How do you choose you breeding males?

[FireIn.TheSky]

A novel concept I know, but how about find a female you like then find a male version.

Identify by leaf shape, growth pattern, smell etc.. Most strains will have the same pheno pop up more than once so you just be looking for the male version of your favorite female.

 

[VERMONSTAH]

If i (hypothetically) had the pollen from several key males from a years worth of experimenting maybe more.......could i hit select females with all the diff pollens at once? I am curious about seeing diff expressions and was wondering if this is doable?

 

[FireIn.TheSky]

Of course it's doable but only one grain of pollen will impregnate each calyx.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

A lot of guys simply wont share what they select for.
It's one of the harder-kept secrets of this whole hobby.

As for finding a "keeper," as opposed to something acceptable - I haven't found a keeper yet.

I asked JD Short (DJ's son) over at his thread how he selects males.

Basically told me all that I knew before and all that has been said here as well. There was nothing new in there.

Either people actually don't share and regard it as their trade secret or there simply is no more to it and it can't be made simpler.

Considering that classic breeding seems to be going out of style and most "seedbanks and breeders" are going the feminized rout and only work with reversed females and hermie genetics, I wonder why they would keep such knowledge from the public, if they had other methods for selecting males.

The only new method I found in a year of searching was reversing the males to smoke the reversed females.
Which was inconclusive as to how much info it actually gives you or how much it is actually misleading.

There really seems no better way or better method.

Growth structur/vigor, timing (to reach maturity, to show first balls and speed of ball development), smells (stem rub and other), resin development.

After that you have to use the force it seems...

Select whatever you select and pollinate your females.
Grow out the progeny, select a male and female from the progeny, grow F3s, select a male or female from your F3 and backcross it to your S1 male or female.

At this point whatever you grow out from those seeds you made, you look if it surpasses the S1 generation.

If it does, you found a "good" male. If it is a stud or just serviceable ..... who knows .......


That's a lot of work and guess work and not knowing until you had to spend a year or more. Tough going...

I will go the esoteric route.
Obviously I will look at all the measurable things and things I can experience (smells, stem rub etc.). But after being done with that, I will just follow my gut, let the force guide me etc.

And see what will come of it.

But I imagine if I do that 3 or 4 times and every time the progeny turns out shittier than the S1, I might throw the towel which could be what happened to many so-called breeders who tried this out.


I think selecting a male by using the force is what makes a good breeder ultimately. Gotta be lucky or gotta just have those instincts (or connection to the force whatever you wanna call it).

 

[bigbadbiddy]

If i (hypothetically) had the pollen from several key males from a years worth of experimenting maybe more.......could i hit select females with all the diff pollens at once? I am curious about seeing diff expressions and was wondering if this is doable?

Yes, I call that a gangbang.

If you don't wear protection, you will have no clue what the seeds you harvest will be though as you couldn't track which pollen landed on which calyx.

So you would need to do the following in order to track which seeds you are actually making:
- Pollinate each bud-site by hand using a paint brush and making sure that you do not spread pollen anywhere but lightly tapping/brushing it on the selected bud-site. Turn off all ventilation during this process, no air movement!!!
- Cover each pollinated bud-site with a material that inhibits pollen from spreading but still lets light through. Think of a thin paper bag. I think the ideal material are those cellulose plastic bags that are kind of transparent but feel like plastic. They would let light through but wouldn't let the pollen spread out.
- Mark each branch individually to know which pollen is on which branch.

Bit of work intensive but it has been done and proven to work.

 

[OakyJoe]

Has been done, I think there is even a thread by SamSkunkman here on IC that isn't even very old. Can probably find it by scrolling 1 or 2 pages back ...

The end result was that it was inconclusive if I remember correctly.


