If any Strain can be Crossed with an Auto

why isnt there more auto strains?
is it because some are not stable(not good plants)?
is it also because you need to breed them for generations to get a stable offspring

I think it also has to do with the relative demand for auto strains and the fact that ruderalis (autoflowering ancestor) is basically ditch weed, so you're constantly flirting with low potency when messing with ruderalis. Also, these autoflowers tend to be limited in their yield. Also, all crosses with ruderalis will not have the autoflowering trait. I think the autoflower trait is desirable in certain scenarios and people will continue to work with ruderalis until they get more killer strains with it.

kamut said:

I think it also has to do with the relative demand for auto strains and the fact that ruderalis (autoflowering ancestor) is basically ditch weed, so you're constantly flirting with low potency when messing with ruderalis. Also, these autoflowers tend to be limited in their yield. Also, all crosses with ruderalis will not have the autoflowering trait. I think the autoflower trait is desirable in certain scenarios and people will continue to work with ruderalis until they get more killer strains with it.

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Ditto. Ruderalis is some serious shwag. Most people do not find this desirable. It is a niche market for auto flower, typically people with size restrains, or less serious growers/consumers. I would never grow one myself for that reason. As far as I'm concerned there is not good ruderalis strains.

dank smoker420 said:

why isnt there more auto strains?
is it because some are not stable(not good plants)?
is it also because you need to breed them for generations to get a stable offspring

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There are plenty of commercially available normal photoperiod strains that are a. not genetically stable, and b. not that high quality. You have to breed ANY strain for many generations to come up with something stable. So while all these things are true, I don't think they themselves are the limiting factor for autoflower strain selection.

I believe that proper breeding should be able to create stable autoflowering lines that also have other desirable traits like potency, flavor, etc. The fact that you are starting out with relatively non-desirable ruderalis genetics makes it harder to select for these traits, but it should still be possible, given enough crossing and selection.

One real problem is that good breeding of ANY strain is highly labor intensive, and takes a long time. You have to grow a LOT of plants to find the ones that have the traits you like. Then you have to cross and backcross them for multiple generations (at least 5 and 10 is better) to create a truly stable line. So at *best* you're looking at maybe a 2 year project involving dozens if not hundreds of plants to create a new quality stable line, and longer that that is possible.

Complicating this further, you can't readily preserve autoflower plant "parents" in vegetative state or clone them. That makes backcrossing difficult to impossible, further complicating the selection process necessary to create high quality stable lines. In short, its harder to breed autoflower strains than normal ones.

Also, autoflowering strains are relatively new to the market. Ten years ago there were maybe just a few, and they weren't all that great. Now there are at least a dozen strains out there by different breeders, with more coming into the market every year, and some of them being fairly decent. So the premise of the question is a bit off. I think with more and more time passing, number and quality of commercially available autoflower strains will continue to improve.

To expand on what's already been said, another big reason for the limited variety of autoflowering strains is just low demand for them.

By their nature autoflowering strains offer low yields and so right there, that's a major turnoff for most growers.

As a niche product, autoflower strains are really only of interest to people who want to grow stealthily, or harvest outdoors outside of the normal Sept/Oct maturity window.

For the typical indoor grower who can grow bigger higher-yielding plants, top/train them, and completely control the lighting, these autoflowers have little value. The fact that the autoflowers can't be kept as mother plants for cloning and must be propagated by seeds is also a big negative for many indoor growers.

dank smoker420 said:

why isnt there more auto strains?
is it because some are not stable(not good plants)?
is it also because you need to breed them for generations to get a stable offspring

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1. Right now there is 17 pages of autoflower seeds on The Attitude, if you go to there seed finder and just hit autoflower and that's not all of then (there is like 250 strains) and many more out there other places...

2. 2-3 years ago there were some breeders that had questionable seeds (not autoflowering, ect.) but now80-90% of them are as stable as a living thing can be...

