New Caledonia

[romanoweed]

Oh you live in Canada, overseen it.. yeah then its hard.. I think a plant that finishes in mid October is basically the maximum you can ever reach with my Methods, while still be tripped out fairly similar to landrace. I SAID FAIRLY.. Not the same, but fairly.
Like my Hoabac x Pure Gooey, its fairly psychedelic, and colors are boosted, i feel the air, psychedelic feeling, but i dont get visuals.

I think your tactic sounds pretty firm!
(besides calling it preservation is crazy IMHO). It can help spreading the Landrace vibe, but preservation? you must be very good breeder with muuuuch time and space to inject a single autoflower gene, while keeping the rest.. probably you can reach that goal , but i doubt you will get a very good trippy weed.. Depends what you want, i think Autoflower strains might induce alot pointless Traits, aswell as melancholic Traits. I know this traits from smoking hemp , Autoflower might be similar?
Anyway, if you do that project, and you seem kinda passionated, i would first hunt for the best old genetics you find, you can not just swap them after years of breeding. And you still can find advice in my post above .. like said watch out for wich exact autoflower resonates better if you mix it in a Joint with the LAndrace.. And search autoflower from the closest location to your Landrace.. But again, hunt long for the right LAndrace, cause old Lines are so much better, you cant exchange them ever after you started..

Its far easyer perfecting your indoorgrowing skills, and its actually possible to grow pure Sativa indoors that totally trips you out.

Also, there is a thread on icmag called "breeding a Cambodian Auto" . He tried exactly what you do. Recommended

 

[Humple W.]

Although I understand how autos can be very beneficial in some contexts, and I can see why some growers prefer them, personally, it's the inability to clone and continue propagating an outstanding cultivar that keeps me away from them. My wife and I love finding gold (genetically speaking) and then keeping it! Thankfully, Ace has made that treasure-hunting way easier!

 

[Marcus67]

Thanks as always for your reply guys. F3s should have a a fair amount of autos in a 50/50 cross. In terms of calling it preservation, it is. Landraces are going extinct at a shocking rate - and genetic diversity in general- and anything that can keep their genetics a part of the mix and appealing to the masses- even in crosses- should be celebrated. Most people aren’t into growing landrace sativas indoors- that’s for hardcore people. This isn’t to say that the original landraces shouldn’t be preserved in pure form. Actually, this method would encourage that as the idea is to keep backcrossing the auto strain to the original landrace seed bank. For such a strain to survive without becoming genetically depressed, that original landrace gene pool would have to be maintained with maximum genetic diversity via open pollination. The idea again is to keep backcrossing to that original landrace gene pool. After several generations, you get 99% original landrace genetics in the auto cross- then 99.5%- then 99.75% etc. As for the auto trait messing up the high, remember many equatorial sativas (africans- thais etc) have auto traits. They have great highs! I like the idea of mixing weed in joints to test a cross. That’s a good idea! I did this with a mix of Hawaii Sativa by Federation seed and Canela by ACE and it produced the happiest high I’ve ever experienced- more than each strain on its own. I intend to make such a cross soon.

As for cloning- I am not a fan in terms of preservation of a strain, as you really narrow the gene-pool that way. But you can self pollinate female autos by standard feminization, right?

 

[Marcus67]

Sorry to hijack this thread- all this to just say I’d love an auto version of New Caledonia

 

[Humple W.]

Thanks as always for your reply guys. F3s should have a a fair amount of autos in a 50/50 cross. In terms of calling it preservation, it is. Landraces are going extinct at a shocking rate - and genetic diversity in general- and anything that can keep their genetics a part of the mix and appealing to the masses- even in crosses- should be celebrated. Most people aren’t into growing landrace sativas indoors- that’s for hardcore people. This isn’t to say that the original landraces shouldn’t be preserved in pure form. Actually, this method would encourage that as the idea is to keep backcrossing the auto strain to the original landrace seed bank. For such a strain to survive without becoming genetically depressed, that original landrace gene pool would have to be maintained with maximum genetic diversity via open pollination. The idea again is to keep backcrossing to that original landrace gene pool. After several generations, you get 99% original landrace genetics in the auto cross- then 99.5%- then 99.75% etc. As for the auto trait messing up the high, remember many equatorial sativas (africans- thais etc) have auto traits. They have great highs! I like the idea of mixing weed in joints to test a cross. That’s a good idea! I did this with a mix of Hawaii Sativa by Federation seed and Canela by ACE and it produced the happiest high I’ve ever experienced- more than each strain on its own. I intend to make such a cross soon.

