Room for amateurs?

[chappie]

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on amateurs contributing to the breeding community.

As an afficianado and passionate advocate of quality cannabis, I am saddened at the lack of diversity and the loss of exceptional phenotypes especially in the past few years as the scene has exploded. I can see that on the one hand, the war on blandness needs a million soldiers, but on the other, too many cooks in the kitchen and sloppy, uncontrolled breeding is possibly worse than none.

I'm keen to know what the real pros think (and I don't mean the biggest celebrity successes, but rather those who are most key in maintaining the ancient torches).

Should people wait to breed until they can do it justice, with room for thousands of seedlings? Or can someone take subcool's advice and pick from 5 females and make decent strides? If they do this kind of casual stuff, should they keep it to themselves instead of unleashing their unstable stuff upon the genepool?

What are the rights and responsibilities of the amateur breeder?

If this has been discussed, I would appreciate a link because I cannot find much on it.

Thanks for any thoughts... especially rambling esoteric ones!

 

[slackx]

Kinda just getting into this i can shed some light but not much. It all depends on what your breeding for, you need to set goals. It's really all about what you want out of your shit and what you want it to do, weather that be heavy yielding potency, or fast finishing yields. Breeding doesn't have to be a complex hundreds of seedling process by any means. Subcools advice is absolutely correct you can make huge strides off of one pack of beans and having 5 females 5 males. I prefer to get around 20 of each cross just because that seems like a fair number too me. As far as unleashing unstable stuff upon the genepool, any breeding project should always be beta tested too see how it did before releasing it to the public, so more or less make a cross and test it in house and have some friends try it, it's really the only way to test how your males and females tango. If you dont wanna test it tell people there not tested...there is a huge part of the seedbay that sells untested beans. Finding the females is the easy part but finding males that suit them nicely gets too be interesting as they are very misunderstood and mostly people just go off of looks and dont get any potency readings or anything really crazy or else we'd see everyone braggina bout there 20%+ thc male. Pretty sure most of the top breeders dont even do that.

 

[Cool Moe]

I'm also just getting into hobby seed-making but would like to offer one humble opinion. I feel like it should in large part be Seedbay/bou's responsibility to ensure that ALL seeds they accept should be from responsible, known breeders. If an amateur grower takes a top strain but ends up with a thousand seeds by accident from undetected herms those seeds should never get sent to Seedbay and they should never get distributed by Seedbay. For example, I seriously doubt that H3ad would want Casey Jones seeds with hermaphodite parentage made by a novice grower getting distributed by Seedbay to the entire international community. Hopefully there are controls in place to ensure this doesn't happen.

 

[WelderDan]

Everyone breeding cannabis was an amateur to begin with.

Gotta learn to walk before you learn to run.

Like anything else, it takes patience and practice. And even the best breeders sometimes hit a dead end.

And sometimes, happy accidents turn out just as well, or better, than ambitious projects.

 

[High Country]

Just go for it I say, experiment, that's what breeders are doing. You might be surprised what you find.

 

[gingerale]

its not like this is rocket science. it's crossing two plants. it works the same way as crossing two humans. start with two good humans (plants), cross them, and you get good offspring, right? the plant is not going to magically sprout all kinds of undesired characteristics out of nowhere. guys, stop making things out to be harder and more complicated than they actually are! yeah, you can spend years learning the trade and get really into it, but getting started requires very little effort/knowledge.

 

[Momerath]

I agree with everyone. Having started my breeding career over the last few years, I still consider myself to be amateur, but its all about how far we wanna take it. With those great strides comes responsibility, if you plan on releasing to the public. But mostly its just about working with genetics YOU like to achieve something new and desireable for you and your friends. And hey, if you stumble upon something good, share it with the community. After all, thats how everything got here in the first place...
"Hey, this is great herb I've breed, someones gotta try this..."
"Hey thanks man, this is good herb, I'm gonna share it with my friends..."
"Hey, my friend gave me a clone of this killer strain..."
...and before long its the next big "elite" (well, maybe not always, but you get the idea )

 

[chappie]

I've been doing casual breeding for some 15 years and have some great crosses to show for it. I realize that its possible to come up with good plants. I would certianly encourage any grower to practice making crosses, weather its to provide their own seed stock or to explore the latent genetics within an existing line.