In the end it is true, you only know by breeding out the progeny.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=99597

 

[Andyo]

sativa males

sativa males

African and thai land race sativas males have leaf potency, i use to cross with indica females or elite clones
need sombody with out high resistance to test male leaf after steamed lightly in foil then flash dried in oven quite a lot of variation in potency
from male to male.A

 

[bigbadbiddy]

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=99597

There it is.
Thanks for the link Oaky

 

[idiit]

I use smell, vigor, true breeding (no herms), undersides of first leaf ( some undersides show purple), fatness of meristem, meristem and petiole color, internodal length, frost on leaf and I smoke fan leaf.

i'm working unworked jojo's aww. there are two phenos terp wise; one is bitter, acrid, the other is sweet sweet. I do not like the acrid taste at all. I justed recently smoked the leaf off my latest aww male and it was sweet. keeper. the leaf has a whitish sheen when viewed from a good perspective. keeper. the vigor is very good. keeper. the smoke was excellent. I know...... there is a tremendous bias held by many growers against smoking fan leaf. this male's fan leaves smoked so nice potency and high wise that I smoked it for three nights till the leaf was gone. without a doubt the best fan leaf I ever smoked. not the best bowl I ever smoked, let's not get too carried away idiit.

aww is a sativa with wld grow appearance wise characteristics. I've never smoke good indica fan leaves that were worth smoking. fan leaves for smoking works on some but not all sativas imo from personal experiences.

imo the best way to determine a male's worth is by his progeny. some plants pass on their desirable traits and some don't. it does not matter from a breeding perspective how good a specific plants attributes are. what does matter from a breeding perspective is how good the specific plant's progeny are.

I just smoked some Nepalese indica /phz last night. I was expecting a strong boring stone. I got very surprised with a strong heavy psychoactive high.

a posteriori is ever better than a priori. hindsight is the true test.

the answer to the question as to a male's worth is ultimately based on his performance; his progeny.

the question gets complicated by the fact that some plants fare better indoors, while others fare better outdoors. some do excellent in all environments, some just plain suck.
then there's the extracts. what might not cut it as a bud product plant might be excellent for extracts.

the Nepalese indica/phz has amazing terps; sweet blackberry melded with ripe sweet bananas. I never would have preconceived this terp combination. the Nepalese is a true hash cultivator. I've got two more Nepalese plants in middle veg and one smells skunky. I would not use either for breeding with my phz. I would just look for fruity Nepalese indica/phz males with no herms, good vigor and a fruity smell like bb/nanna to make seeds with and check out the progeny for confirmation.


like others have said, reversing females for fem pollen is a much more effective route imo but having a good genetic diversity in regular seed stock will enable the line to survive excessive inbreeding problems down the road.

 

[bigtacofarmer]

When I have enough males saved that I'm interested in and they started getting in the way. I flower out a bunch of them. Then smoke a fatty or so of each. Usually if you start with enough of them I will find a few males that I can taste the similarities of the keeper females. Also. If I don't find a good percentage of quality girls i don't even bother looking for a male. Unless one is screaming at me. Or trying to preserve something (like when I noticed I didn't have room to correctly finish Gypsy's Laos) I used the males I had and saved seeds for future use. So far the smoking technique I've been able to find keeper girls in the following generation. I don't have a lot of room to hold onto every cut and test each one. So it usually works out that I pop new seeds every time I can afford space. Every few years I have a decent selection of great girls and potential males. And my veg room is becoming a total cluster fuck. So then its breeding time. Usually a bunch of f1, a few f2, just now looking toward my first f3, and there is usually a bx or so too. Then I label and store them for later. Slim my clone list to my very very favorites and start popping seeds.

 

[PoweredByLove]

i mostly go by the looks. i'm of the opinion that all the good shit is in the female and the male just lends structure. i look at how the male grows. how much it stretches, how it clusters it's flowers and any branching, and smell. i won't necessarily not use a "quiet" smelling male, but i usually pick the smelliest one. or rather the smell i like the best.

 

[MJPassion]

I pop seeds and if a male pops up... Well... It's a male...

I tend to prefer open pollination over 1:1 matings. Genetic diversity is more important to me than stabilization. Especially when dealing with true F1 populations.

The only true test is the progeny.

 

[Stash]

This is a post made many years ago by my very good friend R, I did a copy paste from another site. I trust most here will love this info, ENJOY !

"A secret revealed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a trick...more like a technique, that can help in any breeding project.

