why does fem seeds = hermie tendencies?

[doodah]

Okay it's been puzzling me a long time. Lot of people moaning about fem seeds leading to hermies in the gene pool. I'm interested in this one myself and would like to know WHY. Is it because you need to create hermie in order to make femmed seed, thus passing on hermie thru the genes? i think i might have just answered my own qn.

 

[Brastaman]

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=74285
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=75689
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=55960

i probably am of no help whatsoever in answering your question but here are some links to some talk of female seeds/hermies/breeding.....


brasta.

 

[luvtogrow]

Cause you are messin with Mother Nature, bigtime!

 

[neongreen]

Feminized seed does not mean hermie tendencies as long as it's done properly.

The trouble is, not all take the time to do it properly, so feminized seeds have become synonymous with hermies.

To get feminized pollen, a female has to be stressed to the point where it reverses sex. Since every cut is different in its genotype, any given cut will have it's own intricacies when it comes to what stresses it most. Some plants hermie easily when root-bound, and others hermie if you screw with the light cycle too much.

The first step to making good feminized seed is to stress test you cut every way you can. If you can throw all the types of stress at it that it is likely to encounter in the grow room environment and it does not hermie you have a good candidate for feminized seed. You can then go on to take a clone, and reverse it using a chemical that is not usually found in a grow like STS or colloidal silver, whichever the plant is more susceptible to.

Since you are selecting a plant to reverse/self-pollinate that is not susceptible to sources of stress commonly found in grows, the seeds should produce plants that are also hard to hermie, providing the parents were true breeding.

The wrong way to make feminized seed is to select for plants that are easily hermied by light-cycle induced stress. That is almost guaranteed to produce seeds that will cause problems when grown out.

 

[Hold Your Fire]

I do not like femmed, beans.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

I do not like femmed, beans.

Seems many hold this sentiment...but not many can put their finger on why, other than they read that fems are hermie prone.

Neongreen is spot on. There is absolutely no difference in why a regular seed plant goes hermie, and a femmed seed plant going hermie.
SELECTION!
The process is no different for selecting a breeder for fems as it is for a regular breeder. The problem arises when folks have elites that they try to fem. The elite cut itself may have been from a hermie prone plant.
But pollen chuckster and his pals could give less than a damn about the breeding prowess of the cut. They only want to start peddling femmed beans from their elite cut. And the next thing you know, folks like holdyourfire are not liking femmed seeds. It's the pollen chuckers fault, not the plants.
There are only a handful of reputable breeders who actually have the space and time to find breeders...true breeders, be they regular or femmed.
Don't blame the genetics, blame chuck and his ignorant pals. They often times are seen as those who are providing us with killer stuff...but they are the ones, IMO, that phuck up the gene pool.

 

[Ms Carter]

Been using Fem'd beans for the last 8 years. I'd say in the 8 years, I've had a handful of plants hermie. It's probably the same exact ratio of regular beans that would have hermied during that time period.

Most people just regurgitate other people's statements, regardless of their actual experiences.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

To add to what neon and hoosier have said, it is also important to keep in mind that although properly made feminized seeds can produce some very good plants to grow, these are plants just to grow but not to breed with; that is, properly made feminized seeds should be used just to grow sinsemilla, to avoid growing males etc... but fem seeds are never used to breed with; since if we start to breed with feminized seeds, then the resulting off-springs will be genetically poorer and can eventually pollute a whole gene-pool with empoverished genes.

be good all

 

[greenhead]

My only experience with fem seeds is two plants that I grew out that were feminized. They both were 100% females, no hermies at all, they were robust plants, and I would definitely grow fem seeds in the future again.

Messing with male plants and pulling them out of the cabinet is a waste of soil, nutes, space, money and time if somebody is not planning on breeding. And I don't breed, I grow so that I can smoke it, that's it.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

but fem seeds are never used to breed with; since if we start to breed with feminized seeds, then the resulting off-springs will be genetically poorer and can eventually pollute a whole gene-pool with empoverished genes.

I respect both your knowledge as well as your opinions on breeding, paz. But I want to offer up some food for thought, if thought indeed has an appetite.

I think maybe the jury is still out on the idea of not carrying on lines with no males involved is a bad thing. I think that it can be a bad thing in theory, but do we really know for sure that we need the male genes? Perhaps genetic material found in males only is replicating somehow and it is not a problem?
Surely we do not know enough about the subject on a molecular level to say for certain that plants derived without males are "empoverished".

And also...look at breeding with male plants. Just how thorough are the selecting of males? Certainly not as painstaking as the searches for the true breeding fem. I think males rarely see the stress and scrutiny that a female may, when searching for a breeder.
Now...
Look at breeding S1. We have the opportunity to select two true breeding females to use. We can be 100% certain of the breeding prowess of both female specimens when selfing. But using a male, we risk passing on unwanted genetic mapping simply because of lax selection process' for males.

Unless someone can point to the specific impoverishment that not using a male can bring about, I tend to see a large potential in S1 breeding. Seems I'm not alone either.

*edit...
Also...think about this...
Perhaps it is the male of the species that is passing along all the hermie traits? If the theory holds that there is male specific genetic material, then hermaphrodite could very well be one.
Do we know enough to say for certain that the fem breeders aren't helping to "fix" the gene pool by lessening the chance of the hermie gene, which in theory could be a male only pass along?...... (shrug)

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

good day hoosier

in my opinion, breeding with feminized seeds shortens the ammount of chromosomes available to the resulting offsprings. But as you stated, this is just my view and not confirmed by any hard-cold facts, just by theory, that says that xy + xx is how offspring is produced with all available genetic information; while breeding with just xx will not pass on all genetic material to the next generation.

also, remember we can find true males and true females that do not hermie within any number of landraces and hybrids, these do not carry hermie genes, and these should be a goal of selective breeding too. also, just like there are true males and true females, there are true hermies, and I think these are the ones who pass on the hermie trait.

much peace