Back crossing to female vs male

[Bradley_Danks]

What are the benefits and drawbacks to back crossing to a female vs's a male?

I currently have an f1 mother and father and as I pheno hunt their proginy I'm wondering what to consider when I decide to back cross them to a male or female parent.

 

[meizzwang]

What are the genetics of your parent plants (ie. are they inbred lines for X amount of generations, or are they outcrosses for many different generations)? The more generations you can trace back, the better an answer you can get. Without this info, an accurate response can't be given.

 

[Bradley_Danks]

What are the genetics of your parent plants (ie. are they inbred lines for X amount of generations, or are they outcrosses for many different generations)? The more generations you can trace back, the better an answer you can get. Without this info, an accurate response can't be given.

The parents are an f1 cross I made. I don't have any detailed information on the lineage before I made the f1 parents. What now?

 

[Dropped Cat]

Many would agree that a back cross (BC) is okay either
male of female as the same genetics are present in both siblings.

The popular choice is to back cross to a chosen female as her dominant
traits are easy to quantify.

Grow a few of those F1's to make a selection based on your desired traits.

 

[LostTribe]

Backcrossing to a male really wont work as the male doesnt produce buds and most of the time no resin. Therefore, you wouldnt know what affect that route would have on the female progeny.

 

[obiewanshinobi]

To back cross to a male you probably would want to grow out seeds you made with that male first to see if it passes on traits you want. This is where the work of breeders comes in. It takes many grows to prove a male worthy of breeding with.

So if you think about it, you have to find that male then use that male's pollen and make a batch of seeds. Grow out x amount of those seeds and see if you like the product. That's half a year right there.

 

[seeded]

The real answer is that no one is psychic and can tell you which route to take so the only way to know which way to move forward long term is to make the seeds both ways and then test them.

 

[MJPassion]

Suggested reading;
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=38851

While the article is about Cubing, the basic info for making/choosing bx parents is also contained.

Imo, the chosen parent must be genetically stabil & you wont see genetic stability from an F1 cross.

 

[meizzwang]

The parents are an f1 cross I made. I don't have any detailed information on the lineage before I made the f1 parents. What now?

At this point, you have to grow out a population from these seeds and start selecting. If you notice the F1 generation is mostly uniform, both parents were likely inbred for several generations.

The first sibling cross (F2) will likely be all over the place, but not always...again, it depends on the genetics of the parents. This is where you have to select the right parent plants and do another sibling cross or back cross to the original parent plant.

In the F3 generation, if the plants are starting to look uniform and contain most of the traits you're looking for, you selected right. If not, this is the point where you either have to go back and select from the F2 again or work with another line.

Not all hybrids are easy to work with. the OG line has become so popular these days not only because of the quality smoke, but also because of its phenotypic dominance even in polyhybrids.

 

[meizzwang]

The parents are an f1 cross I made. I don't have any detailed information on the lineage before I made the f1 parents. What now?

At this point, you have to grow out a population from these seeds and start selecting. If you notice the F1 generation is mostly uniform, both parents were likely inbred for several generations.

The first sibling cross (F2) will likely be all over the place, but not always...again, it depends on the genetics of the parents. This is where you have to select the right parent plants and do another sibling cross (since you don't know the genetics of the parents, I wouldn't recommend back crossing to them at this stage, it creates more unknowns).

In the F3 generation, if the plants are starting to look uniform and contain most of the traits you're looking for, you selected right. If not, this is the point where you either have to go back and select from the F2 again or work with another line.

Not all hybrids are easy to work with. the OG line has become so popular these days not only because of the quality smoke, but also because of its phenotypic dominance even in polyhybrids.

 

[Bradley_Danks]

@mjpassion Thanks for the article it helped me understand what's going on better

I see why it makes sense to back cross to a female when you can see the buds grown. With my male I had to gamble a bit and hope the offspring would have the traits I'm looking for. I made a few crosses with my male and grew them out last year outdoors. I'm going to start back crossing to my females now to see what happeneds. In particularly, I want to have a line breed true for flowering early outdoors at my latitude.