My question was more what the "industry" thinks of amateur breeders. Or "pro" breeders like s***c**l who admit to using a very small number of possible parents.

In most industries, amateurs cannot afford to cross the barriers of industry. With cannabis, this is only true for legal growers with low plant count numbers. In the past (and hopefully the future), anyone could grow out 100 plants in small pots to rapidly search for a prized phenotype. It was one of the few realms left in our world where someone could do the same thing at home that pros do without fancy gear. This has the darkside though, of allowing shoddy work to emerge.

Hopefully we all know that cannabis diversity is a real crisis and the explosion of popularity in growing, particularly fast-flowering indoor strains (also autoflowers and femmed seeds) are at the core. What would pro breeders like to see amateurs doing? Do they feel that growers should rely upon their F1s, much like commercial agriculture? Are there breeders who encourage the heirloom "seedsaver" approach? Is there any consensus, or even discussion of these issues?

 

[Momerath]

Good points chappie. I believe while a lot of growers and breeders will follow trends in what is popular or commercially successful, there will also be those interested in preserving old lines that have been successful for a very long time, as well as those breeding for very specific traits to suit very specific needs. In all of these cases, it will just mean more variety for the end user to tailor to their specific needs/location/style/etc. The responsibility will ultimately fall on the breeder, however in the sense that as the market improves and diversifies, a sort of "natural selection" will occur in the breeder market where those who have created a good, strong product will thrive and those that produce crap, get phased out. I mean, people who make poor product dont last very long in ANY market, right?
Just my 2 cents

 

[bobblehead]

What's the difference between the "real" breeders and the "hobby" breeder? From what I see they're all releasing untested crosses... I feel that sending out accidental crosses as freebies or at low cost is plenty reasonable. I've shared many perfectly viable seeds with people that otherwise wouldn't have been grown. Why waste them? Most of the work has already been done. Doing a major commercial release of something w/o testing it is risky business imho... it could tarnish ones reputation if things turn out poorly.

 

[cmobile69]

Everyne here has the right idea from what little I know. There needs to be honest breeders, but better yet there needs to be a committee of sorts to keep oneself honest when sending in seeds to the bay for growing and smoke reports.

 

[WelderDan]

Everyne here has the right idea from what little I know. There needs to be honest breeders, but better yet there needs to be a committee of sorts to keep oneself honest when sending in seeds to the bay for growing and smoke reports.

I would HOPE that anyone sending in seeds for growing/smoke reports is genuinely hoping to get noticed with a decent product. Sending in a load of hermie seeds is begging for ridicule and loss of any potential reputation as a breeder.

I'm a hobby breeder (i.e. Pollen Chucker), but I'd at the very least use decent genetics and make sure to not send seeds from hermaphrodites in for people to test.

If I was to get serious and try to be a breeder of note, I'd definitely do a few test runs to gauge the outcome, and probably enlist a few independent testers too.

Anyone with any decent degree of growing skills can cross cannabis. And they can easily get lucky and create something special. There's plenty of room for amateurs, but you need to have some pride in your work and greed needs to be put aside.

 

[supermanlives]

just do it . who gives a shit what anyone says.be honest and give credit due when working with someone elses strains. me i am tired of hermies and overrated strains.thank god i got a few of my own going. but i keep looking and buying strains

 

[Ur Humbl Nr8tor]

Lovely IBL Female + Studly F1 = at 70 days
at 90 days

You can do it, trust me. Just test and determine if the cross bettered the parentals more often than not.

Good luck and happy hunting.

 

[chappie]

I still feel like my original post was somehow misworded. I appreciate the encouragement, but I do already "breed" and will continue to do so. I wanted to know more about what "pro" breeders, that is, those who have seed commonly available at the main seedbanks, think about amateur breeding and how the community in general thinks that pros and amateurs could or should work together. Its possible I am alone in pondering these ideas, but I still think it is worth discussing. Do breeders know or care if their customers save seed? DJ Short seems to mention that some of his strains are ideal for breeding projects, but most descriptions lack keywords like this. Its obvious that many seed banks are just selling remixes of the same old stuff for profit, and don't really care what people do with their seeds. I would like to see more breeders, especially conscious ones like Mandala and DJ Short, Chimera, ACE, etc offer guidance for would-be breeders as to how to best utilize their genes. Breeders could mention what they are working on ("I want to select phenos from this line which have this attribute" etc). I'm not asking for top-secret projects, but stuff like "the genepool is really lacking in sativas which are growable indoors but retain effect" could easily give a young upstart a purpose in life.