As for cloning- I am not a fan in terms of preservation of a strain, as you really narrow the gene-pool that way. But you can self pollinate female autos by standard feminization, right?

Yeah, I'm really speaking more from a home-grower's perspective, rather than that of a preservationist. It's important to me to be able to retain singular expressions that really click for us. But certainly, seed is the way to go for retaining the potential spectrum of expressions a given strain posseses.

That said, cloning also has some value for preservation, even if it's not on the level of seed. I think of Ace's own Bubba Hash (amazing, by the way!), which is bred from two clones that have been preserved for a long time, or KA5H, which uses another well-renowned clone as a parent. Ace has been able to capture and preserve highly desirable qualities in these plants.

So I guess it really depends on what you're hoping to preserve, yes? If it's all the genetic diversity and potential hidden within a given strain, seed is the way, no doubt. But if it's a very specific set of qualities (taste/smell/effects/resistance/maturation time/etc.) you're wanting to keep locked in, exactly as they are, I don't think you can beat clones.

 

[Marcus67]

Absolutely! I like the idea too of using clones to create hybrids. My interest (or worry) for now is preserving legendary landraces because too many are vanishing

 

[dubi]

Hi Marcus67, to cross a landrace with different genetics modifies the landrace and that's not preservation. Preservation is to preserve as many alleles as possible from the original population, by outcrossing you modify the genepool forever.

You most probably request landrace sativa hybrids adapted to your growing conditions, in this case a landrace sativa hybrid with the autoflowering trait, and this was sucessfully achieved in Auto Zamaldelica, which is already available for a few years.

 

[djonkoman]

The idea is go create strains with old school genetics - also as a means to preserve a dying gene pool. The rough idea is auto x lr (land race), select offspring for autos (if any). Next generation backcross to lr. Select/stabilize for autos (which are now 75% lr). Repeat so that each generation gets closer to the pure LR (88% LR, then 93%, 96%, 98% etc) selecting for autos each time.

I'm doing exactly that with RSC's manipuri right now, so I can grow it outdoor. (at 75% now, but need to take a bit of a step back since I'm bringing males into it, started off the project with female plants only but realised having a natural male is more convenient for the inbreeding generation in between backcrosses)
one important thing to note is that since this concerns a recessive trait, you will have to inbreed one generation each time to bring back the autoflowering before backcrossing again.
so:
auto x landrace f1
auto x landrace f2: 1 in 4 auto, discard the rest

auto 50% landrace x landrace: backcross1
bc1 f2: 1 in 4 auto again

auto 75% landrace x landrace: backcross 2
bc2 f2: 1 in 4 auto again

and so on.

you must be very good breeder with muuuuch time and space to inject a single autoflower gene, while keeping the rest..

disagree with this, if everything goes ideally/how it should go in theory, you only need space for 4 plants to achieve it. 8 plants if you include males.
just to be sure better to start a few more seeds, since statistics are fickle with small numbers, but you should easily be able to do a project like this if you have space for 10-20 plants.
the genetic variation from the landrace lost along the way by chance (because single plant used for next gen) you could just correct for by including a larger number of plants (of the landrace) in the final backcross only.
timewise, it would depend on the generation time needed. if you can go from sowing to ripe seed in 3 months, that would be 4 generations a year, so reaching backcross 6 would take you 3 years. (backcrossing a dominant trait would be faster, since you wouldn'rt need the inbreeding gens in between. but since this is a recessive, you need the number of backcrosses *2, so to reach backcross 6 takes 12 generations in this case)

 

[rolandomota]

Theirs already plenty of auto regular plants you can use on any auto and get auto offspring
also you don't have to backross to the auto to get that auto gene f2 then f3 is a better route you want breed away from the auto and select plants like the non auto if making a hybrid
I like this kind of talk I also want to create my own auto regular strain but I want high thc 25 30 % you won't catch me using low thc auto genes of course they can be bred for higher thc but I need a male plant once the standard auto is made then fem can be made if I want

