Chuckers paradise......

[JohnGlennsGarden]

Great, thanks for the pic, the tin foil catcher is a great idea. This seems totally do-able. You don't even have them under a 12/12, just ambient windowsill light, huh? I guess once they start to flower in the garden, they'll continue with it inside won't they?

Another follow-up question. When the pollen begins to drop on that tin foil, does it need to be used ASAP? I know moisture will neutralize pollen, so I'm guessing yes.

Thanks for your responses @JohnGlennsGarden and @colocowboy

Much obliged.

You're welcome. South facing window seems to be sufficient for my needs.
I pretty much use it as it drops, every couple days.

 

[MInewgrow]

Couple shots of my welchie had to chop it a week early ended up having a light leak and getting some seeds. Boooo it’s personal for me so whatever. First indoor so just got to keep learning and fixing my fuck ups.

 

[GrowRijt]

Hi all-

I posted this is another thread and got some replies, but thought I'd post it here, since this is a 'chuckers' thread, and chucking is what I'll be doing. This thread seems to be a wealth of information. Admittedly, I haven't waded through too many pages, I'm aware that there is probably info about my question already posted. So be it. Thanks.

I'm an outdoor gardener only. Plants are starting to show sex this week. Getting excited for my plans (below).

My plan, once a few choice males have been identified (EKI Bird and Amnesia Hashplant probably), is to trim them to just a few lower branches and let them adjust for a few days in the garden. Then dig them up, put in smallish pots and bring inside to a makeshift 'flower room' where I will immediately induce 12/12. I will collect and freeze pollen till later in the season to do select branch pollination on all varieties in the garden. Anyone do it this way? Or would it be better to time my indoor 12/12 to coincide with flower time of females to avoid freezing pollen (which is risky?) I know taking clones of my chosen males to flower inside is also an option, but I'm a rookie at cloning cannabis (can do tomatoes fine though).


I love this time of year.

I essentially do a variation of this each year. I usually take the tops and whatever look like it will have some big clusters. Top 1/3 of the male maybe, and flower that in a separate area in a cup of water. I don’t have to be nice to it or take it to dinner. I just need that nut powder.

If the male seems really sweet I clone it. If it reveges without issue it is probably a keeper.
I also do not generally freeze my pollen. Outdoors the male start dumping ahead of female flower readiness. So by the time my males are giving me my baby batter I can store it dry with a desiccant pack in a container and use it in a couple weeks time.

 

[klyphman]

I can store it dry with a desiccant pack in a container and use it in a couple weeks time.

Another great response, thanks GrowRijt. You store it in the fridge with the desiccant pack in a tighly sealed glass jar I assume?

 

[thenotsoesoteric]

Another great response, thanks GrowRijt. You store it in the fridge with the desiccant pack in a tighly sealed glass jar I assume?

That is what I do.

 

[18six50]

I essentially do a variation of this each year. I usually take the tops and whatever look like it will have some big clusters. Top 1/3 of the male maybe, and flower that in a separate area in a cup of water. I don’t have to be nice to it or take it to dinner. I just need that nut powder.

If the male seems really sweet I clone it. If it reveges without issue it is probably a keeper.
I also do not generally freeze my pollen. Outdoors the male start dumping ahead of female flower readiness. So by the time my males are giving me my baby batter I can store it dry with a desiccant pack in a container and use it in a couple weeks time.

I cut the male back over and over leaving only one or two "flowering" sites, this delays them some too. I put a clear plastic bag over the male flowers just before they open up. It's more than enough pollen collected that way, once they have dumped into the bag, just snip it off and away you go. I've screwed this up a few times but usually it works out one way or another. I've left a full flowering male that just towered over a whole garden before and let it open pollinate too, not exactly on purpose. I put the male (SK#1) in on purpose, I just didn't get to go back and cut it down and bag it like I usually do. I was out of state and didn't get back in time, it was a trip though, seeing how it turned out. Talk about an abundance of seeds but they were all killer and kind of changed the grow scene, I was like Johnny Weedseed that year.

