playing with aces (aka draining the seed bucket)

[nldfarmer]

Hey all, I finally have harvested my first set of plants from my new grow setup to test it out and figured it's time to start a thread to keep track of things.

I'm a home grower interested in breeding to get the exact strain i am looking for. As such stable and reliable strains are very valuable to me, ACE seeds has made this process much easier than I could ever hope.

I have an extensive list of crossings, but really only want to mostly talk about the ACE ones here. The grow goal for this year is to preserve some ACE varieties ( CBG durban, malawi) while playing around with the crosses of others.

My ACE crosses are:
x Kens GDP Male
Kali China
Zamaldelica (Xtreme thai Pheno)
x Zamaldelica male
Zamaldelica (semiflowering pheno)
Zamaldelica (Xtreme thai Pheno)
C99 - Female Seeds
GDP 3x backcross
Ethiopian Highland Sativa (hermaphrodiate mango pheno)
Hapa Haze
x Rio Negro Colombian male
Panama vanilla incense Pheno
Zamaldelica (semiflowering pheno)
Zamaldelica (Xtreme thai Pheno)


The current plants in the flowering tent are:
4x: Panama Black (Panama x Rio Negro Colombian)
2x: Kali China x GDP

While vegging I have:
Malawi standard
Wild Thalind (S1 or possible F1, dispensary seed non ACE)

This thread is to track all of the breeding ideas and steps I'm going to take, the current plans are:

• Fem the very indica pheno of Kali China x GDP, use the pollen later on the remaining 3 fem Kali China seeds to try to make a plant similar to Dubi's F4 Kali China Hashplant pheno using the GDP as the hashplant influence. Goal is to make a lot of seeds that give me essentially Kali China in its current form with my own twist.
• Extensively test the Panama Black cross with various breeding attempts to try to understand what it contributes. I have a male dropping pollen that threw pistils that I let pollinate itself. That male pollen will be used on the Malawi females, and I will fem two female Panama Blacks to cross to the most New Killer Malawi female. If these tests work out when I grow them next year, I will plant the remaining 3x Panama fem seeds and hit them with choice Rio Negro Colombian males to repeat the cross on a wider range to again hit to the New Killer fem. The goal here is to get a woody, spicy, dense, incredible sativa high fem line that I can just keep popping to get haze like plants.
• Hit the New Killer females with pollen from both a "male" Wild Thai seed I have and feminized Wild Thai pollen. Goal is to somethin akin to a Wild Thaiger, a wilder version of Golden Tiger.

I'm not focusing on the Zamaldelica crosses yet. From playing with it before I know those are beastly plants that require me to be on my tip top game to get good yields without succumbing to the octopus branching. Working my way up to them with these other sativas first, while waiting on that rumored Zamaldelica x Purple Zamal

Pics are going to start coming soon, needed to start the thread to get my post count up and force me to start posting more regularly.

For quick notes on what is currently growing:

• Wild thai is more vigorous and more sativa framed than the malawi plants, nice tropical smell similar to the dispensary bud, it actually looks like it would stretch out/make more wild the new killer phenos that are much more compact.
• Malawi standard phenos range from the plain woody Old Killer to more fruity New Killer phenos, they're taking absolutely forever to sex from seed, at maybe 6 weeks I have only 2/6 identified.
• Panama Black is what I hoped it would be, not at all throwing phenos similar to either parent, it seems that I am getting some good genetic recombination. The phenos are all extremely spicy in stem rub, and leaves/flowers range from chocolate to regular south american spicy. Some phenos seem relatively tame, but I'm not seeing anything as dense as either parents yet.
• Kali China x GDP is a pretty straightforward cross, it was an F3 Kali China so the F1 with an indica GDP is extremely vigorous. The GDP pheno is exactly what I wanted, a bat of dense dense buds that look like Kali China. Already cloned it to get ready to make the fem pollen donor for its fem Kali China siblings. Cannot wait for it to hit the later weeks and start perfuming the tent, indeed Kali China and my GDP are my two most favorite terpene strains.