This information was passed to me (and others) by someone well known to the breeding community, and we were asked not to share it. However if any of you have read the 'My Best' thread, you know I am on my way out the door and am passing my best old school genetics around so the 'new generation' of breeders and smokers can beneift...as well as my old stoner friends lol.

I have also decided to divulge this information after much consternation and angst, because I am not sure if it will ever become public domain if I do not, and I fully believe it should be. This is/was a very difficult decision to make. But hey, WTF, it is what it is. People who are interested should know. Hoarding information is as bad as hoarding clones.

The first person I know of to use this breeding technique in the MJ world was a man named Nevil Schoenbottom, who passed it to Shantibaba, who passed it to another person who passed it to me(and others). The trick is using what some breeders 'in the know' call recessive males.

No one I know of who got this information paid much attention to it, or at least ran with it. The only reason I am different is because I stumbled upon a recessive male by accident but didn't realize what I had found until after a few crops of outcrossing him and noticing I was getting all the traits I wanted passed to the offspring. I suddenly realized what I had in a rare moment of clarity. As a bonus the dominant traits he passed were increased potency and tighter buds. I think this was just a fluke though.

I am no expert in genetics at all, in fact my knowledge is rudimentary, but this is how it was explained to me.

Recessive males are males that have a large number of double recessive genes for the traits most sought after by MJ breeders. Ie aa as opposed to Aa or AA. If you know something about genetics there should be a light bulb going on right now.

When males that have recessive genes for the traits we want passed from the mother, because they are dominant in the mother they will combine as Aa. 'A' from the AA mother and 'a' from the father, and express the trait you want to see in all of the F1 female offspring. There will also be males from the offsrping that combine the same way for this trait ie Aa. If these two sibling plants are combined, using P-Squares we can see there will be a certain % which combine as AA and the trait will be fixed by breeding these offspring. This really eliminates a lot of work.

Fine in theory R (I hear you saying) but how can I find and identify these males? This is key to the application. This information was never passed to me or the others that were privy to the recessive male concept and is perhaps why no one did anything with it. But I will pass it to you now.

These males can be identified easily in some cases, because unlike dominant males which flower earlier than sibling females the recessive males flower later. In addition, it stands to reason that if Shantibaba uses this technique, these males can be found in larger numbers within his seedstock. So there it is, with apologies to Shanti, Nevil and the person who told me about it.

If you have an in depth understanding of genetics and don't believe this or consider it anecdotal only, feel free to express those ideas, but I will not argue it with you. I am only passing on what was told to me and found that at least in my case it was true.

Best wishes and best of luck to you all.

Cheers,
R
__________________
Cull with extreme predjudice. "

Later, Stash

 

[krood]

This threads taking off, ive heard the theory of using a recessive male, sounds like a good gameplan to me. A few other things ive read in other male selection threads, and just cruzing the forums. None of these methods ive tested, its just snips of things ive read from guys i believe are good breeders, and didnt see them mentioned in this thread yet.
Topping the males to see how they react, i think this might translate into the offspring. flowering out the clones of the males to see if they act different as as clones, i think especially if you plan on keeping the male around. (I read of a breeder that im pretty sure only breeds with cloned males) I read a post by bodhi recommending saving a little pollen from every male and mixing/applying to do an open pollination with room or plant count restraints. Ive also read guys recommend using very diverse parents (ex:indy/sat), so theres less chance of the undesireable traits coming through in the cross, and more chance of the dominant (hopefully desireable) traits shining through. But i could be wrong on that last one..

