Basic genetics explained

[rasputin]

It is obvious that Cannabis is being grown like strawberries, I do not see it being bred like strawberries. Not yet.
Cannabis elite clones are selected by many and compared and the best are used to grow crops.
The real difference is that unlike strawberries no single breeder is making the crosses to be grown out by the 10's of thousands to find the one or two clone keepers, it is all done by many different growers/breeders each with different standards as to what is a keeper, quite a bit different then if a single breeder had 100,000 to select from at one grow.
Like old Luther Burbank used to do.
-SamS

The issue of scale is obvious but also unavoidable. So what then? The process is still similar, just the pool is smaller. A lot smaller. Terribly small. I understand the ideal but reality dictates things be done differently.

I'm not sure what the alternative is at the current time. I have wondered about collective seed hunts, 40-50 growers popping 10-20 seeds at a time of the same line. Better than what one person might do but still far off from thousands of plants at once.

where I see most fail, is there understanding of the importance of the genotype and instead most people doing "breeding" are looking for and selecting phenotypes, because well they probably don't know how to select for genotypes/what the difference is.... and the sheer amount of time and work involved in testing and identifying genotypes also makes pollen chucking using attractive phenotypes a quicker more financially viable option

Not everyone knows or even cares to know how to select for genotype. How do you make them care when they can find plants they're damn happy with without all that mumbo jumbo? People have limits and can work with them rather than just hang it up. Think of poor people using cheap meats to make incredible stews. Small time breeders can perhaps perform similarly. The notion that if they aren't aware of specific terms or read this book or that that they aren't equipped is soundly disputed by decades, centuries even, of evidence to the contrary.

Maybe there will be two camps, 'genotype breeders' and 'phenotype breeders', I'm not sure thats necessarily a bad thing, all things considered. People have basically been breeding for phenotype the last 15 years and they're generally happy with the results.

Who has been doing large scale breeding that has had commercial success? Shanti? I'm not certain on the specifics of the size of his operation and I love his genetics but look at most of the grows on here. Not many big ops running MNS gear. More often clone only's of the same 3-4 families of genetics.

Do hobby ("phenotype") breeders need to know certain specifics if they are likely working with lines that originated from elite clones or, to follow the theoretical commercial breeder I talked about, buying from professionals producing high quality lines? They're going to pick the best pheno anyway and likely do 1:1 matings so genotype is not their first concern generally.

The lines most work with today have high GCA so you're likely gonna get something good, whether it is the 'best' is a whale of a different color. Anyway, they gravitate to individuals anyhow so if they grow another line that produces a better 'best' than they drop the old one in favor of the new and in that sense they breed for genotype and the whole train keeps moving.

Just spit balling here... good stuff fellas.

 

[ozza]

cannabis plants transmute shit into consciousness expanding phytochemicals... sounds pretty alchemistic to me

but I agree I don't know what it has to do with breeding other than breeding for the production of plant tonics.

I was going to say maybe the thing isn't to get high. Others said it better for me.

Spagyric most commonly refers to a plant tincture to which has also been added the ash of the calcined plant. The original rationale behind these special herbal tinctures seems to have been that an extract using alcohol could not be expected to contain all the medicinal properties from a living plant, and so the ash or mineral component (as a result of the calcination process) of the calcined plant was prepared separately and then added back to 'augment' (increase) the alcoholic tincture. The roots of the word therefore refer first to the extraction or separation process and then to the recombining process. These herbal tinctures are alleged to have superior medicinal properties to simple alcohol tinctures, perhaps due the formation of soap-like compounds from the essential oils and the basic salts contained within the ash. In theory these spagyrics can also optionally include material from fermentation of the plant material and also any aromatic component such as might be obtained through distillation. The final spagyric should be a re-blending of all such extracts into one 'essence.'


To me it seems like it is what alot of these tinctures are. Maybe they could be helped with this thinking? If people did think like this we'd be separating terpenes and stuff and joining it back together. Hey wait up isn't that nearly the same as adding terpenes to bud or hash?

 

[Luther Burbank]

I would consider import/brick weed to be heirloom. and would say this is true in many locals. I would assume until recently in most places there wasn't outside influence on the genetics and the same lines where grown and selected from over generations.

