Breeding with a reversed female?

[NucleoSynthesis]

Just wondered what the common consensus on breeding with a reversed female plant using STS method is?

I’ve dabbled over the years of creating my own crosses with varied rates of success, usually popping regular seeds and selecting the most desirable male and crossing with some of my clone only female cultivars.

One issue I’m having is a lack of space to properly pheno hunt for males, I currently have a small area set up where I can pop around 20-30 seeds at a time depending on pot size and sometimes il only have a selection of 5-6 viable males to choose from and I feel that it’s greatly limiting the potential of any crosses I might do…

I’ve probably popped 600-700 seeds pheno hunting and probably only ever found a handful of really special males that are super resinous and also have the structure I’m looking for.

So recently I’ve begun thinking maybe I’d have better luck by reversing one of my clone only elites and then using the pollen from that plant to pollinate a female…

Is there any downsides to breeding this way? Both plants I plan to use are extremely stable and never shown any signs of herm etc, will using a reversed female for pollen make it any more likely for the offspring to develop hermie traits or other genetic issues?

Secondly does it matter which plant I decide to reverse? Say plant A gets reversed and I hit plant B with the pollen am I right in thinking there won’t be much difference if I do it the other way round in terms of which traits are passed down to the offspring?

Cheers, Nucleo

 

[GMT]

It's not an issue. Reverse the plant that creates the least plant material, or in other words, pollinate your most vigorous.
The only problem is no more males. Which for some, is a dead line.
On a side note, don't look for males that mimic female traits, look for solid male plants.

 

[NucleoSynthesis]

It's not an issue. Reverse the plant that creates the least plant material, or in other words, pollinate your most vigorous.
The only problem is no more males. Which for some, is a dead line.
On a side note, don't look for males that mimic female traits, look for solid male plants.

Thanks for the reply dude, that’s good to know!

And for sure if I was to do this it would be to collect a few seeds for myself to run through and try and select the best pheno and mother her out, kinda cuttings corners I know but I’m by no means a professional breeder, defo more the hobby type

So are the resulting seeds 100% guaranteed to be feminised with this method? I guess that makes it safer for me to pheno hunt, I might be able to slip a few of the babies into the main tent

 

[El Timbo]

Secondly does it matter which plant I decide to reverse? Say plant A gets reversed and I hit plant B with the pollen am I right in thinking there won’t be much difference if I do it the other way round in terms of which traits are passed down to the offspring?

Cheers, Nucleo

As far as I know the 2 crosses will be different

 

[GMT]

Yeah, guaranteed all female, but the females are not guaranteed not to Hermie. But they are no more likely to Hermie than if you used a male instead.

 

[420 bhudda]

In theory back crossing a female with her own male pollen will make a stable cultivar , provided the parent is a stable f4 cultivar . This ensures all female offspring with a predictable growth characteristic. Selecting a male plant and using that pollen is going to mix the two plants genetics causing a greater chance of variation. That's the idea behind phenno hunting. To discover something unique.
As for hermaphrodite. All cannabis is hermaphrodite to some extent. Stress can cause this to happen to any plant . As a whole, the chance of a whole branch or an entire plant going hermaphrodite has been bred out .

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Reverse a clone from every one of them, then collect and dry it properly so you can store it for 10+ years (and have time to do all the testing you need). The pollen needs to be dried quickly for best results so a low RH area helps. There are some directions on desiccating and storing in the STS thread I started.