Alot of guys seem to recommend playing the statistic game. If you use two males 50% of the offspring will be better than the other half, just because one male will probably be better combining with the female youre using than the other one was. (Doesnt mean it will be an elite) I think it gets difficult once you start combining many multiple males to dictate what specifically each male passes on in that particular cross, selective pollenation, and proper labeling, hopefully seperated from the other male pollen i think could help with the ability to select for a specific male. (Example different pollen on each branch)

Imo, i think it would also be important to test the selected male/males with a few different varieties of females with different genetic backgrounds to see how they combine. I think this is the only real way to actually find out what the male imparts to its offspring. Would probably also help a great deal to have grown out the selected females a few times, to know them intimately and their specific traits and quirks to see what from the females are passed on as well. My thought on that is it would possibly make it easier to find what from the male is dom and recessive. Might even find a badass female to breed with. (I think thats called shotgunning) sometimes i think thats what bodhi does with all of his crosses and then he has testers to go through them for him. Brilliant if you ask me,

I think many traits are also linked together from what ive read i think its called gene linkage, (ex. Narrow leaf red hairs/wide leaf orange hairs or something like that, double leaf serrations with certain smells etc.) and i think most traits could be linked. Selecting for or against a trait could bring or take away another trait you mightve wanted or not in the offspring. If that makes sense

It seems to do proper breeding, time (years most likely) and numbers are the key to really finding what you are looking for, doesnt mean it cant be done in a cabinet, or on accident while moving locations like has happened, but i feel like there needs to be a large selection pool to select against for each generation, and the way it works in my head would be that the selection pool would grow exponentially each generation (i could be wrong on that though) . I think this would be more the route to take if you wanted to create a stable seed line. Dont know much about bxing, but it seems like it works for some.

1:1 crosses imo would be best for finding a clone or finding a nice plant to cross into another line. Assuming that the parent genetics of the 1:1 would be stable breeding stock. I know guys do it with success, but i think non-polyhybrids and large numbers are better for inbreeding

One thing theres not much info on is breeding reg seeds to a fem strain, guys do it im sure but i feel like its taboo to talk about, or admit. Id be willing to wager it might take a little more selection, especially if the mother was selfed. But i could be wrong on that.

The other thing ive always wondered about are dihybrid crosses? Where two f1s are bred together, and the f1s either have the same mother or father.

Dont take anything i write as law, most are just my thoughts or things ive regurgitated as accurately as i can from lurking these forums.

 

[=Roos=]

Hello
as regards the speech recessive male.
so you have to choose between males do not exhibit desired traits?
the last to bloom as not "dominant"?
sorry, my english is not the best, I hope you understand it.

 

[HeriMarry]

This is a post made many years ago by my very good friend R, I did a copy paste from another site. I trust most here will love this info, ENJOY !

"A secret revealed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a trick...more like a technique, that can help in any breeding project.

This information was passed to me (and others) by someone well known to the breeding community, and we were asked not to share it. However if any of you have read the 'My Best' thread, you know I am on my way out the door and am passing my best old school genetics around so the 'new generation' of breeders and smokers can beneift...as well as my old stoner friends lol.

I have also decided to divulge this information after much consternation and angst, because I am not sure if it will ever become public domain if I do not, and I fully believe it should be. This is/was a very difficult decision to make. But hey, WTF, it is what it is. People who are interested should know. Hoarding information is as bad as hoarding clones.

The first person I know of to use this breeding technique in the MJ world was a man named Nevil Schoenbottom, who passed it to Shantibaba, who passed it to another person who passed it to me(and others). The trick is using what some breeders 'in the know' call recessive males.

No one I know of who got this information paid much attention to it, or at least ran with it. The only reason I am different is because I stumbled upon a recessive male by accident but didn't realize what I had found until after a few crops of outcrossing him and noticing I was getting all the traits I wanted passed to the offspring. I suddenly realized what I had in a rare moment of clarity. As a bonus the dominant traits he passed were increased potency and tighter buds. I think this was just a fluke though.

I am no expert in genetics at all, in fact my knowledge is rudimentary, but this is how it was explained to me.

Recessive males are males that have a large number of double recessive genes for the traits most sought after by MJ breeders. Ie aa as opposed to Aa or AA. If you know something about genetics there should be a light bulb going on right now.

When males that have recessive genes for the traits we want passed from the mother, because they are dominant in the mother they will combine as Aa. 'A' from the AA mother and 'a' from the father, and express the trait you want to see in all of the F1 female offspring. There will also be males from the offsrping that combine the same way for this trait ie Aa. If these two sibling plants are combined, using P-Squares we can see there will be a certain % which combine as AA and the trait will be fixed by breeding these offspring. This really eliminates a lot of work.