 

[Easy7]

Backcrossing is a method of preserving a clone only female in seed form. So is selfing but both will be different in countless ways than the clone only female.

There aren't many if any clone only males. So why would someone backcross to a stud?

The way the game works is nobody really does large plant numbers themselves from seed to find keepers. There are so many that pop a few beans and out if that large group keepers that are cutting edge are more likely found. Nobody wants caught doing the hard breeding and selection numbers. Much tastier to grow proven flowers for hard currency.

 

[Fuel]

Reversing a cut have nothing in common with a backcross process wtf

The success of a backcross mainly depend on the "outcross" selected. It exist a fews schools on it but in this specific case the heterosis is the worse ennemy. It's why i prefer a landrace to outcross a jack herer instead a NL5 or something else in the same vein.

This first condition will decide for you the level of difficulty of the operation. A bad outcross choice will simply destruct any hope to get back the reference's cut in the offspring.

Now i think that it isn't the plan because it's more about the flowering time that a specific combination of traits together. btw it's far more easy to accomplish.

Produce a bunch of F2, enough to can kill early anything outside your spectrum of selection. I'm not ok with meizwang, pushing in F3 will fool you more that anything else by the increase of type of specimens. It will be harder to decypher if you want.

Then extract the faster specimens in a new sub line, dedicated to that : faster each generation. No limits.

After that you have just to mitigate this line with your "quality cuts" (depend on your goal : yield, potency etc...) to produce a mastered offspring. If your "dragster line" is a little weak on somes points, then you can start to BX to your "quality cut" until the flowering time is outside your goals. It can be neverending at the moment that you preserve enough dedicated lines from the same P1.

About male/female comparison, it's pretty hard to tell you wich horse to choose. Each line have its specificity, if the males on the line A handle the yield traits ... this will not be true with the line B. It's a matter of tracking and notes, and it's why i always say that crossing a line wich is not known perfectly is just like playing blackjack without counting the cards.

can't resist

The way the game works is nobody really does large plant numbers themselves from seed to find keepers.

Speak for yourself. For me, like for a bunch of "not desirable growers", the commercial packs are just here to be reproduced in thousands seeds. Not to be selected, not to be smoked.

There aren't many if any clone only males.

If you go to a growshop to buy males clones, it don't have any sense. They sell materials to get weed, and the majority of theyr customers are there for that. Do you think seriously that the most expensive cuts of this business will be available between the milk and the eggs at wallmart ? ^^

 

[Easy7]

Good luck with your commercial packs to make thousands of seeds as you claim.

The game moves quicker these days than preservation. It's fine and dandy to have something old, but people bred those lines that had value into something with more value.

Strains that had value when i learned on overgrow are still around. Lot's of people preserved this seed or that cut.

I know everyone wants the mega stash for their Armageddon seed stash.

The best cuts make their round and end up in seed form one of several ways. There isn't a cut that ever existed that i would pay a great deal for. My business model is more that there are lot's of seeds i can select from. Varieties in seed that have expected character that can be finalized and utilized. I am not in Cali and don't crave the most popular whore of the month cut. I know the plant well enough to see the utility in different characteristics and value those for utility.

If you have thousands of seeds do something with that. Chances are you aren't going to work them and profit all yourself.

 

[Fuel]

I don't need luck, just SOG clones wich produce around 200/300 seeds each. It can appear big (when you're used to buy seeds to grow) but a sog clone generally don't eat more that 15 square centimeter. Don't present that like building a pyramid, it's more simple to produce good seeds that good weed.

And, in another times ... it was common for a lot of growers to deal with that. Somes old friends stay on this vein, and it's not to create a secret vault in antartica lmao.

