Why I don't believe in f-cking with the sexuality of cannabis

[CharlesU Farley]

I don't care how outstanding my pistillate plants are, the staminate plants always bring something to the mix the pistillate plants just don't possess:

An intensity and a vigor that is quite unique.

If you don't have the patience and skill to develop cannabis without chemical manipulation of sexuality, by understanding what _both_ sexes contribute to the combination, should you really consider yourself a _breeder_?

This:

could not have been produced without this:

While I totally understand that gender bending, chemical manipulation is necessary for today's immediate gratification crowd, I'm afraid that eventually (through either some viroid or perpetual hermaphroditic process) chemically f-cking with the sexuality of cannabis will eventually, quite literally, f-ck us in the ass.

Hey, I'm a dinosaur, what do you expect?

 

[Caveman4.20]

Is a chemically induced hermaphrodite = stress induced hermaphrodite? Great pics by the way!

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Is a chemically induced hermaphrodite = stress induced hermaphrodite? Great pics by the way!

To me, chemical or stress produces the same by-product, a plant more likely to go hermaphrodite.

 

[goingrey]

The reward from fem seeds takes just as long to get as as from regs, I don't think it's fair to say they are for the immediate gratification crowd. It's just a case of making the odds more in your favor, whether you are a grower for flower, or a breeder looking for certain phenos of females. No need to use electricity, fertilizer, anything, on the males.. That said, when I've made seeds I've always used real males, not because I believe they will produce better/healthier offspring, but because it's easier. No need to spray and pray that it reverses and at the right time and so on. If anything, the real males are more suited for my modern man demand for convenience.

 

[Legalcdn]

I do see the benefits creating FEM seeds if you love the plant you have and there are no more males. Having said that, I agree fully with goingrey. Lots of magic in the males and it is super easy to ID males in pre-flower.

 

[acespicoli]

Feminizing a plant is the most severe inbreeding bottle neck that exists, for better or worse

True breeding, also known as pure breeding or straight breeding,
is when an organism consistently passes down a specific trait to its offspring. This means that the organism is homozygous for every gene related to that trait, and any crosses between true-breeding organisms will result in offspring with the same phenotype. For example, if you cross a true-breeding purple plant with itself, the offspring will always be purple.

Q: How many female plants out of 200 are the apex of spectacular ? A: One (On Average)
I have the documentation to support that statement...

I know many people who will limit themselves to clone only growing of proven cultivars

Cultivar

Description​

A cultivar is a kind of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and which retains those traits when propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture, or carefully controlled seed production.

If you lose that cutting ... seed is a great backup (would you keep hermi's in there?)

Genetic drift, also known as random genetic drift,
is the random change in the frequency of gene variants in a population over generations.
It's caused by "sampling error"
when alleles are selected for the next generation from the current generation's gene pool.

Sampling error occurs when
a sample drawn from a population deviates somewhat from that true population.

Best>>>

 

[CharlesU Farley]

I do see the benefits creating FEM seeds if you love the plant you have and there are no more males. Having said that, I agree fully with goingrey. Lots of magic in the males and it is super easy to ID males in pre-flower.

I completely understand if you've got one _really_ special plant, why you'd want to try it. I know with Northern Lights #5, Nevil tried everything he could to feminize one very special plant. He was unable to and felt that there are certain plants that just are so stable they will not go hermaphroditic, regardless of the environment or chemicals applied.

It just seems like everyone these days wants to take the easy way out and not actually _work_ with the plants, for _several_ generations, to develop something really special.

 

[Lester Beans]

Or they just want to grow some cannabis. There are gazillions of growers who have no interest in making seeds or breeding. Feminized seeds saves them time and space.

Also I'd love to see some evidence that feminized seeds are in any way inferior to regular seeds. That feminized seeds are more prone to hermies myth is directly from the interwebs and bro science.

I have only had a few plants hermies in my day and they were both regular and fem seeds. Unstable cross equals hermie whether it is reg or fem seed.