 

[djonkoman]

if you just want a hybrid you don't need backcrossing indeed, the trick with backcrossing is you can introgress only the auto gene. (there might still be some linkage drag with genes directly adjacent to the auto-gene, but pretty much all of the genes in the final line will derive from the recurrent non-auto parent)
(the backcrossing is to the non-auto parent btw, not the auto parent)
so, with a good number of backcrosses it also doesn't matter which autoflower you use, since you will retain pretty much nothing of the autoflower-donor background anyway.
that's also why you can do it with few plants each generation, since you don't need to do extensive selections, you're only selecting based on 1 trait, everything else you ignore.

if you just select plants in the f2 that look like the non-auto parent, you're still getting a lot of genetics frok the auto-side, you're just selecting on visible traits. also to be able to find one sufficiently like the non-auto you need higher plant numbers.
but instead you can select any that autoflowers (=1 in 4), and each backcross to the non-auto plant you will have higher chances of finding plants similar to the non-auto line. with this method you need much lower plant numbers.

since the starting landrace is probably still genetically diverse, you're not getting an exact copy of the plant you start with, but if you for example add 1-2 backcrosses at the end with multiple plants of the landrace parent, then you could create a line with the full genetic variation of the original landrace, but with the auto-trait added into it.
then within that population you can do more selections with higher plant numbers to stabilise other relevant traits.

 

[romanoweed]

disagree with this, if everything goes ideally/how it should go in theory, you only need space for 4 plants to achieve

im not convinced at all.
Was talking of keeping the QUALITIES upright. Shure you can get a 50 percent auto 50 percent landrace 25 auto, 50 landr.. one tha paper..

if it was so easy, im shure reeferman would trown hundrets of such breeds on the market.
Im shure someone would already done it..
Im shure even one percent auto in the makeup is WORLDS apart.. Im shure cause i experienced the difference between my strongest and secound strongest Canna-Trp.. Details matter in my EXPERIENCE..
On the paper it looks logically to you, but in truth it will never be the same , UNSLESS youre the most skilled biologist with millions of dollars ..

As an amateur with 4 plants per generation.. my little experience, but experience says no, cause you need always hundrets plants for keeping POWER in a selection, for keeping VIGOR..

you can probably achieve something quiet good.. depends also if markus35 finds his autoflowering equatorial..this is by the way a way better idea imho to hunt the elusive autoflowering ZAMAL Pheno wich flowers in summer with slight rootbound. ive seen it longflowering Zamals, Newguineans doin that in mid summer.

The commonly circulating Vietblack (snowhigh, Kiona, FET) is an outcross of a realdeal Vietnamese x shitty vietnamese.. Ive seen someone selecting hardcore from Generation one , with high skills thowards the good Vietnamese. Grown the result.... its far from the 100 percent realdeal Vietnamese.. but thats not wht im reffering to with the "worlds apart" statement.. Just an Example for people to realitycheck..

The only good thing i find cool, is your Tactic to use a immensly big number of Plants in the final Backcross, wich is an efficient compromise,

I WONT REPLY NOMORE, just my oppinion, i dont know in the end, no claim, and im out

 

[romanoweed]

but your Plan @djonkoman sounds very good. Its based on the Idea that you cant change a Lineage. But you can select for a single simple Trait (Auto).
Like per Example someone crosses a Thai to an Indica and tells you subsequent selection made it a Thai again. Never gonna happen easily.

So, thats why i find your Tactic spot on. You lower the percentage to close to Zero, but i think this Selection for Auto Trait wont just take a couple Traits with it, it will rather take the half of the Landrace Traits with it... It wont be the same. A bit similar probably, but thats it. (YES you can make a change trough selection thowards the bad, you can mess things up..)

I agree with your Tactic totally, thank you for that! but not with your sentence how similar it will be.

So, now im out!!

 

[Marcus67]

Thank you for your reply Dubi!

I am not explaining myself well, I apologize. The idea is that you create two lines, 1 the pure unadulterated landrace original with maximum genetic variations, and 2 the auto line that keeps getting crossed-back to the original line so that each generation of the auto line gets closer to the original. This can only work if the original line remains well preserved and diverse enough to prevent a loss of genetic vigour when breeding into the auto line. The original line therefore becomes directly tied to the success of the auto line- one needs the other. That’s how it’s preserved. Of course, one could also chose to sell the unadulterated original line as well to support those preservation efforts.