 

[nldfarmer]

starting it off with pictures of the male i think i will use for testing the Panama x Rio Negro Colombian as an outcross, he's quite the beefy boy. smells of all chocolate in the flowers and spice in the stem. no resin yet as he flowers, but there have been a few pistils that i hit wit his own pollen

Here's the general shape, showing off the trifolate:



and some flowers, i'm pretty happy with the density for a pure sativa hybrid

 

[nldfarmer]

panama black #4

panama black #4

the panama blacks seem to follow the regular F1 pattern so far, even with the recombination going on, I'm seeing two groups. one more pretty and seemingly a little better behaved that i'm calling panama influenced even though it's not anything close to mom. the other is more wild and less refined similar to the Rio Negro Colombian.

the #4 is one of the ones that are heavily panama influenced, darker leaves with chocolate smells, flowers are sativa but look dense versus haze airyness.

#4 is pretty vigorous but did not have a crazy stretch. put her in at ~36" here she is ~2 weeks into flowering, maybe 48". she's pretty similar to the #1 that i'll describe later, and might be deciding between those two to test the outcross w/ Malawi.

 

[nldfarmer]

panama black #1

panama black #1

#1, the most vigorous of the pretty panama kids, just a giant plant that didn't want to stop growing. mainlining technique took care of that

pretty similar smells to the #4, maybe even more chocolate and less spice? never had chocolate before in a sativa so i'm curious how it will develop deeper into flowering.

before flower/2weeks flower

 

[nldfarmer]

panama black #3

panama black #3

#3, oh, getting interesting. panama lemony on the backend behind the chocolate smell, which is accompanied by a heavy spice aroma ala south american strains. getting a flower density closer to the tamed panama expression.

this one seems to exhibit something closer to a true F1 showing obvious traits from both instead of new genetic combinations, so far it's the lead for terpene quality.

veg/2 weeks flower

 

[nldfarmer]

panama black #2

panama black #2

the one i'm the most excited about. #2 is looking like a good base plant to make a haze-like. lanky lean sativa structure, nice stem colors. bright green leaves reminiscent of the Rio Negro Colombian. she's taking longer than the others to begin flowering seems to be more like a 30-40% stretch on this one. it smells not as chocolate forward as the others, more spice with hints of the mint/menthol from the Rio Negro.

she's a little beat up from nutrient sensitivity compared to the other phenos, no matter as this plant is just to evaluate the pheno, i've backed her and all the other candidates up.

veg/2weeks flower

 

[nldfarmer]

kali china x gdp 2 weeks

kali china x gdp 2 weeks

these Kali China kids are making me pretty happy. some of the fastest to form resin, starting to develop nice smells.

sativa pheno mango incense perfume

indica pheno liver, GDP perfume and spice

 

[MallardDuck]

Wow amazing work. I think you will find more than a few gems as you go along. The Panama Black seems particularly alluring to me. Best wishes, I will be taking a seat and watching this one.

 

[Cakeboy]

nice job man, looking forward seeing the development of your crosses.

 

[dubi]

Hi nldfarmer

Thanks for starting this thread about your breeding projects, a pleasure to hear our work and genetics inspire you and are useful for your own breeding.

Panama x Colombian should work very well, they look quite Panama influenced (at least so far in structure) but thinner.

Good eyes and nose The more sativa Kali China x GDP leans towards the F3 Kali China mother which is a fruity mango incensey pheno, the more indica leans towards the more hashplant indica Kali China F4s which are more meaty incensey. Best wishes!

 

[nldfarmer]

Hey Dubi, thanks for chiming in! I do appreciate the info as i'm not that familiar with panama variety. I think i grew 3 or 4 before using the vanilla pheno for breeding, I'm very happy to take a thinner panama.

I guess I should explain what I'm really trying to do. With Panama Black the intention was to undo some of the well behaved breeding and go back to the wilder south american pheno types. I used the Rio Negro since it was a 2nd generation landrace that has the pine terpenes that are medicinally the best for me, and wasn't too far in behavior from Panama.

Overall goal was to get a 12-14 week strain that grew like a old school thin colombian with pine, citrus, and incense notes. This will be mixed with Malawi to introduce wood terps, hybrid vigor, devastating power, and improve even more the leaf/calyx ratio.

Hi nldfarmer

Thanks for starting this thread about your breeding projects, a pleasure to hear our work and genetics inspire you and are useful for your own breeding.

Panama x Colombian should work very well, they look quite Panama influenced (at least so far in structure) but thinner.