 

[raggyb]

I'm sitting here using my old tray to roll seeds down as I tip the tray up and wondering how many new pot heads, that don't chuck, have never had this experience, that is so common to us Chuckers and old smokers. Just a funny thought because back in the day everyone had a tray or used a magazine or something, but we all did it, but how many young smokers never see a seed at all these days? They probably see an old fashioned rolling tray and wonder why the sides are tall and sloped like that.

like using the good ole double album cover such as Physical Graffiti

 

[Michael Huntherz]

like using the good ole double album cover such as Physical Graffiti

I use a grinder and an Ultimate regulation flying disc, Discraft Ultrastar 175g. I use a business card or the flap on the pack of papers to line it up, then scoop it with the paper itself, roll and lick. Hand roller for life!

Back in my twenties I used to roll and smoke a J on the high speed lift chair during rain and 20+mph wind. Now I roll ‘em in advance, like an adult.

Frisbees make great pot trays.

 

[Michael Huntherz]

And when it comes to plant incest, it's true that if you cross and recross strains they lose vigor. The most vigorous plants are hybrids. Hybrid vigor, it's called and I think the less related the parents the more vigorous the offspring will be. That's why some people think that we will have to go back to introducing more landraces strains to try and get some of the vigor back. But honestly I'm not noticing lack of vigor in these well bred polyhybrids. I can say this for a fact, I lost vigor in my own strain when I didn't add in new strains to the mix every so often. That could have been my poor breeding but I don't think so. I had plenty of plants to choose from. I think you just lose something by breeding too far down the same line.

Introducing new genetics into a strain line gives it a shot in the arm and probably the less related the better.

I apologize in advance if this upsets you. I don’t intend to bust your balls so much as help you reach a deeper understanding.

That’s not really how selective line breeding works. and your use of the word hybrid is imprecise. There really is no such thing as hybrid cannabis, according to the modern scientific literature. I recommend studying the history of corn breeding to learn a lot more about selective breeding. The history of corn is fascinating. See my signature to learn why ‘hybrids’ don’t really exist in Cannabis. (As far as we know, yet.) Cannabis indica doesn’t really exist as a species, according to molecular DNA studies. Everything is a variety of Cannabis sativa. Basically all wild Cannabis populations have been selectively bred and/or relocated from other regions at some point in history and before it. People have been breeding this plant selectively for well over a thousand years, there’s almost no such thing as a truly pure landrace according to molecular genome studies of the plant to date.

I am sure you had plenty of plants to choose from, and your breeding efforts were probably on point, but they can’t all be bangers.

Inbred seeds feed a lot of the world today as a result of the “green revolution” of the 50s and 60s. Cannabis agriculture is just agriculture, I believe we can all learn a lot by studying mainstream ag history.

I admit I am a hard-to-tolerate nerdcore crusader on this topic right now. It is because I think it is really important, though it probably doesn’t make me less annoying to know it.

Outcrossing can be good and provide vigor to the line, no argument there, but when it comes to seed plants, incest is best! (To a point)

Everything is nuanced.

 

[18six50]

I apologize in advance if this upsets you. I don’t intend to bust your balls so much as help you reach a deeper understanding.

That’s not really how selective line breeding works. and your use of the word hybrid is imprecise. There really is no such thing as hybrid cannabis, according to the modern scientific literature. I recommend studying the history of corn breeding to learn a lot more about selective breeding. The history of corn is fascinating. See my signature to learn why ‘hybrids’ don’t really exist in Cannabis. (As far as we know, yet.) Cannabis indica doesn’t really exist as a species, according to molecular DNA studies. Everything is a variety of Cannabis sativa. Basically all wild Cannabis populations have been selectively bred and/or relocated from other regions at some point in history and before it. People have been breeding this plant selectively for well over a thousand years, there’s almost no such thing as a truly pure landrace according to molecular genome studies of the plant to date.

I am sure you had plenty of plants to choose from, and your breeding efforts were probably on point, but they can’t all be bangers.

Inbred seeds feed a lot of the world today as a result of the “green revolution” of the 50s and 60s. Cannabis agriculture is just agriculture, I believe we can all learn a lot by studying mainstream ag history.

I admit I am a hard-to-tolerate nerdcore crusader on this topic right now. It is because I think it is really important, though it probably doesn’t make me less annoying to know it.

Outcrossing can be good and provide vigor to the line, no argument there, but when it comes to seed plants, incest is best! (To a point)

Everything is nuanced.