When you pollenate a clone and that you harvest it, you start to really understand what's going on when you launch handfull of seeds; without stress to kill 90% of the specimens at 15 euros the seed.

You have to understand that the deal totally change when you can sow acres of weed if ever you decide it. You start to become literrally a seed ogre and a serial killer of specimens at every stage. When you start to touch the rewards of all this additionnal layers on your crop, you never come back and you can't imagine to don't have at least a seeded clone everytime in a corner. At the moment that i'm able to continue to kill the P1 of a project, i'm happy. Each time you close a line, you pray Jah to have a good year with news outsiders from your work. How to describe this dimension, you totally forget that you grow drug lol I firmly think that it is naturally elitist to produce your own seeds, because you're always unable to share rightly the pleasure and the adrenaline that it give to you.

But you need tons of seeds to accomplish that. Even with a little lab.

The game moves quicker these days than preservation.

I'm totally ok with that. Specially because i'm coming back from the spanish eldorado. And it was absolutly not like i dreamed. If you need 5 years to develop an hybrid, in past you got respect for this dedication, today you're just screwed. It is not what ask people.

Now i'm not the best person to speak about "elite female cuts" things, i use them only to get references, stay in touch about the trend but nothing else. A couple of landraces sativas aside, my genpool is pretty "common" and untouched by marketing. Nothing to dream about on the paper, nothing to hype, no legendary story behind the old orders and bagseeds.

As it, it's totally not interresting for the common "next gen grower". They don't care that you work your lines, they don't want genetics. They want "weed from seeds" only. I don't need to recall you the incredible success of feminized seeds right ? The big place today of "elite cuts" in the commercial hybrids also.

Outside having fun in somes cups, i don't see any interest to push this type of work in the real market. My Don Quichotte period is over lol, sharing buds and compare works is far more interresting and rewarding.

 

[Easy7]

It's different in the states these days. Mostly hacks if not all hacks. They have this mom and that dad and the buyer hunts for type they want. It's a sellers market.

I wish i could roll out acres of cannabis. It would require a lot of proven clones and a new England planter like used for transplanting tobacco. Also a water tower for making tea and laying down irrigation lines. Not so sure i would use just any old barn to dry that crop either. Harvest and drying is very important. Not that the legal climate here is ready for acres. We have about 10 acres just growing hay. If legal for commercial, we would easily grow as much as we could afford to start up. I would start small and reinvest. Wouldn't even need a lot of seed, just keepers cloned hydro for the cuttings required. The medical market sucks here and will continue to be from out of state. Going to be hard for locals to make a name for themselves with local breed stock.

 

[Easy7]

And as always pedigree of varieties is highly influential. Backcrossing is largely a marketing technique. To push a clone only name. But it's going to be it's own and not the clone.

The appreciation foe males is not there for a male market. Plenty of hope popping beans for high quality males. Although i have seen growing rep for breeders males like with Bodhi. Most seedmakers there is not more than a whisper of their males.

 

[Dropped Cat]

My project is based on the male keeper from a batch of
sensi star x nycd.

The female P1 was a bag seed circa 1979.

Its what I have and am sprouting seeds from the first back cross to that male.

 

[Bradley_Danks]

Is potency influenced by one of the parents in particularly? Do filial generations stabilize traits like back crosses do? I think my p1's had been worked a bit before I got them because the offspring was fairly stable. I've been making crosses with my male in a sog @fuel. It works good like you say to make 100+ seeds so I can cull freely.

Thanks for all the info folks

 

[MJPassion]

Potency is the culmination of many different factors combining to give you what you feel. Neither male nor female make lesser contributions than the other. Males are selected for the same traits as females when it come down to stabilizing a line.

Back crossings purpose is to insert genes in a line that weren't previously there. It's purpose is not stabilization but it somewhat works to that end as long as the recurrent parent is already stabilized for some traits.
The purpose of Fillial crosses is specifically stabilization... At least after F2s have been made.