 

[Ca++]

The notion things used to be better, and we are doing things wrong, doesn't have any supporting evidence. In fact, the things we let go long ago, we let go for good reason. Nobody likes the DEA, but they have the numbers from testing over the years. Things used to be 2% and now they are 20%. That's hard to white wash over.

Any decent breeding program is using regs, but producing fem's. The fem's are not for breeding with, they are for making a growers life easier. Truth is though, sometimes any generation of seeds can chuck a curve ball. Them fems will sometimes offer something that can't be ignored. Just as the reg's do. Then selfing might be the best reproduction. Though usually a decent male is soon used to deviate the line towards the next new thing. That's how to get vigor into things. The selfed stuff will fade away in a few years, and as the overall testing of green shows, the net result is us moving forward. Or we wouldn't be buying the stuff. Ultimately the buyers decide what will stay in the gene pool.

I have no problem with using fems, and don't see any evidence they are effecting our gene pool negatively. Yes, the text book does explain things that could go wrong. It's just not working against the greater good though.

 

[Ca++]

Or they just want to grow some cannabis. There are gazillions of growers who have no interest in making seeds or breeding. Feminized seeds saves them time and space.

Also I'd love to see some evidence that feminized seeds are in any way inferior to regular seeds. That feminized seeds are more prone to hermies myth is directly from the interwebs and bro science.

I have only had a few plants hermies in my day and they were both regular and fem seeds. Unstable cross equals hermie whether it is reg or fem seed.

Unfortunately, some breeders did think that getting pollen by stressing girls, was how to make female seed. So were through ignorance, selecting plants that had hermed as their only breeding stock. This happened for a few years. Where really hard to turn fems, that we would want, were not making the selection.
Today, it's the girls that resist turning the most, that are the better choice for herm free fem breeding. The ones that need a whole barrage of treatments, before they turn.

 

[Hiddenjems]

The notion things used to be better, and we are doing things wrong, doesn't have any supporting evidence. In fact, the things we let go long ago, we let go for good reason. Nobody likes the DEA, but they have the numbers from testing over the years. Things used to be 2% and now they are 20%. That's hard to white wash over.

Any decent breeding program is using regs, but producing fem's. The fem's are not for breeding with, they are for making a growers life easier. Truth is though, sometimes any generation of seeds can chuck a curve ball. Them fems will sometimes offer something that can't be ignored. Just as the reg's do. Then selfing might be the best reproduction. Though usually a decent male is soon used to deviate the line towards the next new thing. That's how to get vigor into things. The selfed stuff will fade away in a few years, and as the overall testing of green shows, the net result is us moving forward. Or we wouldn't be buying the stuff. Ultimately the buyers decide what will stay in the gene pool.

I have no problem with using fems, and don't see any evidence they are effecting our gene pool negatively. Yes, the text book does explain things that could go wrong. It's just not working against the greater good though.

The average potency has risen, but the quality of the high from the most potent examples has gone downhill. Quality of high isn’t selected for anymore, lab numbers are.

 

[Lester Beans]

Unfortunately, some breeders did think that getting pollen by stressing girls, was how to make female seed. So were through ignorance, selecting plants that had hermed as their only breeding stock. This happened for a few years. Where really hard to turn fems, that we would want, were not making the selection.
Today, it's the girls that resist turning the most, that are the better choice for herm free fem breeding. The ones that need a whole barrage of treatments, before they turn.

I definitely made my first feminized seeds via rhodalization. I did not see hermaphrodite plants in the progeny. The parent genetics were stable and the flowering plant was let go nearly 16 weeks to finally get some male flowers to donate some pollen.

Cherry Pie, most Thai, GSC to name a few lines, are known to be sexually unstable therefore no matter how you make seeds the results will more than likely be unstable as well. It may be a random nanner on 1 plant in a 100 or widely spread..who knows

Start with stable parents and it doesn't matter how you make your seeds the outcome has a far greater chance of being stable than a hybrid based on hinkey genetics.

Such a fascinating plant.

