

[IM$]

I have a question about males. I have a male that I have been keeping around for about 6 months, just cloning him waiting for the right moment to use him. Recently he has been showing the "balls" while still in veg. He is not flowering, just showing that he is male. Is he still viable to use??

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Might just be him reaching maturity.
Preflowers are nothing bad or wrong.

Just a sign the plant is ready to flower.

One thing to consider though is that I have often read from people's experience that early showing/flowering males should be avoided.

While it is a desirable trait for females, in males it has apparently shown to produce inferior progeny i.e. fast vegers/growers but lower amount of resin/overall less potent etc. .

So many breeders seem to discard the fastest flowering male and instead go for something that takes a bit longer but then produces massive amounts of balls and resin at the budding sites, stem rub gives potent odors etc. etc.

 

[IM$]

thanks bigbadbiddy!!! he smells amazing, and his structure is great as well. Just this little hiccup. I am thinking of just cutting him down and search for another.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

I doubt you would need to.

If I understand correctly, the donor plant of which you took the clone just has reached maturity and so has the clone.
Once it fills out its container it should throw preflowers in veg if I am not mistaken.

So I wouldn't regard it as any sort of hiccup or anything.

Just a sign that the plant has reached its maturity and is ready to flower.
Plants are usually made to flower through environmental influence in this hobby of ours. So we rarely see a plant that reaches maturity on its own because we make it flower before it does.

 

[IM$]

you are correct. It is a plant that has been around since March. I have just been keeping him on standby until I found some good girls to mix with him. He just started this about two weeks ago. I was watching to see if they opened but no. just kind of showing sex is all. I do think you are right. usually I just put them through, This is the first time I have held a male for that long. Let me put him in flower and see what happens. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[HeriMarry]

Vigor,stem rub,stress the males, growth patterns an lab testing if you choose so. Then test them on your females of choice because this is your best test of all. Also smoking male tips are a good indacator too. I also heard that the longer it takes for males to show sex during flower indicate higher potency but I don't know

 

[BAKED_BEANZ]

though i look too , vigour, structure , smell , any sign of resin normally its too early to tell wether your male is going to have resin by the time its needed to pollinate if your doing live/sinked pollination .......

the thing is give me 100 males of the same strain unless you use all of them and test the individual offspring of each one on the same mother plant , your never going to know you chose the best male .

you may be surprised the shitty little runt male pumped out the best lot of offspring of the whole bunch . odds aren't in its favour off course , its an example .

seeds are a gamble , cause its not practical to test like this . so you just got to go with what you consider you want to pass on , and with any luck you will .

then theres so many other factors with combining the genes and there heritage and lines and there parents lines ......pick what you like and go for it .

use the most stable plants you can find

 

[who dat is]

Subbed

I narrowed it down to two males while running through my Dank Zappas. I was judging based on stem rub and general structure. I'm currently flowering them and am happy to note that the one that has been my favorite all along has more flower clusters.

 

[Coughie]

You wont really find a definitive way to choose males, if you haven't noticed yet..
We can all agree on some general things, but some of us are more qualitatively analytical than others, some let their intuition guide them.. some prefer 1:1 matings, some refuse to perform 1:1 matings.. There are as many ways to choose what to grow, as there are ways to actually grow it..


I perform a lot of selection pressure/criteria before I even know the sex of the plants, so some of what I do is just the limits of acceptability.

Then later on, there are different things I look for in males than I look for in females; sex-specific traits.

I take a look at the over all population, as well as specific individuals within that population.

Ratios of males to females, ratios of genetic potential to genetic messes, ratios of growth rates, symmetry, numbers of phenotypes...

If you're doing things right, you shouldn't have the same selection criteria from one male to the next, across different genetic lines. It should vary slightly, depending on both what you're dealing with and what your aim is.


I go through a lot of seed though, so I've noticed - because I'm a fan of record-keeping - that I generally find 1 acceptable male for every ~50 seeds I sprout. Females are somewhere around 1 per 35-40 seeds.

If you're/I'm starting with a 10-pack or something... I generally start with those same pre-sexual maturity selection pressures - everything I have on hand has passed those same pressures - and then aim to open-pollinate everything that makes it through that step. When you've made several hundred seeds, you can be more strict with your acceptable plants and you may quickly notice yourself arriving at ratios like I mention above.. Or higher.. or is it lower?

If I only have one 10-pack, I cant even apply the second set of criteria or I'd toss everything out. Even still, it's happened before.


A lot of guys simply wont share what they select for.
It's one of the harder-kept secrets of this whole hobby.

As for finding a "keeper," as opposed to something acceptable - I haven't found a keeper yet.