3. This is the reason many breeders are just now releasing auto strains.. There were a few breeders that got on board with autos many years ago, now a lot more are making auto seeds it just took them until now to get them ready for market...
Take me for example, I am doing a project Subcool's Jack The Ripper x my auto (Russian Rocket Fuel x Purple Jems(green pheno) but I know it will take me 2-3 years to get it stable. Its a lot of work but I enjoy playing with them...



and as a side note to a few of the things I have seen on here about size/yield not to be a ass but some of you have no, zero, ziltch, nada damn clue what you are talking about... per plant yes there smaller but weight per square foot over any given time autos will out produce hands down...just as with my JTR in the time it took to veg I have grown 1 1/2 grows of my autos and when she is done(in 3-4weeks) I will have another harvest of autos and be 1/2 way done with another...and at a gram+ a watt...

i completely agree with u. autos are the future of pot growing if u are into growing from seed. so many advantages to autos compared to the normal photoperiod plants. alot of ppl on here are misinformed about autos. the only way to know them is to grow them.

Scyntra said:

1
and as a side note to a few of the things I have seen on here about size/yield not to be a ass but some of you have no, zero, ziltch, nada damn clue what you are talking about... per plant yes there smaller but weight per square foot over any given time autos will out produce hands down...just as with my JTR in the time it took to veg I have grown 1 1/2 grows of my autos and when she is done(in 3-4weeks) I will have another harvest of autos and be 1/2 way done with another...and at a gram+ a watt...

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With due respect, I stand by my statement that most growers (and that means most of the people ordering seeds from the like of Attitude seed bank, etc) simply aren't interested in low per-plant yield plants.

Instead of small yield, small stature, high number, high turnover plants (ie sea of green type growing), most want to grow a small number of bigger plants with a high yield per plant. Now, maybe they ought to be interested in autos for the yield reason you suggest, but that's a different issue. Legal plant count limits, and simple maintenance factors play a role here.
Also, it might be "chicken and egg" but variety and quality still aren't the same with autoflowers.

In general, autos produce more bud per light bulb watt simply because they can be lit up to 24 hours per day, vs the typical 12-14 hours for ordinary flowering plants. So per month of flowering, each auto can pack on more bud mass under the same lamps in the same space. But autos aren't any more energy efficient, in the sense that they don't really produce more bud per kilowatt-hour of energy usage. You're not going to grow your buds any cheaper using autos.

I'm also not entirely convinced that autos are more space efficient than classical sea of green gardening using large numbers of rooted clones.

In general, autos don't like transplanting, and from germinated seeds, you still need at least 3 weeks of seedling type growth before they start to flower. Unless you're using feminized auto seeds, you'll then have to cull out males, meaning you'd have to start with potentially twice the number of seeds as plants you'd ultimately want to keep. Meanwhile, rooted photoperiod clones (which can be started in a relatively small space and are amenable to transplant) will start flowering literally as soon as you plant them into 12-12, and you can do this with ANY photoperiod strain you like.

Assuming you planted the two side by side, by the time your female autoflowers have just started to flower under 24-0 lighting, the 12-12 photoperiod clones have already been flowering for three full weeks. At that rate, it would take until week six before the clones and autoflowers have received the same number of hours of light during active flowering time. If harvest were at week 7 or 8, the autos only get the added benefit of 24 hour lighting for another 1-2 weeks over the conventional photoperiod clones before harvest. That's not all that much of an advantage, and you have to weight it against the need to acquire and start from seeds, cull males, etc.

Meanwhile, some people believe that dark time is necessary for plants to achieve max potency. If you believe this, you might want to flower your autos under 20-0. Conversely you might want to flower your photoperiod clones under 14-10 for max bud production. Under that comparison, the autos and clones don't achieve flowering light parity until the end of week 8. . .now you're already at harvest time. If your autos don't flower until week 4, you're at harvest before they "catch up" to the clones.

Anyway, you can tweak the assumptions a bit here in terms of hours of lighting, germination times, harvest times, etc, but I can tell you as a matter of practice, none of the commercial breeders I'm aware of are using autoflower strains. If there really were a significant yield advantage, you'd think at least some of them would be.