The selective pressures of the market then could change dramatically. If someone in Canada can grow only 5 plants per house, many would want their plants to be the biggest for their Instagram pictures and biggest yielding. All of a sudden, stretching characteristics of sativas become a good thing. Additionally, longer flowering traits (for may to September window) generally means bigger yields than autos finishing faster. Add to that the ease of growing rugged landraces, and you have a winner (in my opinion). I live in Canada so I realize not having to hide plants is a luxury. But the world is moving towards better laws hopefully and old characteristics of landrace sativas could maybe become attractive again.

 

[Marcus67]

I'm doing exactly that with RSC's manipuri right now, so I can grow it outdoor. (at 75% now, but need to take a bit of a step back since I'm bringing males into it, started off the project with female plants only but realised having a natural male is more convenient for the inbreeding generation in between backcrosses)
one important thing to note is that since this concerns a recessive trait, you will have to inbreed one generation each time to bring back the autoflowering before backcrossing again.
so:
auto x landrace f1
auto x landrace f2: 1 in 4 auto, discard the rest

auto 50% landrace x landrace: backcross1
bc1 f2: 1 in 4 auto again

auto 75% landrace x landrace: backcross 2
bc2 f2: 1 in 4 auto again

and so on.



disagree with this, if everything goes ideally/how it should go in theory, you only need space for 4 plants to achieve it. 8 plants if you include males.
just to be sure better to start a few more seeds, since statistics are fickle with small numbers, but you should easily be able to do a project like this if you have space for 10-20 plants.
the genetic variation from the landrace lost along the way by chance (because single plant used for next gen) you could just correct for by including a larger number of plants (of the landrace) in the final backcross only.
timewise, it would depend on the generation time needed. if you can go from sowing to ripe seed in 3 months, that would be 4 generations a year, so reaching backcross 6 would take you 3 years. (backcrossing a dominant trait would be faster, since you wouldn'rt need the inbreeding gens in between. but since this is a recessive, you need the number of backcrosses *2, so to reach backcross 6 takes 12 generations in this case)

That’s amazing! I ordered that strain from ACE and it’s high on my list of what to crack next. There are some amazing people doing God’s work here on this forum. Preserving and spreading quality effects is a very effective way of spread positivity in this world simply because so many people use cannabis (and sadly mostly the bad stuff).

 

[Marcus67]

if you just want a hybrid you don't need backcrossing indeed, the trick with backcrossing is you can introgress only the auto gene. (there might still be some linkage drag with genes directly adjacent to the auto-gene, but pretty much all of the genes in the final line will derive from the recurrent non-auto parent)
(the backcrossing is to the non-auto parent btw, not the auto parent)
so, with a good number of backcrosses it also doesn't matter which autoflower you use, since you will retain pretty much nothing of the autoflower-donor background anyway.
that's also why you can do it with few plants each generation, since you don't need to do extensive selections, you're only selecting based on 1 trait, everything else you ignore.

if you just select plants in the f2 that look like the non-auto parent, you're still getting a lot of genetics frok the auto-side, you're just selecting on visible traits. also to be able to find one sufficiently like the non-auto you need higher plant numbers.
but instead you can select any that autoflowers (=1 in 4), and each backcross to the non-auto plant you will have higher chances of finding plants similar to the non-auto line. with this method you need much lower plant numbers.

since the starting landrace is probably still genetically diverse, you're not getting an exact copy of the plant you start with, but if you for example add 1-2 backcrosses at the end with multiple plants of the landrace parent, then you could create a line with the full genetic variation of the original landrace, but with the auto-trait added into it.
then within that population you can do more selections with higher plant numbers to stabilise other relevant traits.

That’s exactly the idea. Also if you had enough space for more plants, you could also select not just the auto trait in each backcross, but additionally for things like potency or stature as well. This of course would divert away from the original landrace more than only selecting for the auto trait, but all other traits that you are not selecting - like the effects, terpenes etc in theory would progressively get closer and closer to the original with each backcross (if the traits are “untied” to what you are selecting for- and if it’s the effect, many trippy sativas have auto traits so that doesn’t worry me). It also depends on what preserved landrace traits you are trying to sell to the public- probably the original high and flavour of say a New Caledonia as opposed to it’s “unique” height for instance . But I keep saying, regardless this entire idea depends on maintaining a healthy diverse original landrace bank to prevent loss of genetic vigour.

