Herms! Always seem to show up

[acespicoli]

Any advice on avoiding herms would be greatly appreciated. I look after my plants well and they always seem to look super healthy but seems like it never fails about halfway through flower I start getting pollin sacks and next thing you know I end up with baby seeds in my buds. It normally is still fairly good for seeded bud but something is definitely going wrong I feel like. This is About my 3rd or fourth year growing and I have been having these issues since the beginning but it seems to have gotten more frequent and now pretty much every tent ends up herming at some point and I just wonder is there is any more pointers someone could give. Maybe some advice on how you avoid them thanks in advance

There are many theories and causes, you can google this cannabis is naturally Dioecious it is artificial selection by man that encourages hermaphroditic specimens. After 2-3 generations in the wild open pollenation it will revert back to its two sex natural state...

That said you need 200 plants to keep a wind pollenated crop genetically intact...

Pick a stable female and clone her, for smoke.
Other thing I would ask is what are your goals?

Mature plants exhibit alternating phylotoxy
Imature plants forced to flower early, stress...

Small pots nute stress, water drought stress.... list goes on... and on

Frontiers | Hermaphroditism in Marijuana (Cannabis sativa L.) Inflorescences – Impact on Floral Morphology, Seed Formation, Progeny Sex Ratios, and Genetic Variation

Cannabis sativa L. (hemp, marijuana) produces male and female inflorescences on different plants (dioecious) and therefore the plants are obligatory out-cros...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[GMT]

Strain types are a big factor. Anything with SE Asian ancestors is a far bigger risk than anything else. The glue does have Thai in the mix.

 

[weedemart]

The hermaphrodite trait is caused by a hormonal imbalance in the plant and is passed from one generation to the next.

When starting with a regular seed; it can turn male, female or ''hermaphrodite''. Its sexual expression depends on its hormonal balance.

So a plant dominant in ethylene will be female, a plant low in ethylene will be male. The hermaphoridite is not sufficiently dominant in ethylene to be female so it shares both sexual expressions for this reason.

In short, when you see hermaphrodites in your cultures it is because

1. your breeder has crappy genetics and breed from it.

2. you make clones from a genetically unstable mother, which translates to crappy genetics.

3.It may appear as a result of natural genetics degradation; for example ; when backcrossing too much in the same gene pool. But it should be limited to few indivual.


A female with a stable sexual history will not turn into a male, no matter how stressful it is. Even though some genetics are so stable that it is difficult to get feminized seeds from them; Chemically treated plants develop sterile male flowers.

I have already revegetated plants mid-flowering just to experiment with hormonal stress. I have never had a sexually stable female turn hermaphrodite this way and yet I see and hear a lot of growers complaining about hermaphrodites only after discovering they forgot their timer.

The problem is that the market is full of unstable genetics.Know your breeder, know your genetics.

 

[OleReynard]

Nanners will show at the end of the plants life.
It knows its dieing and one last ditch effort to reproduce itself.
Now I say Nanners not out right balls

 

[budman678]

S1s are notoriously for week 3-5 male flowers. If you stay on top of them their in lower 3rd of your plant, I wouldn’t worry for one second. I only grow from seed and it’s seem to be part of the process these days.

Rarely is the pollen viable and usually you catch it early enough

This is why people run clones because they’re more stable and they know what to expect. But if you’re a seed grower, then you’re gonna have to get good at looking for male flowers and removing them as soon as possible.

What’s popular in cannabis now flavor of the month and crossing popular hybrids. So what you’re growing is poly hybrids that haven’t been worked, haven’t been stressed tested. Maybe besides a germination test, the seeds get packaged and sold

 

[OleReynard]

I've got a huge collection of seeds, dont care for others so called "elites" , I prefer to find my own.
I blaze I don't follow

 

[Hiddenjems]

Try growing an old school stabilized strain from an older more recognized breeder.