Again, being able to keep "mother" plants and work from clones is a huge advantage in terms of ensuring continuity of growing, line stability, and increasing flexibility. Legal restrictions as well as labor intensity have turned most of the big growers away from the high-number of small plants "SOG" type grow models.

DoctorSmoke said:

i completely agree with u. autos are the future of pot growing if u are into growing from seed. so many advantages to autos compared to the normal photoperiod plants. alot of ppl on here are misinformed about autos. the only way to know them is to grow them.

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Seed for seed, they'll give you a faster and potentially bigger yield than a conventional plant in a similar small space, but I think those are the only real advantages for indoor growing.

Outdoors is a different story, since autos offer two big advantages: short height for stealth, and the ability to relatively quick harvests over a much wider time of year.

Back on indoor growing, again, even stipulating for the sake of argument that the quality of product is the same (which is questionable. . .it probably isn't) and that autos can yield more on a per square foot basis then regular plants, space isn't necessarily the limiting factor for most growers. If you're a medical grower, and you're working under legal plant count restrictions, then that has to be taken into consideration too, and the advantages of autos erode.

Consider that there are small growers out in CA and OR extracting 1-2 **POUNDS** per plant, per 3-4 month grow cycle indoors, using gigantic lights, big pots, high intensity nutrient regiments, and SCROG. This is a specific sort of regimen designed to maximize legal per-plant yield for medical growers.

If you wanted to replicate that sort of yield using autos, you'd literally need dozens of them, all started from seeds, and growing all at once. Although setting up the SCROG for big one plant grows is pretty labor intensive, once you've trained the plant into flowering, after that maintaining it is pretty simple. . .you've only got one plant to take care of!

Even apart from the plant-count legal issues, maintaining a mini sea-of-green of dozens of autos is much more labor intensive.

Jogro said:

With due respect, I stand by my statement that most growers (and that means most of the people ordering seeds from the like of Attitude seed bank, etc) simply aren't interested in low per-plant yield plants.

Instead of small yield, small stature, high number, high turnover plants (ie sea of green type growing), most want to grow a small number of bigger plants with a high yield per plant. Now, maybe they ought to be interested in autos for the yield reason you suggest, but that's a different issue. Legal plant count limits, and simple maintenance factors play a role here.
Also, it might be "chicken and egg" but variety and quality still aren't the same with autoflowers.

In general, autos produce more bud per light bulb watt simply because they can be lit up to 24 hours per day, vs the typical 12-14 hours for ordinary flowering plants. So per month of flowering, each auto can pack on more bud mass under the same lamps in the same space. But autos aren't any more energy efficient, in the sense that they don't really produce more bud per kilowatt-hour of energy usage. You're not going to grow your buds any cheaper using autos.

I'm also not entirely convinced that autos are more space efficient than classical sea of green gardening using large numbers of rooted clones.

In general, autos don't like transplanting, and from germinated seeds, you still need at least 3 weeks of seedling type growth before they start to flower. Unless you're using feminized auto seeds, you'll then have to cull out males, meaning you'd have to start with potentially twice the number of seeds as plants you'd ultimately want to keep. Meanwhile, rooted photoperiod clones (which can be started in a relatively small space and are amenable to transplant) will start flowering literally as soon as you plant them into 12-12, and you can do this with ANY photoperiod strain you like.

Assuming you planted the two side by side, by the time your female autoflowers have just started to flower under 24-0 lighting, the 12-12 photoperiod clones have already been flowering for three full weeks. At that rate, it would take until week six before the clones and autoflowers have received the same number of hours of light during active flowering time. If harvest were at week 7 or 8, the autos only get the added benefit of 24 hour lighting for another 1-2 weeks over the conventional photoperiod clones before harvest. That's not all that much of an advantage, and you have to weight it against the need to acquire and start from seeds, cull males, etc.