 

[hector_100]

I definitely made my first feminized seeds via rhodalization. I did not see hermaphrodite plants in the progeny. The parent genetics were stable and the flowering plant was let go nearly 16 weeks to finally get some male flowers to donate some pollen.

Cherry Pie, most Thai, GSC to name a few lines, are known to be sexually unstable therefore no matter how you make seeds the results will more than likely be unstable as well. It may be a random nanner on 1 plant in a 100 or widely spread..who knows

Start with stable parents and it doesn't matter how you make your seeds the outcome has a far greater chance of being stable than a hybrid based on hinkey genetics.

Such a fascinating plant.

would you say it's still worth doing rhodalization when making fems seed or it's better to go down the colodial silver route?

 

[Lester Beans]

Oh for sure the spray. Back when I did that I had never heard of any kind of sprays or silver. Early 90's mind you. The spray will be much more predictable. Make sure to spray more than one plant to have a better shot a reversal.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

Or they just want to grow some cannabis. There are gazillions of growers who have no interest in making seeds or breeding. Feminized seeds saves them time and space.

Also I'd love to see some evidence that feminized seeds are in any way inferior to regular seeds. That feminized seeds are more prone to hermies myth is directly from the interwebs and bro science.

I have only had a few plants hermies in my day and they were both regular and fem seeds. Unstable cross equals hermie whether it is reg or fem seed.

Excellent points! I totally understand growers wanting to purchase feminized seeds and that most have no interest in developing cannabis. It's just that I see many growers here on this forum discussing and performing chemical manipulation of sexuality when they've only got a couple of years of experience actually growing cannabis. Seems like half the growers are trying to produce hermie seeds and the other half are freaking out thinking they've got them.


I'm not aware of any studies that have been done regarding hermaphroditic tendencies with feminized seeds. However, I've been monitoring internet forums on cannabis since pre-web days and back in the '90s , hermies were not near the issue they are now. Totally anecdotal evidence for sure, but I still get the nagging feeling that it's going to end up biting cannabis development progress directly in the ass.

But what the hell do I know??? Hell, even Shanti of Mr Nice seeds is selling femmed seeds to _numerous_ other seed companies now.

Good post!

 

[Orange's Greenhouse]

Any decent breeding program is using regs, but producing fem's. The fem's are not for breeding with, they are for making a growers life easier.

They also make a breeders life easier. Instead of needing two stable lines you can inbreed a single plant to stabilize it. It's quicker and at the same time you're selecting for a tendency to be able to be femmed. You don't want to remove that genetic potential from a new line and then be stuck with a nice plant that can't be sold.
Jeremy Plumb of Pruf Cultivars is using fems.

I'm not sure if the spraying silver is much different than general stress? It elicits ethylene production so if the breeders had any sense they would switch more benign treatments to get that ethylene response. No reason to poison yourself for this.

 

[dogzter]

No fems no selfing which means no outside genetics at this point sadly.

 

[WHIPEDMEAT]

would you say it's still worth doing rhodalization when making fems seed or it's better to go down the colodial silver route?

but first better to stress test and see how easy or hard to make herm the canditate, and use the silver on the most stable ones

 

[Ca++]

They also make a breeders life easier. Instead of needing two stable lines you can inbreed a single plant to stabilize it. It's quicker and at the same time you're selecting for a tendency to be able to be femmed. You don't want to remove that genetic potential from a new line and then be stuck with a nice plant that can't be sold.
Jeremy Plumb of Pruf Cultivars is using fems.

I'm not sure if the spraying silver is much different than general stress? It elicits ethylene production so if the breeders had any sense they would switch more benign treatments to get that ethylene response. No reason to poison yourself for this.

I thought the silver blocked the ethylene receptors. These are what trigger flowering, and in blocking them, we take that option away.
Other methods are stress related. Generally telling a plant it's going to die before seeding, if it doesn't do so itself. Many plants, faced with extinction, will produce some pollen themselves. Cannabis was very possibly better at this in the past. We have been selecting that trait out though.

 

[mudballs]

I think it stops the ethylene production.not receptor blocking