Fine in theory R (I hear you saying) but how can I find and identify these males? This is key to the application. This information was never passed to me or the others that were privy to the recessive male concept and is perhaps why no one did anything with it. But I will pass it to you now.

These males can be identified easily in some cases, because unlike dominant males which flower earlier than sibling females the recessive males flower later. In addition, it stands to reason that if Shantibaba uses this technique, these males can be found in larger numbers within his seedstock. So there it is, with apologies to Shanti, Nevil and the person who told me about it.

If you have an in depth understanding of genetics and don't believe this or consider it anecdotal only, feel free to express those ideas, but I will not argue it with you. I am only passing on what was told to me and found that at least in my case it was true.

Best wishes and best of luck to you all.

Cheers,
R
__________________
Cull with extreme predjudice. "

Later, Stash

Good post, the key would be a large population to see the late bloomers better. I wonder what the minimum male plant count would be for such a project?

Thanks for refreshing my memory.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Good post, the key would be a large population to see the late bloomers better. I wonder what the minimum male plant count would be for such a project?

Thanks for refreshing my memory.

Great post indeed and much thanks!

I had heard many times before that late flowering males are more desirable but could never quite put my finger on it or understand the reasoning WHY they are.

Looking for recessive males in order to let the females dominate in the cross and thus find it easier to lock down desired traits as we know much more about the females than the males is a very interesting proposition indeed.

I wouldn't call it the end all be all and probably not even the "best" or most scientific method to go about it because the ideal cross would likely be done with a more dominant male here or there once we are able to lab-test them and be as familiar as we are with the females.
But until then, this seems like a great work-around and a workable solution for hobby breeders like myself to get closer to desirable results.

I will apply this method for sure and try to look for less imposing/dominant and later flowering males.


As to your question about plant numbers:
As always, that depends on the luck of the draw as much as anything else.
I can tell you that I had popped 5 CM from MRN and 4 survived, of which 3 were male.
They had their similarities but one was clearly more dominant as it was already loaded with balls all over the plant when the other 2 had just begun. So clearly within 3 males you could see which is the most imposing or dominant one.

If you have much experience and have seen males from a line many times, you might only need 1 and have no need to compare it to anything currently present because you have pics and notes or just stored the info in your head.

But as a generic answer: The more, the better. Always.

 

[englishrick]

I pop seeds and if a male pops up... Well... It's a male...

I tend to prefer open pollination over 1:1 matings. Genetic diversity is more important to me than stabilization. Especially when dealing with true F1 populations.

The only true test is the progeny.

This is a really smart post,,,

I agree ,,,genetic diversity is important and preserving the gene pool is number one priority,,,people who pollute it need to change there underpants and stop eating noodles,, I wish people would just wise up

Breeding cannabis is a funny deal,,, we debate loads of things funny subjects here online ,,,but we as a community,,we seem to not grasp the consensus I feel from this post right here,,preservation!

How do we achieve a real positive outcome!!!! ???

 

[Croissant]

This is a really smart post,,,

I agree ,,,genetic diversity is important and preserving the gene pool is number one priority,,,people who pollute it need to change there underpants and stop eating noodles,, I wish people would just wise up

Breeding cannabis is a funny deal,,, we debate loads of things funny subjects here online ,,,but we as a community,,we seem to not grasp the consensus I feel from this post right here,,preservation!

How do we achieve a real positive outcome!!!! ???

Rick you and me will have our midlife crisis together... 'We must preserve the good ol' days!"

 

[englishrick]

Line breeding ,, establishing pure lines ,,, outcrossing between lines selectively for heterosis ,,,large population numbers,,bio diversity then remains at a high

Yo Croissant,,, I'm starting to believe me an you are on a wavelength,,,seems like we are always in the same threads nowadays,,,

Recessive males are used because the breeder wants to see the female dominate the cross,,, That means it's always a one sided affair,,,that's all good for some crosses,,,but i that means every cross will be using donors with potentially negative recessive traits that can't be identified until incrossing,,,,not sure that's such a good thing ,,