I'd buy that if anyone was winning cup after cup with in-line breeding, they aren't though. The people who win cup after cup are breeding polyhybrids or call them whatever you want, if the term isn't correct it doesn't really matter, A rose by any other name is still a rose. When you are crossing one landrace with another landrace it's "Something" right? So what is the correct term? IDK does it matter? The effects are the same.

What I have not seen happen is anyone winning with a true landrace that they have bred using in-line breeding. I could be wrong but someone would have to prove it to me by showing they get consistent winners. If in-line breeding is the way to go, where are the winners? Why are the best producing and most resinous and best tasting plants that win all the cups always what I call polyhybrids?

As for the green revolution of the 50's and 60's that again was what I call hybrids or polybybrids. Nevils SK#1 is case in point. Three strains crossed into one. Durban poison is the one landrace strain that has stuck around a long time but again, who's winning cups with Durban? They aren't but they sure win a lot of cups by using Durban as part of a polyhybrid cross. And as great as the original SK#1 was it's been left in the dust by newer crosses that moved further away from landrace strains into even more crazy crosses.

And yes I agree my breeding might not have been perfect but apparently the same is true of everyone because nobody is winning cups with in-line breeding that I know of.

Now if you are talking about creating a strain that is Commercial and works better because it's Uniform then sure that can be accomplished by in-line breeding. My strain would get far more stable and consistent yeilds when I had interbred. I've take a line to F16 how many of you can say the same? Yes they might have been great for commercial growers but like I said, they were not as potent or as vigorous and no matter how much I though I could get that potency and vigor to improve it never did. I'd cross F2 and F3's with F15and so forth and so on. The genenics of an in-line strain doesn't magically improve by breeding it over and over, all it does is become more stable and uniform. So OK, if you are breeding for a commercial grower looking for consistent yeilds and uniformity great. All the plants will be the same, you can use the same fertilizer on them, they will grow to the same height under the lights, etc. etc. But is that the way to win the next cup or create the next hype strain? Doesn't seem to be to me and that's my point. Are we breeding for the next big thing? Or are we breeding to make a uniform crop of what is OK weed? In-line breeding is a great way to stabilize and create uniformity, I don't buy that it's the way to create the next big thing, it's a way to take the "next big thing" and stabilize it, hopefully without losing what made it the "next big thing" in the first place. But who has created "the next big thing" with in-line breeding" Anyone???? And do we have evidence that over time the stability of the line will remain or will it slowly over time lose what made it the "next big thing"

I know this much. I've moved on from trying to create a perfectly stable line. Why? Because by the time you do get it stable the industry has moved on to bigger and better plants thanks to the work of people breeding the hybrids and creating more polyhybrids. It's even possible that my original strain was as good as when I started with it and that it simply seemed less potent because I was then comparing it with never and better strains that people were creating with hybrids while I was wasting my time fucking around trying to be the next Nevil, well Nevil's stain isn't that big a deal anymore and that's because people started breeding more and more different strains together.

Corn is a plant that the commercial growers value for size and uniformity over everything else. They used in-line breeding to creat large yeilds of unifor but incredibly BLAND corn. Guess what happens when you get into designer sweet corn for gardeners? Then it's right back into hybrids and polyhybrids that win the day. Go look up the most expensive sweet corn seeds and see if they were in-line bred. They aren't they are all hybrids.

 

[Michael Huntherz]

I'd buy that if anyone was winning cup after cup with in-line breeding, they aren't though. The people who win cup after cup are breeding polyhybrids or call them whatever you want, if the term isn't correct it doesn't really matter, A rose by any other name is still a rose. When you are crossing one landrace with another landrace it's "Something" right? So what is the correct term? IDK does it matter? The effects are the same.

What I have not seen happen is anyone winning with a true landrace that they have bred using in-line breeding. I could be wrong but someone would have to prove it to me by showing they get consistent winners. If in-line breeding is the way to go, where are the winners? Why are the best producing and most resinous and best tasting plants that win all the cups always what I call polyhybrids?

As for the green revolution of the 50's and 60's that again was what I call hybrids or polybybrids. Nevils SK#1 is case in point. Three strains crossed into one. Durban poison is the one landrace strain that has stuck around a long time but again, who's winning cups with Durban? They aren't but they sure win a lot of cups by using Durban as part of a polyhybrid cross. And as great as the original SK#1 was it's been left in the dust by newer crosses that moved further away from landrace strains into even more crazy crosses.