Good eyes and nose The more sativa Kali China x GDP leans towards the F3 Kali China mother which is a fruity mango incensey pheno, the more indica leans towards the more hashplant indica Kali China F4s which are more meaty incensey. Best wishes!

 

[nldfarmer]

panama blacks at 3 weeks

panama blacks at 3 weeks

#1, can't really get back there but it seems to be tracking with #4, definitely holding onto the chocolate aromas for longer

#2 is getting sexier and thinner, very refreshing aroma starting to build but still chocolate heavy, still stretching.

#3 is surprisingly toned down this week after showing off for the 2nd week. The panama lemon is gone and replaced with the heavy chocolate aroma.

#4 is actually starting to exhibit some of the terps of #3 at week 2, panama lemon + rio negro pine. Grew 6 inches in one week, starting to hope they stop stretching.

 

[nldfarmer]

kali china x gdp

kali china x gdp

These plants are flat out amazing. I've crossed the GDP to over 20 varieties so far and this is already at the top of the pack at week 3. Early resin builders, hints of it at week 2 and got their first layer of trichomes at week 3 They're starting to perfume the tent and generally make it hard to id smells, but that's a good problem to have

IMO Kali China is an excellent breeding tool, it might feel early to say since they're not harvested but I haven't seen a cross perform with such vigor AND predictability. My GDP traits are heterozygous and the cross behavior tends to depend on how much breeding work went into the mom, it's obvious with Kali China that a lot has gone into it. Shucks, now I'm thinking of Kali China crosses and I'm still working the panama one....

The sativa pheno just keeps getting more F3 kali china fruity and GDP perfumed as it keeps flowering.

The indica pheno is starting to lean more towards the F4ish kali china description now, liver/meaty notes on the front, the GDP perfume is being moved to the back for a refreshing cleanup. Somewhere in between is the Kali China incense, this might be my most flavorful cross.

the colors are already starting...

 

[dubi]

Hi nldfarmer,

Sounds like a good plan and your hybrids seem to go in the right direction considering the visual traits i can see from here and based on your descriptions of the terpene profiles. Please, keep us updated!

 

[nldfarmer]

kali china x gdp 4 weeks

kali china x gdp 4 weeks

These plants just keep getting better, honestly not much to say about them other than they're perfect plants. I don't breed for flower time since I believe it has a negative inverse relationship with the high, but these phenos are on track to meet or exceed the earliest possible harvest time, which I do take note of. Of all the 20+ GDP crosses there was maybe 1 that could arguably be harvested at week 6, although 7 would definitively round it off. Considering how frosty and thick these are at week 4, we might have a winner for fastest earliest harvest time. This matches with the pain of trying to keep moms, they semi flower similarly to Zamaldelica, with the F3/more sativa version being very difficult to keep as a mom. So far the indica version is okay but it grows much slower so I'm not sure how much the semi flowering affects it.

Both phenos display dense rock hard buds that have both aspects of Kali Chinas terpene profile.

indica (F4ish)
just increasing in meaty terpenes, incense, and GDP perfume

sativa (F3)
similarly to the F4ish, this one just keeps getting fruitier and more perfumey. I now need to touch this one last, any amount of resin sticks to my hands and makes it impossible to get rid of the smell for a few minutes.

F3 color closeup

 

[nldfarmer]

panama x rio negro columbian 4 weeks

panama x rio negro columbian 4 weeks

Major changes at week 4, getting pumped! Starting to be able to make selections and I think that this cross is on track for my plan of developing a better haze like.

#3
Starting with this one as it is failing selections. For week 4 the Panama influence came back with the strong vanilla incense, which is now evenly mixed with Rio Negro pine. Unfortunately it seemed to have inherited most of the growth structure from the Rio (leafy, wilder fluffy buds, not as vigorous, slow/low resin buildup), which is no bueno for good bud/leaf ratio.

#1
Deciding between this one and #4 as the more hybrid parent for outcrossing. Definitely has more of the Panama looks, I still detect chocolate which I'm learning is what eventually translates to vanilla incense, with the Rio Negro pine but joined with wintergreen/mint. Leaning away from this one since it displays a little bit of the leafy Rio growth still. A bit slow at building the frost, it has some but it's even more close to the #3 in how delicate it is versus the #4.