Meanwhile, some people believe that dark time is necessary for plants to achieve max potency. If you believe this, you might want to flower your autos under 20-0. Conversely you might want to flower your photoperiod clones under 14-10 for max bud production. Under that comparison, the autos and clones don't achieve flowering light parity until the end of week 8. . .now you're already at harvest time. If your autos don't flower until week 4, you're at harvest before they "catch up" to the clones.

Anyway, you can tweak the assumptions a bit here in terms of hours of lighting, germination times, harvest times, etc, but I can tell you as a matter of practice, none of the commercial breeders I'm aware of are using autoflower strains. If there really were a significant yield advantage, you'd think at least some of them would be.

Again, being able to keep "mother" plants and work from clones is a huge advantage in terms of ensuring continuity of growing, line stability, and increasing flexibility. Legal restrictions as well as labor intensity have turned most of the big growers away from the high-number of small plants "SOG" type grow models.

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oh I agree with you on many points.. and sure most people growing have plant # limits and such and want to grow monsters..
now in your comparison using less power in 12/12 clones vs 24/0 you also have to account for your mother/clone room in your power usage, I prefer a 20/4 myself to give them a rest..
now as far as comparing growth of 12/12 clones vs autos are you not going to count the 2 weeks of rooting the clones?? if not, don't count the 2-3 weeks the autos are vegging before they start to bud..lol..
transplanting autos are not really a problem if you use a deep pot to start they just keep on growing...I know some people say don't but I have never had any problems with any of my 3 auto strains transplanting, I use large plastic drink cups from McD's until sexing can start about 28 or so in 1 plastic tub and kill the males at 2 weeks by 3 there in there final pots...start a new batch at week 5 and by the time there 3 weeks old and sexed you harvest the 1st batch...I harvest 14 plants 1 to 1-1/2oz each every 5 weeks with one small box and one light can't do that with clones/mothers...

and sure mother plants open up a whole bunch of advantages for a grower but by the same token so do autos...I bet if you polled everyone on this site less then 30% keep a mother and clone..sure the bigger fish do, but most people are "closet" growers and don't..anyway enough rambling..

I think the biggest problem with autos is the yield aspect. If you are in a state or county with a relatively small number of plants allowed then you just cant get enough yield to justfy growing them.

bigv1976 said:

I think the biggest problem with autos is the yield aspect. If you are in a state or county with a relatively small number of plants allowed then you just cant get enough yield to justfy growing them.

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oh I agree there not for everyone thats for sure...

If you pick the right autos the potency is up there. Everyone around here (In a med state) says its better then anything they get anywhere else ( dispensary quality whatever that may be). Ive yet to have a complaint about any auto ive grown out. The amount of plants im allowed allows for me to keep a pretty stable supply while still having overages of some sort. I think they get a bad rap from a rough beginning in the market but have surpassed many expectations at this point. Some autos can really do some amazing stuff.

Scyntra said:

now in your comparison using less power in 12/12 clones vs 24/0 you also have to account for your mother/clone room in your power usage

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Well, to be clear, I didn't say you used less energy running clones 12/12. I said that even though autos finish faster, you don't save on energy because they use more hours of light per day.

Of course if you want to accurately tally your energy use, you have to include everything, including ventilation. In practice, a cloning table and a mother plant don't take much energy. Clones can be run literally 8 to a square foot under cheap low intensity fluorescent lighting, and a mother is just one plant that doesn't take much lighting or space either.

Ultimately, unless you happen to be growing in a place where energy is astronomically expensive, I don't think these small differences will matter. Even if autos did take a little more energy per gram, if they provided a higher yield per unit time or per square foot, or some other advantage, it would probably be worth it.

now as far as comparing growth of 12/12 clones vs autos are you not going to count the 2 weeks of rooting the clones??

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Its a good question, and no you don't count the time necessary to root the clones (or the time necessary to veg the mother!).

You don't because the clones are rooting while your main crop is growing, and therefore they don't add any extra calendar time to the grow cycle. The clones for crop two are ready to go into flowering the second you make space in the grow area after harvesting crop one.

if not, don't count the 2-3 weeks the autos are vegging before they start to bud..lol..

