Being an outdoor only home breeder (more like fumbler ) I really need to focus on male selection..... The females I always keep, may not always keep the seed from them if their traits are undesirable or not the more desired ones, but the males seem to be the determining factor in my game. I can only hope for the day I'm able to do progeny testing for male trait contributions.....
As of today, the technique involves looking at a male, smelling, tasting, smoking the immature flowers, and making my selections based on the observed traits...... I hope for some stabilization but at the same time I mostly hope for preservation of the best variations in the line..... Discarding these variations accidentally will make it more difficult to find the desired individuals of the population in the future.
What can I do to better stabilize a hybrid, in my situation, without discarding individuals with desired traits or that contribute desired traits to their progeny?
Seems I dont have much to work with I know...... In an attempt to stabilize and preserve a couple non true F1 hybrids in 05, male selections were made leaving what was observed to be the best 2 males from each hybrid for use in open pollination.
Did I do the right thing? Should i have used more males? Obviously I didn't have that many to choose from as the numbers were around 10-20.......
As of today, the technique involves looking at a male, smelling, tasting, smoking the immature flowers, and making my selections based on the observed traits...... I hope for some stabilization but at the same time I mostly hope for preservation of the best variations in the line..... Discarding these variations accidentally will make it more difficult to find the desired individuals of the population in the future.
What can I do to better stabilize a hybrid, in my situation, without discarding individuals with desired traits or that contribute desired traits to their progeny?
Seems I dont have much to work with I know...... In an attempt to stabilize and preserve a couple non true F1 hybrids in 05, male selections were made leaving what was observed to be the best 2 males from each hybrid for use in open pollination.
Did I do the right thing? Should i have used more males? Obviously I didn't have that many to choose from as the numbers were around 10-20.......
Gratefulhead said:How do we make new seedlines stable without loosing diversity? How diverse can a genetic population be and still be a stable strain? Where would the point of balance be between maximum stability and maximum diversity, and how close to the balancing point should we seek to be as a project goal?