I think these are incorrect assumptions Kief. Seed exchange has been going on for forever; there's almost no place untouched. What's an heirloom, to start with? I think it's a term that doesn't really apply to the way cannabis is cultivated. There's been muddling of lines for decades.

This is the main reason I still buy the Columbian Brick that comes around my way. I figure that they're growing some of the stuff there been growing forever..

Johnny I don't know how long you mean by "forever" but I've found there's a common misconception among growers that cannabis has pre-Columbian roots in the Americas, and all evidence indicates the S. American drug are most likely a 19th century mashup between European narrow-leaf hemp plants and Indian narrow-leaf drug plants brought to the Americas by coolies after the British banned the slave trade. Those first few plants must have been wild - a mashup of genetic populations which had been separated for millenia.

 

[KiefSweat]

I woudl say an heirloom strain would be something grown for more then 10 years by the same people or in the same area and there has been more of a human selection in the plants to keep with seed then just letting it grow completely wild and mixing seeds from all the plants. If no outside seed was brought in you should have at least a f10 at that point

I'm growing three landrace/heirloom Afghans this summer. Two of the varieties originate about 100 miles apart and are unique enough with all the characteristics that it would be tough to say the lines have been crossed any time recently. One of the lines is said to have been grown by the same family for at least 100 years (which may be a tall tale but I do know the source of the seed)

Maybe with some Mexican or Jamaican lines they have been influenced by outside seed and would be tough to say may not be hybrid.

 

[Luther Burbank]

The Jamaicans are a lot like the Americans, they have been actively adding whatever they can get their hands on into the genetic pool for decades. The problem is there's just a wiff of colonialism or "the other" to the whole discussion. We assume that other societies or cultures aren't doing exactly the same things we are in regard to the genetic pool and making active attempts to improve their lines. The result is advances for them, but losses of what we'd call unique local cultivars.

Afghanistan and anything up in the Chitral especially is the last holdout of "heirlooms", your point definitely still stands about those places. The mountains work as such a successful divider that valleys are still isolated - it's a bit of a continuation of plants being trapped in hospitable areas isolated during the ice age.

edit: And to me coming from the gardening side "heirloom" means a much older line to me. I think of St. Valery in carrots, or Early Dutch Flat in cabbages - stuff that's been around 100 or 150 years.

 

[KiefSweat]

true, its probably almost impossible to find but i'm sure there are pockets where people have been cultivating outdoors since the 60s and 70s with some genetics that would start to fit the bill.

Would feral hemp patches in the States be considered Landraces at this point?

 

[oldchuck]

Would feral hemp patches in the States be considered Landraces at this point?

No. A landrace is a geographically isolated cultivar. American ditchweed is feral which means once cultivated but gone back to the wild. A landrace is a continuously cultivated variety.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

I always thought of landraces as geographically and/or culturally isolated, be they cultivated or just wild populations. Not sure I am right, but that is how I thought.
-SamS

 

[oldchuck]

I think there is some overlap in definition. Wild, feral, landrace, heirloom, modern hybrid.

 

[mofeta]

Yeah as these are all artificial distinctions, they are not completely discrete except by convention, and the conventions on these terms have never been firmed up.

 

[mofeta]

Wow you guys are doing really well here. I am impressed with the depth of understanding being demonstrated here.

Your discussion of numbers etc I think will lead you to reach the conclusion that I have: growing the large numbers necessary for transgressive selection is trivial compared to evaluating those large numbers accurately.

I see two main ways to mitigate this problem, one is good machine testing but this is still nascent, and it will be maybe a decade before practical application.

The other solution is to use crowdsourcing. This takes advantage of distributed cognition, in an effort to enhance the powers of the "Invisible Breeder" I mentioned before.

Breeders co-ops/associations could provide free seeds (or other propagules) to people willing to conform to certain standards and protocols. The familiar local, regional, national, world progression of competitions/cups that is employed to identify top athletes or other competitors would be used to winnow through the fruits of their efforts.

A very small core of people, or even one person, knowledgeable in modern breeding techniques/methods and statistics could direct a huge operation quite easily.