#4
Pretty similar to the #1 above, except the chocolate has fully converted over to vanilla, the wintergreen/mint is actually more represented, and I'm getting hints of the refreshing aroma I will describe for #2. Building delicate frost similarly to the Rio, but with bud density and better leaf ratio from the Panama.

closeup

#2

This. Is. It. Unbelievably excited, holding out to see if there are any herm issues, to be honest even if there are I will want to work with it. Unique among the phenos, still very tall sativa stretchy structure. Taking longer than the others to set buds and is still in its stretching phase. However, this plant is already stacking frost. More frost than I've ever seen on a sativa, if I didn't have the Kali China crosses I'd say for a plant overall. This is my first time getting a completely greasy feeling rubbing the leaves. Not sticky or tacky, feels like literal hair grease/liquid in your hand after a rub, does interesting things when mixed with the Kali China resin. This and the Kali China plants make it very difficult to gauge smells in the tent anymore without multiple hand washings. Terps are also unique, raw ripe juicy mango first and foremost, Panama Vanilla incense and Rio Negro pine are tiny contributors in the background. I don't recall mango terpenes in either parents, Rio Negro has citrus following the pine but it's normal citrus. IIRC one of the Panama parentals might've had mango phenotypes in its gene pool? Or maybe I'm mixing this up with reports I've read of Colombian Mangobiche? Either way, mixing the #2 with either the woody old Killer or fruity new Killer would be a dream sativa hybrid, and is almost certainly one route I will take for the outcross. My heart also feels like this is a dream plant to cross with the CBG Durban that I have left as it would be wonderful with the orangey licorice of the CBG, but that's a while away.

Dubi's given us some good formulas and we might as well use them, I'm getting my Malawi evaluation plants cloned this week to get fem pollen to do a fem Panama Black x Malawi repro with #2 and likely #4, following the formula to try to preserve the wonderful terps found in the phenos while adding some power, yield, wood/new killer terps, and improved bud/leaf ratio.

I will try the other route, Malawi x Panama Black whorrled/trifoliate once I select my Malawi parentals while making fem pollen, which in theory gives me more power but less terps based on the outcome of Malawi x Panama and male genetics should I choose to introduce some Y chromosomes back into the gene pool. My initial inclination is to keep the male pollinated seeds as backup since we're now dealing with long flowering sativas when Malawi gets involved, it would be an incredibly frustrating and a long process to try to breed long flowering sativas indoors from a male genepool while respecting plant counts.

Once these steps are completed I have the ability to explore and evaluate the cross and nudge it in any direction that I want by inbreeding, outcrossing to the sister line, or recreating any step of the process with my remaining Panama and Rio Negro parental seeds to get new P1s selected for specific traits I'm looking for. For instance if I can figure out what P1s produce the #2 pheno consistently that would be worth a Panama Black V2. Probably a project for later though, this haze reconstruction, Kali China f4 breeding repo attempt, Wild Thaiger selections/crossing, and some seed preservation/monocrop runs have my room booked out for the next year.

 

[dubi]

I like your thinking nldfarmer

Panama is a very very tamed Central American sativa line so crossed with another one not so tamed line from close area it will hardly make any improvement over Panama regarding resin production and terpene intensity at such early flowering stage. Guess the success of this sativa hybrid will be able to be evaluated after harvest when smoking the flowers.

The Kali Chinas rarely will flower in the mother room unless they are extremely root bound. If that's the case try to take new clones from the mothers and plant them once they are rooted in new pots with enough space for the roots to replace the old ones. Very happy to see the KCs being so dominant

 

[nldfarmer]

kali china x gdp 5 week

kali china x gdp 5 week

These crosses are officially my fastest GDP cross at 5 weeks early harvest date. Obviously you wouldn't want to do this unless you had to, but it's impressive. Based on the progress I'm estimating both it and the sativa variety will be done in 7 weeks. It is possible that some loose males in the tent in the first week might've pollinated the initial pistils and sped things up, but they're still plenty fast and solid buds.

