[Owl Mirror]

I'm curious as to how much work is really involved in the making of huge batches of seeds for resale.
Do you (or others) painstakingly pick each seed from each bud ?
Is there some process that you use to separate the seeds from the buds?
Is there any good smokable product left ?

I'm just a hobby breeder/medicinal grower so I would simply gather seeds as they roll out of the buds upon crushing them up for smoking.

How do the commercial seed producers obtain the 1000's of seeds for resale?

[cronicle]

All the real work is the selection proseses growing etc,unless your company is referman seeds doing the work then growing alone cause it dont seem like any hard screening is being done as for as quality is conserned.As for as retreaving the seeds remember the whole plant is pollanated so its full of seeds! Easy to just touch the plant and they come out

[Kootenay]

I would have to say most of the work is in selecting the plants to breed. Cleaning and sorting the seeds is a bitch if you dont have the proper equipment. There is only a small amount of seed breeders that breed by population which is what i feel is the best way.

Peace
Koot.

[BIOJenn]

making seeds/crosses/hybrids is simple...! making a 100% Stable killer strain is a whole nother ball game!

[endlesssummer]

that physical labour is really the least of your worry.. once the plants are dried you can most of the time shake the seeds off the plant. you're left with split calyxes... which you can smoke.

[Owl Mirror]

Isn't SELECTION very subjective ?
I've heard this many times and yet, what I select as proper traits may be thrown out by another.
One breeder may like multi-branched plants while another may like tall stalks lined with buds.
Even with all the selection criteria that goes in to creating a strain, the individual environment vary so greatly that it would be hard to say the exact same plant will grow the same if under a 100 watt, 1000 watt or outdoors.

Do commercial breeders take in to account the growing environment, growers experience when developing a strain or do they simply grow some kick ass buds under their proper (expensive) growing environment and sell these seeds to the masses without regard to the requirements necessary to replicate their results ?

[Guerilla Family]

It all depends if its an ongoing project or what u are actually aiming to do. To make f2s or a hybrid is one step move. Easy work. A BX is a bit more involved. More Steps and a lot of selection

[Dr Dog]

For us to release a strain, it can take up to 2 years of work or longer.

backcrossing, stabilizing, etc, takes a while

[englishrick]

Originally Posted by Owl Mirror

Even with all the selection criteria that goes in to creating a strain, the individual environment vary so greatly that it would be hard to say the exact same plant will grow the same if under a 100 watt, 1000 watt or outdoors.

Do commercial breeders take in to account the growing environment, growers experience when developing a strain or do they simply grow some kick ass buds under their proper (expensive) growing environment and sell these seeds to the masses without regard to the requirements necessary to replicate their results ?

most indoor weed seeds as less sensitive to stress than pure "landrace" lines!......indoor peforms well indoor under HPS and the outdoor stuff prefers the sun,,,,,this is because breeders DO take into accout YOUR choice of enviroment!!,,,

the underlining fact is ,,,"peeps need to take responcability for there own choices",,,,if you ask breeders to lower enviromental standards,,,your starting on a slippery slope,,,!!

ID SAY ,,,DONT BRING THEM TO A LOWER LEVEL OF GROWING!!,,,,its peeps own fault that they are growing seeds not suited for there enviroment,,,its no supprize that plants dont turn out as peeps would wish,,,

YOU CAN GET BETTER!!,,,,,,,,BUT THE SEEDS STAY THE SAME!!!,,,if you want seeds for a troubbled enviroment then just grow PowerPlant ,its a stable line, good weed!!!!!!!,,high stress tollerence,,,,,,,once you get better then you can grow more advanced seeds

just my 2p

[foomar]

Only doing simple crosses and F2,s , no serious selection so far apart from one .
Have settled on relatively small plants but as heavily seeded as possible , whole plant chopped at pollination +40 ish days and dried over a bucket to catch loosies.
Broken up fine by hand when smokeable dry and put through a stack of sieves , seeds easily seperated and anything below 2mm gets dry sieved properly or bubblebagged.

Bottleneck for me is pinch testing every seed individually , impractical above hobby level and there must be a better way.

If i grade by size and colour alone , around 20% will fail a subsequent pinch test with some crosses.
With one recent plant it would have been over 80% and a magor problem.

Would a very fast water flotation test with equally rapid drying within seconds , lower the viability of the sinking seeds ?
No worse than they would face in the wild from rain and mist.