I would suggest trying to make it as fun and rewarding for the members as possible. The materials being worked would, needless to say, would be top-notch in most cases, and would provide ample motivation to a large number of people to join and conform with the protocols necessary to maintain membership and the access to free seeds/cuts that that membership entitles them to. The elimination style competitions could be done in a way to maximize the "fun" factor.

You guys are also hitting on some stuff I find interesting. I was going to make a thread called "Plant Breeding Discussion/Cagefight". People would be encouraged to make bold, controversial statements (LOL) on topics of plant breeding, and engage in vigorous debate on them. I was going to ask those participating to refrain from any analysis of any aspect of the other commentator's thought processes, credentials, personality etc etc. They would also agree not to engage those folks who violated the "Prime Directive". It looks like I will be on an extended hiatus from ICMAG soon though, so I won't be doing that. Seems like this thread here has gone that way anyway. So here are some things I'd say in those circumstances:

• The more people making seeds the better. The only "danger" posed by willy-nilly seed making is that to the wallets of people selling seeds.
• Non-scientific, empirical methods have to this day made for more impressive results than scientific methods. Language, mathematics etc etc, all the most powerful tools we have were a result of distributed, non-scientific information processing. In plant breeding, show me an achievement of the scientific approach that compares to the transformation from the wild ancestors of our food crops to their current form. Of course the industrial revolution was a result of the scientific method, but we still have a way to go before it is as successful as the spontaneous, self organized system that came before it. There are forms of non-verbal, non-mathematical cognition/information processing whose workings are still opaque to us, that are very powerful. We tend to lump them into boxes that discourage further exploration- its "intuition" or "art". You don't need to understand a thing fully to manipulate it very effectively. I love how Luther Burbank riles scientific breeders up! He didn't know anything about genes or DNA, or any of the scientific breeding methods, but his results....

Hey I have to go now, got the call I was waiting for. I will try to add a few more inflammatory comments before I go on break.

Good work in this thread.

mofeta

 

[Elmer Bud]

G`day Mof

The breeders club ?
Isn`t that what Sacred Seeds were back in the day ? Sam ?

Yes I`ve dreamt of a collective that works on lines as well Mofeta .
Trouble is . The most decisive committee is is a board of 1 . The more people involved in decisions the harder it is to come to a conclusion .
But I am generally against ,one person deciding whats best for the majority so its a dilemma .
Still we can dream ...

Thanks for sharin

EB .

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Sacred seeds was me alone, a few friends helped with plants from my seeds, that I had access to, I did all the breeding. The story you read was just made up.

And Mofeta,
Can you name the results of crowdsourced Cannabis varieties? To me the highest examples of Cannabis breeding in recent times were the papers by
Etienne DeMeijer
"The Inheritance of Chemical Phenotype in Cannabis sativa L."
http://www.genetics.org/content/163/1/335.full.pdf+html
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/163/1/335

Euphytica (2005) 145: 189–198
DOI: 10.1007/s10681-005-1164-8 C
Springer 2005
The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L. (II):
Cannabigerol predominant plants

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...ativa_L._(II)_Cannabigerol_predominant_plants

Euphytica (2009) 165:293–311
DOI 10.1007/s10681-008-9787-1
The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L.
(III): variation in cannabichromene proportion
E. P. M. de Meijer · K. M. Hammond ·
M. Micheler

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...(III)_variation_in_cannabichromene_proportion

The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L.
(IV): cannabinoid-free plants
E. P. M. de Meijer Æ K. M. Hammond Æ
A. Sutton
Euphytica (2009) 168:95–112
DOI 10.1007/s10681-009-9894-7

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...nnabis_sativa_L._(IV)_cannabinoid-free_plants

Etienne's thesis "Diversity in Cannabis" was real interesting, but not breeding.
Compare anything crowd sourced breeding work to the above works, they are not even close to the same level of work. Maybe someday, but to me it is like cooking, to many cooks can spoil the soup. Especially if some cant cook....
-SamS

 

[Infinitesimal]

Sacred seeds was me alone, a few friends helped with plants from my seeds, that I had access to, I did all the breeding. The story you read was just made up.

