There are no homozygous Cannabis seed Varieties or clone Cultivars.
They can be made, but they will suffer from loss of vigor. Selfing a single female is maybe the easiest path, but by S3, S4 they are inbred and have many problems even with reproduction, much less producing good healthy plants. We made several almost homozygous lines, but did not finish as they were zero vigor and almost impossible to use for a pollen source, they were all but functionally sterile. They did make pollen but it was sticky and did not drop. (dehiscence) You could use a q-tip and pollinate but it gets worse every further S generation.
So you can do it if you are motivated, not sure it will help you understand Cannabis evolution, but you can try and do it.
Who will do the DNA analysis and then the "assembly" for you?
You can use dihaploid tech, but I have not heard of anyone doing this with Cannabis.
-SamS
They can be made, but they will suffer from loss of vigor. Selfing a single female is maybe the easiest path, but by S3, S4 they are inbred and have many problems even with reproduction, much less producing good healthy plants. We made several almost homozygous lines, but did not finish as they were zero vigor and almost impossible to use for a pollen source, they were all but functionally sterile. They did make pollen but it was sticky and did not drop. (dehiscence) You could use a q-tip and pollinate but it gets worse every further S generation.
So you can do it if you are motivated, not sure it will help you understand Cannabis evolution, but you can try and do it.
Who will do the DNA analysis and then the "assembly" for you?
You can use dihaploid tech, but I have not heard of anyone doing this with Cannabis.
-SamS
Hi all,
I am a biologist interested in genome evolution in the Cannabaceae family (including hop but also tropical trees such as Celtis, Trema, Chaetachme). For my research I am looking into the possibilities of determining a genome sequence of Cannabis. First a bit of introduction:
Determining (assembling) a genome sequence is a hugely complicated puzzle. You can compare it with making a jigsaw puzzle with millions of pieces without knowing what is depicted. People have attempted to assemble Cannabis genomes but the results so far have not been great. I think this is because of the heterozygosity of Cannabis plants. Imagine that our metaphoric jigsaw puzzle contains each piece in two similar but slightly different forms - that would complicate solving the puzzle tremendously!
This is why I would like to have a completely homozygous Cannabis for research purposes. Normally, you can get homozygous plants through inbreeding. I am not a Cannabis breeder and have never grown a Cannabis plant myself. So I know virtually nothing about the practicalities. But what I have learned from various webpages and posts on this forum is that Cannabis plants suffer when they are inbred. They have reduced vigour: their performance deteriorates due to inbreeding depression. To avoid this problem, I understand breeders make backcrosses to maintain heterozygosity and 'hybrid vigour'. On the other hand, I see references to IBLs which are supposedly inbred. So perhaps it is possible to get to a homozygous line.
I am very interested in the advice and experiences of the expert breeders on this forum:
- Are there any truly homozygous Cannabis strains/lines (not just homozygous for particular traits of interest but for all genes in the genome)?
- How far can one go with inbreeding in terms of reduced vigour? (I would not mind having a poorly growing plant that requires a lot of care. But they should remain alive
Thanks in advance!
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