This week the GDP influence is becoming stronger, and is roughly equal to the Kali China terps, so with the addition of the pheno specific terps (fruity floral for sativa, meat incense for indica) I now have strong sugary grape perfume. This matches up with preivous crosses, as the GDP dominant phenos normally take 9 weeks to fully finish.

indica pheno

sativa pheno, just doing its thing

 

[nldfarmer]

panama x rio negro columbian 5 weeks

panama x rio negro columbian 5 weeks

These are starting to develop buds slowly. I think I am starting to understand the phenos. Putting #1 and #3 in the Rio Negro dominant and #2 and #4 in the Panama. The first two are leafier and have what I'm calling the "landrace" terpene, it's a terp that reminiscent of grassy, hay, herbal note that is present throughout the Rio phenos. The #2 and #4 have more refined terpenes that I assume are contributions of Panama, both have pine and vanilla incense, but #4 has floral mint and slight citrus and #2 has very strong mango that is becoming more generic floral perfume. 2 and 4 are also very nutrient hungry compared to the other 2, although 2 is more sensitive to the balance being more extreme sativa.

I guess I should talk about the Rio Negro and why I chose it.

After more than two years in the making the Rio Negro Colombian Sativa seed is finally finished. This heirloom Colombian cannabis variety is both vigorous and easy to grow and is an excellent choice for either indoor or outdoor cultivation.

Grown indoors the plants will finish flowering in 10 - 11 weeks. In Northern Colorado’s latitudes they will finish outdoors in early October.

The Rio Negro Colombian Sativa is highly productive and produces a dense and very fragrant flower with complex pine and citrus flavors. It is a pleasure to trim.

The Rio Negro Colombian is a classic equatorial Sativa type. Its effects are both clear-headed and stimulating. This variety is perfectly suited for active minds and bodies alike.
In a marketplace filled with hundreds if not thousands of seed varieties, this is without a doubt one of the most unique varieties I have had the chance to work with.

Reasons for the Rio are 2 fold. 1) I grew up in the caribbean islands and strongly remember smoking what I surmise was imported Colombian/South American. It was strong trippy and euphoric with a unique body effect 2) Through the legal dispensary offerings, I've discovered that pinene terpenes help me medically the most. These terpenes were most strongly and consistently expressed in two strains: Romulan and Haze. When I visited Centennial and inquired about the seeds he showed me a jarred sample and the smell instantly brought me back to the caribbean and was exactly the terpenes I needed.

The issue is that, as said above, it's basically still a land race. Plants were consistent in phenotypes for growth but had varying resin and high qualities and were sometimes a bit leafier than I would have liked. I wanted the same terpenes in a better package. Ideally in both a skinny extreme sativa format and a more hybrid easy to grow format.

Enter Panama, with its high degree of inbreeding and floral terps and similar genetic makeup. My pheno had vanilla incense, so I figured it would serve as a good genetic prop for getting the strong pine terps in a more desirable package.

In short I'm not trying to improve Panama with this cross as that would be foolish and not likely to happen. I'm trying to improve the Rio Negro with the Panama genes while searching for phenos that will serve as good outcrosses to Malawi for making my haze-like. On the outcross is where I expect hybrid vigor and extreme terpene examples which will be used for directing the F2 where I can really play with traits. In an ideal world, which actually seems be pretty close to what I have, I get completely Panama dominant phenos with extreme pine terps.

Here are the photos, #2 is looking a bit beat up since it's dealing with nutrient issues and some summer mites.
#1

#2

#3

#4

 

[nldfarmer]

wild thaiger candidates

wild thaiger candidates

Here are some seedling and mom pictures of what I'm testing for Wild Thaiger.

They're ACE malawi and a dispensary mystery seed that is 50% Thai. I'm estimating that some seeds are legit F1s while others are S1s. Some display very strong thai traits while one in particular smells like it was mixed with an OG, I have a male which is an additional strike towards it being an F1 instead of S1.

I will probably only work with the very thai leaning ones and see what happens on the outcross, since the Thai seems so dominate I'm hoping that will still result in a strongly sativa hybrid.

The Malawis started out slower and more hybrid looking than the Wild Thailands, but over time 3 Malawi phenos grew massive while 3 stayed more compact.

Here are the Wild Thaiger candidates as seedlings and overgrown moms before cutting clones. Once clones take I am putting the moms directly into flowering to sex the Malawi and evaluate both strains for breeding candidates.

Leaf size comparison, the Malawi is in the middle.