Do breeders even care about this kind of stuff? Or are they just some guy with some plants tyring to make some cash?

I might be unable to word my concerns properly, so sorry for any confusion. I am not asking permission to cross plants or for others to do so. Words from those who actually sell their seeds would be most interesting, but thoughts from those who do not are equally welcome.

 

[TBug]

High all! Ima pollen chucker too..lol. But i have been able to create the perfect strain(just about..lol) for me. maybe it was luck...maybe nobody eles would like it...but by crossing strains that had traits i liked and chosing the ones that were dominate in that trait...I made a very decent product(in my sig if ya wanna see..lol)
Ill tell you that everyone pefered my strain over ecsd..lol. but to be honest, i could not keep that girl happy(fed). which is another factor..you breed/select best growing plants under YOUR conditions and growing style. i think thats cool.
Peace, bugout

 

[Arkady2300]

I wonder sometimes too what really makes the difference between saving seed and 'professional' breeding. I mean I have crossed, inbred, and backcrossed a couple of strains for my own amusement and enjoyed the results.

But yeah when I F2 a commercial seed to run a couple hundred plants to look for interesting individuals is that circumventing the breeders intent?

 

[chappie]

I wonder sometimes too what really makes the difference between saving seed and 'professional' breeding. I mean I have crossed, inbred, and backcrossed a couple of strains for my own amusement and enjoyed the results.

But yeah when I F2 a commercial seed to run a couple hundred plants to look for interesting individuals is that circumventing the breeders intent?

Arkady2300, I think the difference is through very conscious selection. I do think seed-saving is a very valid act for growers, but breeding involves a whole 'nother universe of complexity. I suppose part of my questioning here is "breeders" such as Joey Weed who seem to (very consciously, at least I hope) make F2s of celebrated lines, helping noobs to find good phenos as a result. What seperates him from a guy like me? How many plants is he running to make these crosses? If he is actually just a "pollen chucker", what is SubCool? What is Soma?

 

[Arkady2300]

I sort of wonder what this 'whole other order of complexity' is? I mean you do an open pollination with four or five males and two girls, and your going to get thousands of seeds that express a large amount of genetic diversity. Then you start a flat or two of that and start removing underperforming plants almost immediately your gunna end up with a very nice ultra vigorous plant and hopefully one of those has the high type you want and the production you need. How is that not very conscious selection for vigor in veg and stone in flower. So I suppose my point really is I dont see a difference between pollen chucking and 'pro' besides scale.

 

[chappie]

I sort of wonder what this 'whole other order of complexity' is? I mean you do an open pollination with four or five males and two girls, and your going to get thousands of seeds that express a large amount of genetic diversity. Then you start a flat or two of that and start removing underperforming plants almost immediately your gunna end up with a very nice ultra vigorous plant and hopefully one of those has the high type you want and the production you need. How is that not very conscious selection for vigor in veg and stone in flower. So I suppose my point really is I dont see a difference between pollen chucking and 'pro' besides scale.

You then would not know which male was the father, right? You'd never be able to replicate the cross. I believe what I am considering "pro" other than scale is rigorous attention to detail like this. For example, taking a known female, and making a hundred clones of her, and then taking 2 fathers and doing 50 each, determining which batch of 50 is better, and out of the batch you keep, choosing the best pheno to continue the line.

Also, "pro" breeding seems to always have a targeted goal. Not just combining two plants and keeping the best kid (though that can sortof work). Instead, deciding "I want the cross to be fruitier than the parents" and rejecting all offspring that do not meet this goal. Then, once you have the fruit locked down, you work on the high. ETc etc etc. This is very different than what you described, which is I suppose "pollen chucking".

Might be splitting hairs, I dunno.