How to pick Mr. Right?

[Blind Joe Death]

You want to create an Auto IBL? Don’t swim upstream: keep all the males, but select the best female. Plant her seeds!

You can’t keep clones of the males, so you can’t reliably keep the best male (who is always the male with the best offspring). You have to keep them all and focus on traits you can actually observe (that is, the ladies’ traits). You CAN pick the best lady, and she’s the plant to keep if you want to select a single parent for each generation....

You can actually keep clones of males...there are many documented reports of breeding studs being kept and passed around....Somas G13/Haze is a great example...

It's going to be hard to clone an Autoflowering plant of any gender which is what OP is wanting to breed in which case it would be wise to choose the female/s with the traits that you want and breed all males unto it/them...you're biggest factor here is time, obviously with a higher plant count less time will be needed

 

[Dawe]

It depends on if you want to breed for diversity or a specific trait. Use as many males as possible if you don't mind a hunt sometimes.

 

[Londinium]

Use All Healthy Vigorus(not stretchy,vigorous)Males as donors and test progeny to determine which show best General Combining Ability with the chosen Recepticle Female/s,or.....just guess and join the crapshoot Stinky,Frosty males are a safe guess if u have to guess

 

[zif]

You can actually keep clones of males...there are many documented reports of breeding studs being kept and passed around....Somas G13/Haze is a great example...

It's going to be hard to clone an Autoflowering plant of any gender....

Absolutely! Non-auto males are as easy to clone as non-auto females. Aridbud makes a good point, though, that pollen CAN be kept. Ironically, that means with autos that the male genetics are easier to preserve/revisit than the female genetics. That flips the script for me!

You could even break out the old RRS or other hyper-efficient recurrent breeding plan thanks to that male pollen.... pretty cool.

 

[Superauto]

You want to create an Auto IBL? Don’t swim upstream: keep all the males, but select the best female. Plant her seeds!

You can’t keep clones of the males, so you can’t reliably keep the best male (who is always the male with the best offspring). You have to keep them all and focus on traits you can actually observe (that is, the ladies’ traits). You CAN pick the best lady, and she’s the plant to keep if you want to select a single parent for each generation....

So what you suggest is to collect pollen from all the males and THEN just make them live as long as they can so I can see their traits, mold resistance and so on......that's pretty smart but it require a male section in the garden(or maybe more wisely bring them to a spot in the forest far away from the females to avoid any unplanned pollination)

 

[Gr33nSanta]

You want to remove the males roughly 5 weeks before you plan to harvest or more, but at least 4 weeks. Otherwise you ll have hundreds of immature seeds mixed with your good seeds, twice the work to separate them.

 

[zif]

So what you suggest is to collect pollen from all the males and THEN just make them live as long as they can so I can see their traits, mold resistance and so on....)

Personally, I would not try to evaluate traits in the males. But by saving pollen, you can run each male's offspring, decide which one produces the best females, and then make as many more offspring of that male as you like. At least, while you've still got his pollen!

Non-auto breeders are spoiled. They keep clones of many (if not all) of their parent plants, male and female both. If a specific partnering produces great offspring, then with that male and female clone, they can produce identical seeds indefinitely. SamS, for example, can regenerate his favorite version of Skunk #1 at any point from the 5 females and 2 males he kept in the 1990's.

As a side thought, does anyone know the pattern of inheritance following auto x non-auto crosses? I'm sure it's on IC somewhere....

 

[Superauto]

You want to remove the males roughly 5 weeks before you plan to harvest or more, but at least 4 weeks. Otherwise you ll have hundreds of immature seeds mixed with your good seeds, twice the work to separate them.

Personally, I would not try to evaluate traits in the males. But by saving pollen, you can run each male's offspring, decide which one produces the best females, and then make as many more offspring of that male as you like. At least, while you've still got his pollen!

Isn't it possible to just cut off the pollen sacs and let rest of the male live?
Then I can see how mold resistant he is and observe other traits without having any undesirable crossings or seeds in the buds

 

[Mate Dave]

Use All Healthy Vigorus(not stretchy,vigorous)Males as donors and test progeny to determine which show best General Combining Ability with the chosen Recepticle Female/s,or.....just guess and join the crapshoot Stinky,Frosty males are a safe guess if u have to guess

Pre order a Phylo's kit before germination. Squish them cotyledons. & pair up the chemotypes It's a new era

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

Isn't it possible to just cut off the pollen sacs and let rest of the male live?
Then I can see how mold resistant he is and observe other traits without having any undesirable crossings or seeds in the buds

Thats what I've been doing for the past few years. Its a lot of work to keep on pinching off the new flowers before they open, about half an hour every day or so on my 5 small males. Anything bigger than that would probably get annoying or out of control for me. Its like playing whack-a-mole, flowers will pop out in every spot, every hidden node that you can't see because a leaf is in the way or whatever and you think you pulled them all off, but then you check the next day and you missed some and a bunch of yellow dust drops out when you bump the guy's stem by accident.

 

[Mengsk]

There is a beauty and simplicity in this answer. Just look at them. Even in this day of genetic testing (read Mate Dave's post above) the old fashioned way still works. I see the chemographs and what not, it doesn't really surprise me or impress me too much at this point. I am not sure Phylos or myself would agree or afford the time/money difference between 'sexing the plants in the field' in other words just looking at them. 2c you're tending them and taking notes anyway how does sending samples to an extra company fit in. Not sure of the most relevant place maybe I'll edit this post but I asked them outright how much time it would save to use kits what's the pricing or promo discount etc did not receive an answer. There is a different side to this, 'hidden cost' or I'm not sure what to call it. Lab technicians and computer people, all of that takes a great deal of time to analyze chemographs and make pictures and stuff. That is all time that is not spent growing weed. So for the grower, I know how to use the computer. But every single person bragging about how smart and fancy everything is, did not personally cut me a check for intellectual property or contribution for all of my years of education and service to genetics research medicine and everything. Now (slightly difficult to follow) the concept of money and what patents, or ownership or power, based on strain chemotypes is complete and utter bs. I can recognize all of these strains but what stops some bonehead with zero growing experience from claiming CEO of some cannabis company? Kick rocks, eat dirt, that is my answer. Eat dirt it's good for you and will help with irritable bowel syndrome symptoms. It is dynamic, meaning open source genetics sure upload the genetic samples to one or more servers that isn't that hard to do I think lots of people can do it now. But it is or should be free, and in the meantime the strains still grow. I'm not sure this is more of a library (record, archive) or if it will actually help people.

Pick up any old cannabis pot growing book when you have time. Any characteristics you are breeding for can be spotted in the growing plants. If you want diverse progeny use all of them or many different ones. If you want selections then pick the best one. It's that simple. If you understand it then you do. And if it becomes more complicated for you then it probably is.