As for what to cross with, yes you are right it wouldn’t matter much! But why not start ahead. Many sativa leaning auto hybrids these days are relatively tiny in stature and extremely potent and productive relative to plant size- which is the exact opposite of many landrace sativas. So these drastically opposite traits could make initial crosses interesting and one could - as an example- create a separate shorter stature auto line for markets where growing cannabis is still illegal and height needs to be controlled for discrete grows. So and original non auto line, an auto line only selected for auto straits, and another selected for auto plus short height (or extra long- whatever), auto plus yield, etc. Again the revenues from these lines would have to partially support the maintenance and preservation of the original landrace bank because again, these backcrossing auto lines depend on the successful maintenance of the original line (for successive backcrosses- I can’t stress this enough).

Zamaldelica and Malawi auto by ACE which are great or Gelato (also a favourite modern of mine for the effect), LBH Haze auto etc there are good options to chose from that are sativa leaning that have good traits to start such projects.

 

[Marcus67]

One last thing that’s off topic a bit, but Manipur is a great choice I think because if I remember correctly, it won’t got into flowering if too young, so you potentially get an auto that has a longer veg time that will therefore end up a bigger plant - which is ideal for Canadian/Dutch grows (or any other colder country where you can legally grow in your backyard).

 

[Marcus67]

I lied hahah this is my last post on this as to not divert from New Caledonia topic (unless I’m replying . Every year or two the breeder gets renewed interest in people buying seeds because each new auto generation would get closer to the original- making it more valuable/authentic than the previous generation. This is such a unique and unexplored dynamic and the holder of the diverse original landrace bank ultimately holds the key here. This incentivizes the preservation of landrace strains in their full diversity (vs picking a few clones- which is great for creating the best sativa hybrids we all love today like Zamaldelica, but not for maintaining healthy genetic diversity of an original line). This is why I would love this to happen to your New Caledonia line, perfect line to start - and you guys at ACE are the masters. OK no more begging.

 

[djonkoman]

Also if you had enough space for more plants, you could also select not just the auto trait in each backcross, but additionally for things like potency or stature as well.

true, but do watch out with taking on too much.

the nice thing with autoflower is that it's a single gene, so that's why it's relatively simple to backcross, and only takes 4 plants each (inbreeding) generation.
in my case, I'm also not just selecting for auto, but also webbed (duckfoot) leaves. that is another single gene recessive. so because of that, I need 16 plants each generation instead of 4. (only counts for the selection gens btw, each f1 inbreeding, to bring out the auto again, requires only a single selfed plant, or 1 female and 1 male)

that is still doable, but you can imagine that with every extra gene you include in this, the plant number increases more.
with 5 genes you'd already need 1024 plants each generation, with 6 genes 4096 plants. (assuming all these genes are recessive)
and many traits are not so simple that they're determined by just 1 gene.

so as long as you stay focussed on a simple, realistic goal (keep landrace background, add in autoflower gene) it's a doable and pretty straight forward project. don't let yourself get too distracted by wanting everything.

if your goal is taking more traits (like potency and stature) from the auto side, I'd stick probably with just doing a hybrid. you could then run larger numbers for the f2, potentially split up into successive batches, to find what you want. but as opposed to backcrossing you won't need those big numbers+selection on repeat for 6 times.

or you could do 1 backcross but not more, then hunt that backcross population similar to an f2. (downside here is the auto trait is recessive, so while a backcross can create a segregating population similar to an f2, none of them will display autoflowering, although some will carry it)

 

[FletchF.Fletch]

Guys, start a new thread for this topic. Call it Landrace Autos. Enough of the Hijack.

 

[H e d g e]

Hey chilliwilli.. how are you getting on with that Caledonian Balochi x? I like your thinking .

Also, reading the above reminded me of this quote from a classic 80s b movie.. probably a bit obscure, hopefully someone out there might have seen it..

‘Auto! Don’t go! What about our relationship?’
‘What?’
‘What about our relationship!?’
‘... f**k that.’