Rule of 100 seeds

[BOMBAYCAT]

I have really been studying up on breeding. Is it true the best breeders grow out 100 seeds, choose the best 10 males and females to breed and do it all over again for several generations? I have read the small breeder has very little chance of finding a freak pheno. Thanks

 

[medmaker420]

yes

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Yes... I'm actually planning on making several thousand F3's of a strain, to do just that.

Stay Safe!

 

[niceeven]

So how would you do it outdoors? Could you help me picture that? Grow 100 plants and? Open pollinate the whole bunch and find the best female of the bunch according to the traits you are looking for? Collect the seeds from her and start over again?

I was a little discouraged when I read somewhere that Sam The Skunkman was doing that with!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thousands of individuals. Is it possible to amount to something outdoors with 100 open pollinated plants in one spot? I suppose it's better than nothing but what are the chances you can get anywhere that way?

any answer is better than no answer, I guess.

 

[NotSoNewbie]

It really depends on your goal

If I were simpply trying to combine the traits of two strains I would actually test different batches of the F1 seed with the goal of determinig which male or even which combination of male and female actually produces better offspring. So you would have to keep several males around for at least another grow cycle with the F1 hyrbid being the finished product. Small number of phenotypes and vigor


If I was trying to find a super special keeper I would make an f1 cross using open pollenation, but only the best females, grow out those and do another open pollination, and then grow those F2 generation plants looking for your super plant

If I was trying to create a new strain that didn't neccisarily remind me of the strains that went into it I would IBL it out a few generations like you are talking about

 

[niceeven]

Ok. thanks for that.

So, if i wanted to do the second option I would have to work with clones of all of the females, keep the females from seeds indoors and go back once I found out would I not? You don't know what you got until it's too late, right? I am afraid it's impossible for me to do that. I can only get things started and work with it the best I can till the end of the season and start over the next year.

Let me tell you what I have in mind.: I have a pretty good outdoor strain that's been around for some time but is not available anymore in F1 form. Discontinued if you will. From Canada, its been kept and grown for some years and I got it from another country ( I am in canada), a country that has more time to finish them than I have. So more or less it's an IBL , I think. Naturally they have kept individuals that tend to finish a bit later, because they have a longer season. Also I don't know how well it's been kept, all I know is that in the state I got it the person who made the seeds used two males.

I started from about 40 plants and narrowed it down to six along the way, kept three male, pulled one in the middle of the way and kept the best female in the end. Now, it was all over the place, early ones late ones, I worked with latish ones. The early ones tended to be less potent as I suspected.

Ok, so say my goal was to bring it back to say 'less all over the place' more 'even' for the lack of better terms. Would growing say 100 plants in one spot, and pull the very early males and females as they show and let the rest enjoy group sex. THEN in the end choose the best female for potency, yield and the time line I can handle, keep seeds and start over again.
That should help right?

That's for one plan I have!

 

[jm420]

all i can say is you better have a big room and a whole lota time and money

 

[niceeven]

Got lot's of space outdoors, lots, not much money and a fair bit of time. We'll see how that goes.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

You could do what some breeders do...

Grow 100 plants and pollinate them all with pollen from a specific plant. Chop the buds, cure them and pack them away.

As you smoke the buds... keep the seeds of the best buds you find, the ones you enjoyed the most, etc...

Plant those seeds next year and go again.

Just be sure to set down the characteristics you're looking for so you don't get confused after a few generations.

Stay Safe!

 

[redneck shogun]

I think you can still test 100 plants with a small closet grow, but you have to break it up into chunks. I've been doing it that way for a few years now. I like to first do a little test run of 10 seeds to see how I like the offspring. If I am intrigued then I will spread 100 plants out over one year using 10 to 15 seed batches. After awhile you really start to become familiar with the genetics and you start noticing certain traits are related to others and you can even start culling earlier and earlier when you notice patterns that are not acceptable. At the end of the year you should have a handful of plants you really like.

 

[niceeven]

Yeah hydro i already do something like that. Kind of, freeze some material fresh, separately, label it of course. Make ice hash, sample when sober, on different days preferably. I already have notes about the other traits, like yield and aspect.

Really, I don't smoke much bud when I can smoke hash!

Those are helpful ideas.

 

[wdr]

to be honest 100 plants its not enough .. ofcourse you can find intresting pheno from 100 plants, but best breeders in buisness planting thousands..

 

[medmaker420]

to be honest 100 plants its not enough .. ofcourse you can find intresting pheno from 100 plants, but best breeders in buisness planting thousands..

I still think this is done in cycles though. It is already hard locating keepers within a hundred plants let alone 1k at a time. I think key is to put your previous keepers against the next seasons keepers and cull those that don't make the overall cut each cycle.

In the end you can test thousands of plants without having to do it all at once. This will also allow you to test the meds against each other multiple times a year or cycle depending on if it is done indoors or out.

 

[niceeven]

Very interesting comment medmaker....