[Owl Mirror]

Originally Posted by foomar

Only doing simple crosses and F2,s , no serious selection so far apart from one .
Have settled on relatively small plants but as heavily seeded as possible , whole plant chopped at pollination +40 ish days and dried over a bucket to catch loosies.
Broken up fine by hand when smokeable dry and put through a stack of sieves , seeds easily seperated and anything below 2mm gets dry sieved properly or bubblebagged.

Bottleneck for me is pinch testing every seed individually , impractical above hobby level and there must be a better way.

If i grade by size and colour alone , around 20% will fail a subsequent pinch test with some crosses.
With one recent plant it would have been over 80% and a major problem.

Would a very fast water flotation test with equally rapid drying within seconds , lower the viability of the sinking seeds ?
No worse than they would face in the wild from rain and mist.

a stack of sieves ~ dry sieved

That is a great idea !
Won't work with my Ethiopian though as they are about half the normal sized seeds.

very fast water flotation test with equally rapid drying within seconds

That could be tricky !

pinch testing every seed individually ~ hobby level

This is one question that points directly to my original question of how much work actually goes in to producing and packaging seeds for commercial sales.
I am only a hobbyist so, I normally clean a bud to smoke and, am able to select/pinch the limited amount of seeds that roll out of the buds.

[Grat3fulh3ad]

My answers:

Originally Posted by Owl Mirror

I'm curious as to how much work is really involved in the making of huge batches of seeds for resale.

a moderate amount

Do you (or others) painstakingly pick each seed from each bud ?

yes. I dry the buds normally (much less manicure) and then sit and separate all of the flowers from their seeds.

Is there some process that you use to separate the seeds from the buds?

gently pinching the buds and breaking the apart

Is there any good smokable product left ?

not much. what is there goes through the bubble bags.

I'm just a hobby breeder/medicinal grower so I would simply gather seeds as they roll out of the buds upon crushing them up for smoking.

How do the commercial seed producers obtain the 1000's of seeds for resale?

I usually only sort and package around 1000 seeds in a sitting. I touch every single seed. I select based on appearance of viability, and i germ test using seeds which 'looked' least viable but not obviously dead.

[foomar]

I touch every single seed. I select based on appearance of viability, and i germ test using seeds which 'looked' least viable but not obviously dead.

That has to be best practice and evident in your high germination rates , not all breeders are as conciensious in my experience esp the larger players.

Failing eyesight and a touch of whitefinger are makeing pinching a real chore in my case.

[medmaker420]

I guess it depends on the scale of the seed company. It shouldn't be that way though because you would think as they get bigger so does their workforce BUT can understand why they don't expand due to potential security issues.

On the seed thing,

I wonder if there is a "shaker box" of sorts type of thing that can vibrate the plant that is hung upside down over a pail/bag/something to catch anything that falls out.

I know they have shakers for fruit trees SO I wonder if there is a smaller scale plant shaker to get the seeds out faster.

I also like the squeeze test BUT you can also for the most part do the color test for undone seeds as well.

Hell if each seed is costing the customer $5+ a piece I think each one SHOULD be looked at and checked out and the packaging should be crushproof at MINIMUM.

I worked on one cross of mine for a few years now and am loving where it is headed BUT there are just so many great strains out there to play with I can't simply stick with this strain or that strain.

I tend to cull a strain whether good or bad just to try other stuff, lifes to short to stick to one bud to smoke just because it is kush, purple, this or that.


I also want to know how big of a setup some of these breeders honestly have as well. I mean you can get thousands of seeds in a small area every 60 days or perpetually sooner if setup. I understand the "Selection" growing being a big search and needing room to grow BUT once you found the parents how much room is really needed to make seeds?

Another thing,

Seed Breeders mostly have variations in most of the strains and we need to locate the "keeper" usually. So I don't get the "stable" versus pollen chucking sometimes BECAUSE they both tend to offer variations either way. If its quality genetics it should perform well correct?

I do wish seed breeders would start with landrace and build up their own strains versus using strains from others. I think landrace breeders compared to hybrid breeders are two different levels all together.

The time and energy trying to stabilize landrace strains odds are is a TON more difficult for SELLABLE seed production versus hybrid crosses and f2's that many carry.

[UnderAttack]

The proof is always in the pudding.

Everything else is hype.