And yes I agree my breeding might not have been perfect but apparently the same is true of everyone because nobody is winning cups with in-line breeding that I know of.

Now if you are talking about creating a strain that is Commercial and works better because it's Uniform then sure that can be accomplished by in-line breeding. My strain would get far more stable and consistent yeilds when I had interbred. I've take a line to F16 how many of you can say the same? Yes they might have been great for commercial growers but like I said, they were not as potent or as vigorous and no matter how much I though I could get that potency and vigor to improve it never did. I'd cross F2 and F3's with F15and so forth and so on. The genenics of an in-line strain doesn't magically improve by breeding it over and over, all it does is become more stable and uniform. So OK, if you are breeding for a commercial grower looking for consistent yeilds and uniformity great. All the plants will be the same, you can use the same fertilizer on them, they will grow to the same height under the lights, etc. etc. But is that the way to win the next cup or create the next hype strain? Doesn't seem to be to me and that's my point. Are we breeding for the next big thing? Or are we breeding to make a uniform crop of what is OK weed? In-line breeding is a great way to stabilize and create uniformity, I don't buy that it's the way to create the next big thing, it's a way to take the "next big thing" and stabilize it, hopefully without losing what made it the "next big thing" in the first place. But who has created "the next big thing" with in-line breeding" Anyone???? And do we have evidence that over time the stability of the line will remain or will it slowly over time lose what made it the "next big thing"

I know this much. I've moved on from trying to create a perfectly stable line. Why? Because by the time you do get it stable the industry has moved on to bigger and better plants thanks to the work of people breeding the hybrids and creating more polyhybrids. It's even possible that my original strain was as good as when I started with it and that it simply seemed less potent because I was then comparing it with never and better strains that people were creating with hybrids while I was wasting my time fucking around trying to be the next Nevil, well Nevil's stain isn't that big a deal anymore and that's because people started breeding more and more different strains together.

Corn is a plant that the commercial growers value for size and uniformity over everything else. They used in-line breeding to creat large yeilds of unifor but incredibly BLAND corn. Guess what happens when you get into designer sweet corn for gardeners? Then it's right back into hybrids and polyhybrids that win the day. Go look up the most expensive sweet corn seeds and see if they were in-line bred. They aren't they are all hybrids.

I appreciate your response and totally agree with pretty much everything in it. I love what are commonly called polyhybrids, I like fems, but not autos, personally. Outcrossing/hybridizing totally has benefits, but you can dial in on specific desirable traits through a combination of line breeding and outcrossing. We don’t disagree hardly at all.
I agree that everyone has a different list of desirable optimizations, which is one reason why there are so many strains and breeders these days. There’s a diverse customer base with diverse preferences and the same is true of the growers. We are spoiled for choice right now.

Line breeding on a large scale for many years really does produce amazing results, very few have had the scale for a long enough time to produce the next generations of winners. This all assumes cannabis contests are 100% above board meritocracy-driven contests and not bald faced marketing events, which is not entirely accurate in all cases, let’s say.

If someone took some famous cut and inbred it, ran 200 seeds, selected the best plants from the next generation and breed those together then repeat the process for 12-20 generations of hundreds of plants, and selecting for desirable traits carefully they would produce something amazing and ‘new.’ The traits we consider desirable could be mere yield, or flavor, finishing time, or pest resistance, or all of the above. Corn growers in the decades past were after yield almost exclusively, but options exist because everyone has different preferences and the market retained some of the heirloom options.

It is very similar to how Asian tropical fish farms make new varieies in captivity, they cull tens of thousands of fish over dozens of generations and end up with crazy new colors, patterns and even morphology in aquarium species. I am ethically opposed to those fish breeders, but the selective breeding principles are the same, and yes you sometimes have to outcross to restore vigor, but in the case of cannabis it is not hybridization in the traditional sense. Hybrid vigor is a known phenomenon in fish and reptiles, too, I know it exists, I didn’t address it, but “varietal outcross” is a more accurate. A lot of business plans depend on “indica” and “sativa” and I am fighting an uphill battle in that sense.

PS: I also don’t begrudge folks selling their chucks, but I would love everyone to be educated on basic genetics and what they are really buying before losing money to scammers or marketing pukes.