Originally, and I may be wrong, but the thread was started from an indoors perspective, is it not Bombaycat? So I don't want to expand too much more on what I want to do but in my case I pretty much need to work with semi-auto strains with particular outdoor attributes.
Thus far I think it's pretty obvious I don't really know what I am doing, the friendly way to say that is that 'I am learning'. But one thing I sense needs to happen is that I need to work outdoors as much as possible to become aware of traits useful to me outdoors.

Outdoors bred is outdoors adapted no? Hence, in my position (having limitations that prevent me from growing thousands and thousands) cycles are the key.

Also, I am not trying to compete with the Dutch, the Spaniards, or anybody for that matter.

 

[BOMBAYCAT]

Hey niceeven: You are right as I was planning on doing some pollen chucking this winter. I thought I could run a couple packs, pick the best male and harvest the pollen. I would label everything and use an artist's paintbrush and paint pollen on a couple of the lower branches of the fems. The rest of the fem plant would still be sinsimella and I would check the finished buds for desired characteristics. I was pretty bummed when I found out I would have to run many packs to find a keeper pheno and so very many more packs to maybe find a freak pheno if I got lucky.

 

[niceeven]

Hey niceeven: You are right as I was planning on doing some pollen chucking this winter. I thought I could run a couple packs, pick the best male and harvest the pollen. I would label everything and use an artist's paintbrush and paint pollen on a couple of the lower branches of the fems. The rest of the fem plant would still be sinsimella and I would check the finished buds for desired characteristics. I was pretty bummed when I found out I would have to run many packs to find a keeper pheno and so very many more packs to maybe find a freak pheno if I got lucky.

Hey bro. No doubts: I was pretty bummed out as well when I read that a certain person ran 10.000 plants and selected 1 from them all, then 'worked it' further afterward.

But then again I also read that a certain plant was originally selected from a single pack of a certain strain.

Everything is relative bro.... If what we do is unpretentious,( I am not crazy about people taking themselves too, too seriously) there should be a little room left for having fun right?

Good luck to you!

 

[MiMedicineMan]

it would seem that one project would require 10000 plants maybe if its (a X b) x (c X d). where ibl X ibl might only take 100 or 1000 to get acceptable results...

 

[exploziv]

it would seem that one project would require 10000 plants maybe if its (a X b) x (c X d). where ibl X ibl might only take 100 or 1000 to get acceptable results...

Yeah, and real IBL's are so easy to come by these days.. NOT!

I'd say that you could do good work even when starting with 100 seeds, you just need to get a bit more lucky than the guy who has space to start with more. At the end of the day, we could say he has more chances than you. That doesn't mean you can't do it. If you work more you might even do a better job than him.

I've got some nice offspring starting with less that 100 seeds. I never say no before testing something that I feel it might work.

 

[symbiote420]

100 plants? .....Overkill

I mean if you have the time and space knock yourself out! I doubt there is a breeder today that does this ....not a single one! A Seedbanks myth, I believe this is yet another attempt to play on the naive ..."Can't let them know how easy this can be, let's make it seem overwhelming ....no one will want to make their own then we can sell our seeds for $100+ a pack worldwide!" ....REALLY??

An eye for observation plus a mind for selection makes for the best breeders, seed makers, chuckers, or whatever you wanna call em/yourself! Sure selecting from a patch of 100 plants is ideal but if you're working with good stock to begin with, who's to say you can't do the same with 25 to 50 plants? This ain't the 70's/80's people ....we have the work they've already done as a reference .....there's tons of strains out here that we are 99% sure of what the will offer to the project(s), back in the daze of the 100 plants to make selections from they were just learning what they had!

 

[oKiHai]

I agree with symbiote420. Many people I know like to "save" the genetics that they purchase. For example if you buy a 10 pack from the bay or boo, pop all 10 and seperate the males and females to different places. Cull any males that are tall lanky or have undesirable traits. Once they start dropping pollen, collect a little. Once your girls are at the 3-4 week mark, pollinate the bottom 1 or 2 buds on each of the keep females. When you harvest in another 4-6 weeks only those bottom buds will have seeds (More than you realize), the rest will be seedless. Once dry clip off the seeded buds yet keep them seperated and cure the rest of the buds either labeled in the same jar, or in seperate jars. When you start sampling your buds, choose the few you like the best and keep those seeds for the next run adn do it again. If you have some freak pheno that you love then you can always keep a small clone in veg in a bonsai state. The extra seeds that you made that came from the less desirable females made great gifts to friends!

PS. Just a side note. Until you have done a polination you have no idea how easy it is to get pollen into EVERYTHING! Plus a little goes an extremely long way! I saw this with a friend of mine. He did the process stated above but instead of touching the bottom coule buds with the paint brush he flicked it over the top of the female plants that were about 8 inches tall. From 6 females he ended up with over 1000 viable dark seeds, if they were light at all he tossed them.

Good luck

O