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You have to count that time if (and only if) it adds to the calendar days of the grow cycle. If you're running from seeds at the beginning of each grow cycle, then you'd have to count it.

Alternatively, if you didn't mind transplanting them, you could start your seeds three weeks before harvest in a separate "seedling table" somewhat like a cloning area. The seed table would have to be a little larger than a comparable cloning area, since you'd have to accommodate for true vegetative growth and a certain percentage of male seedlings to be culled later. Plus the lighting would have to be more intense. But the general idea would be the same. Anyway, right after your main crop was harvested, the seedlings would be ready to move into the flowering area, and would themselves be ready in only five weeks.

5 weeks is probably about as rapid a turnaround as you can get growing the plant. I think the fastest conventional strains still take about 6-7 weeks.

transplanting autos are not really a problem if you use a deep pot to start they just keep on growing...I know some people say don't but I have never had any problems with any of my 3 auto strains transplanting, I use large plastic drink cups from McD's until sexing can start about 28 or so in 1 plastic tub and kill the males at 2 weeks by 3 there in there final pots...start a new batch at week 5 and by the time there 3 weeks old and sexed you harvest the 1st batch...I harvest 14 plants 1 to 1-1/2oz each every 5 weeks with one small box and one light can't do that with clones/mothers...

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So you basically are doing what I described above, only your "seed table" is under the same light as the main grow? Pretty slick. . .that's worth a rep.

Mind if I ask a few questions about your setup?
-What sort of lighting are you using for your 14 plants and seedlings, and how big is the overall grow space (height too)?
-What strains do you like for this? Why do you like them? How tall do they get at harvest? What's the final pot size?
-Are there any other auto strains have you tried that you didn't like? Why didn't you like them?

and sure mother plants open up a whole bunch of advantages for a grower but by the same token so do autos...I bet if you polled everyone on this site less then 30% keep a mother and clone..sure the bigger fish do, but most people are "closet" growers and don't..anyway enough rambling..

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It depends mostly on what you're trying to do.

Mother/clone setups are really more suited for serious/pro grow ups where you want to grow large numbers of the same strain again and again. As you say, I don't think most small "personal use" closet/cabinet type growers are interested in that. They're also useful for maintaining "elite" lines where seeds are unavailable.

I think you've convinced me if you're trying to maximize absolute yield per unit time from a small space, you've basically done that with your autoflower sea-of-green. I guess the disadvantages to this sort of setup are that its labor intensive and you're going to burn through an awful lot of seeds.

Presumably you make your own seeds, so that's not that big of a deal. If you wanted to, you could probably devise an automated watering system or run hydroponically to reduce the hand labor,, though maybe watering 14 tiny plants every 2nd or 3rd day isn't that big of a deal.

With a slightly longer cycle time, comparing to a small sea of green with clones is really going to come down to quality and yield per plant. Even if autos can yield more product in the same time, they'd also have to be better quality to be an unequivocal winner.

ThatGuy113 said:

If you pick the right autos the potency is up there. Everyone around here (In a med state) says its better then anything they get anywhere else ( dispensary quality whatever that may be). Ive yet to have a complaint about any auto ive grown out. The amount of plants im allowed allows for me to keep a pretty stable supply while still having overages of some sort. I think they get a bad rap from a rough beginning in the market but have surpassed many expectations at this point. Some autos can really do some amazing stuff.

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If you don't mind my asking, which auto strains are you growing that your peers say are better than the stuff at the dispensaries?

Which ones are the most potent or otherwise "amazing"?

Well at least from what ive grown out.... Barneys Farm Pineapple Express and Flower Power are both favorites of mine for smell and affect. The Fast Bud # 2 buds were of a nice head high. Could it be since i am not growing for quantity my quality is better then whats out their on the market? Maybe but that doesn't discount the fact that its still better then whats around for most people. Living in a college town theirs all sorts of meds brought in by the student population and others from all over the state so the local med community gets a full spectrum to compare to around here. Im not saying my buds the bomb diggity and can blow anything else out the water but in my insecure state of mind Im always asking about it and being told by people that everyone that came in contact with my stuff loved it and wanted to know where they could get some more. Its surprised the hell out of me and Ive also heard many caregivers just running autos on a bigger level and never having ANY complaints from patients about quality affect and so on.