We almost entirely agree on the important bits, cheers to what brings us together, bollocks to what doesn’t.

“Does it matter?” - that’s a good question.

 

[18six50]

I appreciate your response and totally agree with pretty much everything in it. I love what are commonly called polyhybrids, I like fems, but not autos, personally. Outcrossing/hybridizing totally has benefits, but you can dial in on specific desirable traits through a combination of line breeding and outcrossing. We don’t disagree hardly at all.
I agree that everyone has a different list of desirable optimizations, which is one reason why there are so many strains and breeders these days. There’s a diverse customer base with diverse preferences and the same is true of the growers. We are spoiled for choice right now.

Line breeding on a large scale for many years really does produce amazing results, very few have had the scale for a long enough time to produce the next generations of winners. This all assumes cannabis contests are 100% above board meritocracy-driven contests and not bald faced marketing events, which is not entirely accurate in all cases, let’s say.

If someone took some famous cut and inbred it, ran 200 seeds, selected the best pants from the next generation and breed those together then repeat the process for 12-20 generations of hundreds of plants, and selecting for desirable traits carefully they would produce something amazing and ‘new.’ The traits we consider desirable could be mere yield, or flavor, finishing time, or pest resistance, or all of the above. Corn growers in the decades past were after yield almost exclusively, but options exist because everyone has different preferences and the market retained some of the heirloom options.

It is very similar to how Asian tropical fish farms make new varieies in captivity, they cull tens of thousands of fish over dozens of generations and end up with crazy new colors, patterns and even morphology in aquarium species. I am ethically opposed to those fish breeders, but the selective breeding principles are the same, and yes you sometimes have to outcross to restore vigor, but in the case of cannabis it is not hybridization in the traditional sense. Hybrid vigor is a known phenomenon in fish and reptiles, too, I know it exists, I didn’t address it, but “varietal outcross” is a more accurate. A lot of business plans depend on “indica” and “sativa” and I am fighting an uphill battle in that sense.

PS: I also don’t begrudge folks selling their chucks, but I would love everyone to be educated on basic genetics and what they are really buying before losing money to scammers or marketing pukes.

We almost entirely agree on the important bits, cheers to what brings us together, bollocks to what doesn’t.

“Does it matter?” - that’s a good question.

Thanks, it's a great conversation. I guess time will tell and if you are correct then we will see a lot more in-line breeding, which would be a good thing either way, having more stable favorite strains isn't a bad thing, more stable and better strains would be kick ass. So hopefully we do see more work done to improve on our favorite strains. I do worry though that the actual real world result will be watered down lines rather than improvements. Maybe with truly huge numbers of plants to work with it won't be a problem.

It's funny, we used the term "genetic drift" for a long time when referring to clones not seeds, but I swear I was seeing the same thing with my seeds and until I brought in fresh genetics my line was in fact losing ground, at least compared with other breeders. That could have been my breeding mistakes but I really think my mistake was not getting new genetics in sooner so that I would have kept up with the breeders who were doing just that. Part of working the same line for as long as I did was neccessity but not all of it, even after I had new strains to play with I continued to work that line hoping to get it to where it could compete but it just never really did, not on it's own. The crosses I made though were better than ever and it just keeps getting better as I slowly add in more and more genetic variation.

I still think the next big thing will almost always come from creating entirely new strains rather than trying to stabilize and improve on a strain. The possibility of a big leap forward is there with a new strain in a way it's not when working on a stable line. There isn't going to be any big surprise when working the same line not unless you get a mutation. But you always find surprises when smashing new lines together. So maybe it's looking for a big leap forward vs hoping for small improvements over time and hoping those add up to something big. Time will tell.

It's really just two different sides of the same coin and in a way it's a numbers game no matter what you do. Hopefully you are right and these lines get better and better rather than watered down as they pretty much all have so far. (There have been some good strains lost and maybe they could have been not only saved but improved on.) Better breeding might do just that and with more plants to play with it sure adds to the odds of that happening.

I actually hope you are right, thanks for the great conversation.

