Regular seeds vs. Feminized seeds.
- Thread starter Thread starter NickMode
- Start date Start date
The simple answer is no.
I prefer feminised seeds, I've had nothing but 100% success from them since I started using them 4 or so years ago. Now just about every second bean I grow is feminised (I'd grow them more often but the choise of strains is naturally more limited than regular beans).
It seems with some people not overly familiar with them that there's an underlying concern about getting hermaphrodites from feminised seeds, but that generally only occurs when the mother itself has natural hermaphrodite tendencies, and breeders tend to avoid such plants. This is just as likely to happen with regular beans created from a mother that has hermaphrodite tendencies / can easily be stressed into producing pollen.
Actually the only hermaphrodite I've ever ended up growing was from a regular seed.
Breeders making seeds (whether they're feminised or regular) look for females that are stress-resistant, ie. females that are very difficult to get pollen bananas from without the use of colloidal silver/silver theosulphate/giberillic acid, so more often than not they're more stress-resistant / less likely to turn hermie than regular seeds, but it all depends on the mother.
I prefer feminised seeds, I've had nothing but 100% success from them since I started using them 4 or so years ago. Now just about every second bean I grow is feminised (I'd grow them more often but the choise of strains is naturally more limited than regular beans).
It seems with some people not overly familiar with them that there's an underlying concern about getting hermaphrodites from feminised seeds, but that generally only occurs when the mother itself has natural hermaphrodite tendencies, and breeders tend to avoid such plants. This is just as likely to happen with regular beans created from a mother that has hermaphrodite tendencies / can easily be stressed into producing pollen.
Actually the only hermaphrodite I've ever ended up growing was from a regular seed.
Breeders making seeds (whether they're feminised or regular) look for females that are stress-resistant, ie. females that are very difficult to get pollen bananas from without the use of colloidal silver/silver theosulphate/giberillic acid, so more often than not they're more stress-resistant / less likely to turn hermie than regular seeds, but it all depends on the mother.
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When it comes to the hermie issue of fems, IMO it is much easier to create a plant that is true breeding for no hermies by using fems and forcing male stamin for pollination of another female.
We can easily find out if a female plant is worthy of breeding by stressing it and trying to make it hermie. If it goes through light, and other stessing methods, and continues to not throw male stamen, it is worthy of breeding for a no hermie progeny.
But that is just one half of the picture. We need to know how hermie prone the other Parent plant is, as we want both parents to be true breeding for the non-hermie trait.
If using a male, it is a crap shoot...OR a long wait, as we must use the pollen from the male, and then grow out the progeny to be able to see what traits the male had.
BUT...pick another female that has been stressed tested and found to be hermie free, and you have two confirmed plants that can potentially breed true for no hermies.
And you have femmed seeds that are non-hermie before the guy using the male even has half a clue as to what his will produce.
I hope this makes sense to folks...
We can easily find out if a female plant is worthy of breeding by stressing it and trying to make it hermie. If it goes through light, and other stessing methods, and continues to not throw male stamen, it is worthy of breeding for a no hermie progeny.
But that is just one half of the picture. We need to know how hermie prone the other Parent plant is, as we want both parents to be true breeding for the non-hermie trait.
If using a male, it is a crap shoot...OR a long wait, as we must use the pollen from the male, and then grow out the progeny to be able to see what traits the male had.
BUT...pick another female that has been stressed tested and found to be hermie free, and you have two confirmed plants that can potentially breed true for no hermies.
And you have femmed seeds that are non-hermie before the guy using the male even has half a clue as to what his will produce.
I hope this makes sense to folks...
hoosier mate that's poetry in motion, I couldn't have said it any better myself 
RoomRaider
Member
If you have a feminized autoflower and you use colloidal silver to produce seeds, will the progeny have a tendency to hermi? Or does it only depend on whether the plant is stress (hermi) resistant in the first place?
Good explanation btw, got me thinking.
Good explanation btw, got me thinking.
If the mother herself has a tendency to hermi then yes there's a good chance her offspring will also have hermaphroditic tendencies.
This is why breeders (whether they're creating regular or feminised seeds) look for mothers that are stress-resistant.
To make a strain that is true breeding don't you choose phenos that you want and interbreed them weeding out the phenos that you don't want each generation? I mean do you only use non hermie plants throughout the whole process or just chose a non hermie mothers once you have normalized the traits you want?
bitpoop21,
I'm sorry to hear that you've had no luck with feminised seeds, but you say "I found them in all fem plants DP mazar sensi star and bubba k" ...... ???
We're talking about MAKING feminised seeds here, not growing feminised plants, or seeds grown from feminised plants ... it just sounds to me like you've let a male pollenate the hell out of your flower chamber.
I've personally had 100% success over nearly 5 years from feminised seeds, including 100% success from all the feminised seeds I've personally made via Colloidal Silver.
I also noted that you mentioned the SIZE of the resulting seeds ... well, I've made feminized seeds including Cinderella 99 and yes they were small ... but so what??? They still matured and ripened like any other seed, and EVERY one of those seeds has grown into a clone-like version of its mother, and EVERY one of them has turned out female. I could give these seeds to any other grower, and apart from the 100% female ratio they'd never be able to tell they were feminised.
So anyway, do you actually have any single valid reason as to why people shouldn't use feminised seeds??? Because you've failed to explain it so far ...
I'm sorry to hear that you've had no luck with feminised seeds, but you say "I found them in all fem plants DP mazar sensi star and bubba k" ...... ???
We're talking about MAKING feminised seeds here, not growing feminised plants, or seeds grown from feminised plants ... it just sounds to me like you've let a male pollenate the hell out of your flower chamber.
I've personally had 100% success over nearly 5 years from feminised seeds, including 100% success from all the feminised seeds I've personally made via Colloidal Silver.
I also noted that you mentioned the SIZE of the resulting seeds ... well, I've made feminized seeds including Cinderella 99 and yes they were small ... but so what??? They still matured and ripened like any other seed, and EVERY one of those seeds has grown into a clone-like version of its mother, and EVERY one of them has turned out female. I could give these seeds to any other grower, and apart from the 100% female ratio they'd never be able to tell they were feminised.
So anyway, do you actually have any single valid reason as to why people shouldn't use feminised seeds??? Because you've failed to explain it so far ...
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Do a search for "cubing" ... it explains how strains like Cinderella 99 are stabilised.
In regards to making feminised seeds, the breeder chooses a female that is known to be very stress-resistant. The breeder actually has to use an ethylene inhibitor such as colloidal silver, silver theosulphate, or giberillic acid in order to FORCE the female to produce pollen, because if it's a stress-resistant plant then other tricks such as light poisoning may not work. It's for this reason that plants grown from _quality_ feminised seeds are actually generally more resistant to stress than regular seeds, as regular strains don't tend to be stress-tested as much (although obviously that isn't always the case).
I have heard someone use the term cubing before, I will try to do a little reading on it later tonight. So just to clarify, lets say you wanted to work with a particular strain, lets say ak47 and wanted to decrease flowering time and increase potency and yield. Would you try to isolate those three traits in separate lines and then recombine the three once they became fairly true breeding? Oh well, I will go read some stuff. Thanks for the tip man.
Dewd, all you witnessed was late flower hermie seeds. Had nothing to do whatsoever with the topic.
You plants get stressed and they hermie...and they don't have long enough time left in flower to full mature the seeds...so you see what you saw. Only explanation. Tighten your grow up and I bet all that stops.
