Will science change cannabis?

[Sam_Skunkman]

With Cannabis, part of the problem is that the surface has barely been scratched in terms of how much the species can be improved. With cannabis, male selection is crucial to improvement, and within our community there is a complete lack of any sort of quantifiable technique to measure male desirability, and very little experimentation is being done to achieve this. I hope to help move this a little further ahead with an upcoming article in treating yourself magazine on the art of male selection. The techniques we have discovered appear to produce significant improvement in every line they have been tested in thus far, although more testing needs to be done on lines from a diverse type of origins, such as feral, wild, and lines which have improved or maintained both under sun and hps. I dont think we can should even begin to discuss the use of gmo in cannabis until we start to learn what the species is capable of with properly selected males. Then, we can go on to genome mapping and then if there is still something we really need from the species can look at genetic modification, but that is highly unlikely.

WTF?, While maybe not common in the Cannabis seed industry, the methods are well known if seldom used.
#1 select males from large populations.
#2 GC test males for Cannabinoid profiles.
#3 Cross new males with lots of known female clones.
#4 Trial the progeny of male clones in large numbers.

This will give you a lot of the data about males you need.

-SamS

 

[flashog]

Shove off hippies and bring on the GM super skunk. I will be first in line!

 

[JITAMON]

WTF?

WTF?

Science will never trump MotherNature. D.E.A cares about bottom line. They are bottom feeders. All D.E.A. cares about is status quo. Any Studies payed for by the U.S. government want inconclusive negative results. We have seen this pattern for YEAR'S , generations' in fact. This has not changed with the current admin. Any so called "Research" done on da man's bill does not help. Only funds for negative research. they just don't get it

 

[K.J]

Well, personally I feel transgenic technologies when applied to real world crop production is a doomed industry. The stock prices of corporations specializing in such matters is falling every day with a new large batch of bankruptcies every year. There are several reasons for this. Primarily because there is simply not enough tangible results being produced to justify the investment required. The other factor is that genome mapping is becoming cheaper, almost every day, which can be applied to classical breeding techniques through the process of genetic screening of seeds and individual plants. This not only allows for running huge numbers never before seen, before even one seed is germinated.

The effect of environmental variations on phenotype really complicates classical breeding projects, since phenotype is really the only thing that breeders have to go on. Giving the breeder the ability to look straight at genotype allows them to bypass much of the complexity which lies between the genes and their physical expression, such as environmental variations and different genes relying on the same resource pools to allow for their expression. "Smart Breeding" (the use of a mapped genome combined with genetic screening) also gives breeders the abilities to create new traits, never before seen in a species, without any genetic modification whatsoever, simply by combining genes in ways the never would have occurred otherwise. For example, the sentinel corn variety which was bred under completely natural conditions, but using an open source, mapped genome, producing a variety which turns bright red when it needs irrigation, limiting the amount of water wasted unnecessarily.

Transgenic processes however, can have detrimental effects on seemingly unrelated traits. The most insidious of all of the characteristics of transgenic crops is the fact that the process by which the genes are inserted into the sequence allows them to be easily "picked up" by viruses and bacteria and then spread to other species. In the last year, transgenic technologies claimed its first human casualty, in a female patient whose cancer possessed a patented sequence used in food crops, which appears to have been picked up in her digestive tract by on of the many viruses or bacteria present. The primary function of viruses is to inject dna into the cells of their host, which is probably the cause of how this patented sequence infected this victim. This technology can effect more than just humans, spreading transgenic genes for sterility among various species in a fragile ecosystem, or various types of environmental, pest or pathogen resistance, to either pathogens or other plant species setting ecosystems off balance are merely a few of the many possible situations where they can cause damage.

With Cannabis, part of the problem is that the surface has barely been scratched in terms of how much the species can be improved. With cannabis, male selection is crucial to improvement, and within our community there is a complete lack of any sort of quantifiable technique to measure male desirability, and very little experimentation is being done to achieve this. I hope to help move this a little further ahead with an upcoming article in treating yourself magazine on the art of male selection. The techniques we have discovered appear to produce significant improvement in every line they have been tested in thus far, although more testing needs to be done on lines from a diverse type of origins, such as feral, wild, and lines which have improved or maintained both under sun and hps. I dont think we can should even begin to discuss the use of gmo in cannabis until we start to learn what the species is capable of with properly selected males. Then, we can go on to genome mapping and then if there is still something we really need from the species can look at genetic modification, but that is highly unlikely.

It is kind of interesting that poor, Coca farmers in Bolivia with no formal education, managed to breed a variety of coca which is completely resistant to roundup/glyphosate. The resistance to roundup was so extreme that this variety (bolivian negro) had to be tested for the presence of genes which monsanto developed for roundup resistant soybeans and tested negative. It is also supposed to be an extremely good yielding and potent variety. Pretty impressive, to say the least.

It is also worth noting that I have nothing against the use of transgenic technologies in laboratories and in situations such as the production of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, as well as the production of energy and fuels such as methane and octane which seems very promising.

A very wise and knowledgeable response. And an education at that! I wholeheartedly concur.

 

[Chamba]

eventually GM genes will find their way into non-GM strains, that's the problem..so why aren't all GM seeds developed so their male pollen is sterile?...it can't be that hard?..or would that be like admitting there might be a problem there in the first place?