Jogro said:

Mind if I ask a few questions about your setup?
-What sort of lighting are you using for your 14 plants and seedlings, and how big is the overall grow space (height too)?
-What strains do you like for this? Why do you like them? How tall do they get at harvest? What's the final pot size?
-Are there any other auto strains have you tried that you didn't like? Why didn't you like them?

I think you've convinced me if you're trying to maximize absolute yield per unit time from a small space, you've basically done that with your autoflower sea-of-green. I guess the disadvantages to this sort of setup are that its labor intensive and you're going to burn through an awful lot of seeds.

Presumably you make your own seeds, so that's not that big of a deal. If you wanted to, you could probably devise an automated watering system or run hydroponically to reduce the hand labor,, though maybe watering 14 tiny plants every 2nd or 3rd day isn't that big of a deal.

With a slightly longer cycle time, comparing to a small sea of green with clones is really going to come down to quality and yield per plant. Even if autos can yield more product in the same time, they'd also have to be better quality to be an unequivocal winner.

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my set up is about as simple as a grow can be... 2'x5'x 4.5' tall box with a 400HPS in a homemade cooltube, I use 4' of the length of the box for my 14 plants and the last foot for a fan and babys.. although I'm in the making of a baby box, so I can put 3 more in bud for 17 total... I use 2 gal pots with subcools supersoil and just give water all the way through... as far as watering I have the pots in plastic tubs and I rotate the plants everyday so in the process I water as needed every 2-3 days on water day takes 15min at most...
I started with Russian Rocket Fuel and Mossy's Purple Jems 10 pack of each...got 8RRF-5 girls and 3 boys.. from the purple jems I got 6 girls and 2 were the green pheno the rest purple..
made a few hundred RRF seeds and a few hundred RRFxPJ (both green and purple) did not like the purple cross but love the green pheno cross. up to F3 so far and it great so far.. the RRF is also a really good auto, both get about 20-24" tall and have 1-1 1/2 oz each...as far as potency I have never had any complants..lol..

here's a few pics.. last 2 are Jack the Ripper thats prego with RRFx Purple Jems seeds..my next project..

That's pretty cool.

Just for consideration, if you're growing 14 plants in a row with 5 week harvests and separate babies all under 20-0 lighting, you could pretty easily switch to a continuous harvest setup. Just imagine you're growing 15 plants (instead of 14), in 5 rows of three. Now, they don't necessarily have to be in separate rows of three, but for discussion purposes this makes it easier to understand the process.

Every week you plant 6-8 new seeds (to ensure three females), transplant the three oldest (3 wk old) female seedlings from the nursery area into soil in the grow area, move every row of three plants in the grow area over one "slot" down the assembly line, then harvest the three plants on the end.

Advantage here is a continuous supply and ability to break the labor into smaller weekly chunks, which might be easier to schedule; disadvantage is less economy of scale with labor.

yea Jogro I tryed the 3-4 at a time and found it a little more time consuming on a weekly bases. I find its easier to do them all on 1 day as far as transplanting/planting. more work on 1 day vs more work every week..

if your growing for you own personal use then autos are the way to go (IMO and IMO only) as the turn around is faster, so talking time vs yeild it dont stack up too bad really.... and whats more you can get far more choice of strenth, flavour, with the benefit of small (lower profile, easyier to house) plants .....

i'm just starting 1 critical jack auto ... 21% thc (if you turn your nose up to that you need crack not weed)...

as i say IMO ... but thats what counts in my mind

My first grow was an auto, it was tough (I nute burned it quite badly towards the end of flower), it was easy (just add light, water and nutrients) and the smoke is up there with the best I've ever had, potency is a fair bit stronger than your average bag from a dealer.



I just invested in new equipment for round 2 of the same, going to do a perpetual harvest in ONE cab, couldnt do that with a photo strain