And Mofeta,
Can you name the results of crowdsourced Cannabis varieties? To me the highest examples of Cannabis breeding in recent times were the papers by
Etienne DeMeijer
"The Inheritance of Chemical Phenotype in Cannabis sativa L."
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/163/1/335

Euphytica (2005) 145: 189–198
DOI: 10.1007/s10681-005-1164-8 C
Springer 2005
The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L. (II):
Cannabigerol predominant plants

Euphytica (2009) 165:293–311
DOI 10.1007/s10681-008-9787-1
The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L.
(III): variation in cannabichromene proportion
E. P. M. de Meijer · K. M. Hammond ·
M. Micheler

The inheritance of chemical phenotype in Cannabis sativa L.
(IV): cannabinoid-free plants
E. P. M. de Meijer Æ K. M. Hammond Æ
A. Sutton
Euphytica (2009) 168:95–112
DOI 10.1007/s10681-009-9894-7

Etienne's thesis "Diversity in Cannabis" was interesting, but not breeding.
Compare anything crowd sourced breeding work to the above works, they are not even close to the same level of work. Maybe someday, but to me it is like cooking, to many cooks spoil the soup. Especially if some cant cook....
-SamS

I must find these books... thanks Sam!

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

I must find these books... thanks Sam!

They are not books, only the Diversity in Cannabis was a book.
All the others are journals the first is the link to get the first, I added links for the rest.
-SamS

 

[KiefSweat]

maybe someone can help me with the math but when people say that your ruining the genepool do they have any clue what they are actually talking about?

If your looking at a plant with 10 chromosomes like cannabis in a perfect hybrid your looking at 1000 combinations in the f1 and almost 60k in the f2.

Now I understand there may be less then 10 pairs of contrasting loci but how many combinations could you expect to find if you worked someone elses f1 line?

 

[Luther Burbank]

maybe someone can help me with the math but when people say that your ruining the genepool do they have any clue what they are actually talking about?

Mostly not. It's just one of the tropes you hear repeated a lot that sounds kinda believable. I feel like the sort of people out to prove to other anonymous posters on an internet forum that they know what they're talking about say it especially. I'm not saying it's whether it's an accurate statement or not, but I don't believe most people saying it are speaking from a place of knowledge or experience.

 

[gaiusmarius]

how would you organize it to grow 1000 seedlings and then test and select them all? seems a humongous job, each plant needs to be cloned and flowered, you can then make your initial selection, how to choose the best males? reverse them and flower? how to go about smoking 500 phenotypes and keeping track? then when you throw out the obvious inferior ones you really have to start to work? would take me years, even if you organize it so you can do 10 test runs every 3 months, it still all needs to be smoked over a weeks or 2, it needs to be aged to see how it reacts. it all takes time even if you speed up the growing out test harvests part of it. also how far would you keep selecting, once you have the 50 best plants from 500 ladies, is it time to do a seed run? or how far down do you select? you can even select down to 1 plant and only make seeds from the best male and female? but it seems to me using the 50 best or 25 best males and females is the thing if you want to maintain the gene pool? even so, it all takes time and if you rush it you will throw away gems with the trash. you can not always get to know a plants potential the first time you flower her out after all. like i said just selecting the females from a mere 80 seedlings has taken me a couple of years, and i still have 8 ladies all of which have their spot in my grows at the moment.

so anyway those working with thousands have my respect, full time job for sure. would be nice to hear how some of them go about culling and the organizational aspect etc.

 

[Morcheeba*]

i would think you would use existing breeding software to help keep track long term like what is offered in the below links.

http://www.agronomix.com/

http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Exper...-and-partnerships/Plant-Breeding/Software.htm

http://www.agripartner.nl/en-us/products/plantbreedingsoftware.aspx


in my novice mind i think a lab equipped w/the proper equipment to analyze each plant and possibly a tissue culture lab w/adequate storage would be the way to go.


peace

 

[gaiusmarius]

numbers only mean so much when it comes to good and tasty bud. the Sour Power from Hortilab that keeps winning cups year after year tests at 10% thc. so numbers are not that important to me in my selections, but terp profiles will help at least i suppose. so you are saying you no longer smoke test every single one when working thousands, instead you use lab numbers and terp profiles? very interesting. i should have seen that softwar before i started as i have a whole mess of hand written notes as well as some stuff on the computer, but yeah it's chaotic and hard to make decisions just off the notes without smoking it again. but yeah i guess you have to use a scoring system in the end like with cup entries.