 

[The Mantis]

I appreciate your response and totally agree with pretty much everything in it. I love what are commonly called polyhybrids, I like fems, but not autos, personally. Outcrossing/hybridizing totally has benefits, but you can dial in on specific desirable traits through a combination of line breeding and outcrossing. We don’t disagree hardly at all.
I agree that everyone has a different list of desirable optimizations, which is one reason why there are so many strains and breeders these days. There’s a diverse customer base with diverse preferences and the same is true of the growers. We are spoiled for choice right now.

Line breeding on a large scale for many years really does produce amazing results, very few have had the scale for a long enough time to produce the next generations of winners. This all assumes cannabis contests are 100% above board meritocracy-driven contests and not bald faced marketing events, which is not entirely accurate in all cases, let’s say.

If someone took some famous cut and inbred it, ran 200 seeds, selected the best plants from the next generation and breed those together then repeat the process for 12-20 generations of hundreds of plants, and selecting for desirable traits carefully they would produce something amazing and ‘new.’ The traits we consider desirable could be mere yield, or flavor, finishing time, or pest resistance, or all of the above. Corn growers in the decades past were after yield almost exclusively, but options exist because everyone has different preferences and the market retained some of the heirloom options.

It is very similar to how Asian tropical fish farms make new varieies in captivity, they cull tens of thousands of fish over dozens of generations and end up with crazy new colors, patterns and even morphology in aquarium species. I am ethically opposed to those fish breeders, but the selective breeding principles are the same, and yes you sometimes have to outcross to restore vigor, but in the case of cannabis it is not hybridization in the traditional sense. Hybrid vigor is a known phenomenon in fish and reptiles, too, I know it exists, I didn’t address it, but “varietal outcross” is a more accurate. A lot of business plans depend on “indica” and “sativa” and I am fighting an uphill battle in that sense.

PS: I also don’t begrudge folks selling their chucks, but I would love everyone to be educated on basic genetics and what they are really buying before losing money to scammers or marketing pukes.

We almost entirely agree on the important bits, cheers to what brings us together, bollocks to what doesn’t.

“Does it matter?” - that’s a good question.

Cool topic y'all are on here. Appreciate your contribution on this.

I haven't read up on the corn history yet, but I will. Forgive my ignorance now, but if nothing is truly a hybrid (I have read a bit on the new classification system that ditches the indica/sativa/ruderalis classification and calls everything "afghanica"), then how would you describe a polyhybrid / heirloom to a new smoker who walks in a dispensary, let's say?

Since there doesn't seem to be any "official" university backed information on cannabis, it seems everything changes every few years and it is a little frustrating keeping up with it. Can't wait until the federal laws change and we can finally learn everything (or at least more) about this plant.

----edit---- just read through it quickly. Very, very confusing about the cbd>thc or cbd>thc in relation to indica/sativa. It's almost like I have to re-learn everything lol. There has to be a better way to explain what's what to folks.

For example, here's the summary of the article: "In summary, reconciling the vernacular and formal nomenclatures: “Sativa” is really indica, “Indica” is actually afghanica, and “Ruderalis” is usually sativa. All three are varieties of one species, C. sativa L."


-- At this point, it's seems best to start from scratch imo. Like how can you best describe this in as few of words as possible?

 

[MInewgrow]

Welchie 7 days drying now into jars it goes. The high is night time smoke for most but I like that kinda high the narcotic type and it definitely has that. Overall eso killed it with this cross. Now onto some solfire, double tap, west side creeper, gelly biscuit and hood candyz.

 

[Michael Huntherz]

Cool topic y'all are on here. Appreciate your contribution on this.

I haven't read up on the corn history yet, but I will. Forgive my ignorance now, but if nothing is truly a hybrid (I have read a bit on the new classification system that ditches the indica/sativa/ruderalis classification and calls everything "afghanica"), then how would you describe a polyhybrid / heirloom to a new smoker who walks in a dispensary, let's say?

Since there doesn't seem to be any "official" university backed information on cannabis, it seems everything changes every few years and it is a little frustrating keeping up with it. Can't wait until the federal laws change and we can finally learn everything (or at least more) about this plant.

----edit---- just read through it quickly. Very, very confusing about the cbd>thc or cbd>thc in relation to indica/sativa. It's almost like I have to re-learn everything lol. There has to be a better way to explain what's what to folks.

For example, here's the summary of the article: "In summary, reconciling the vernacular and formal nomenclatures: “Sativa” is really indica, “Indica” is actually afghanica, and “Ruderalis” is usually sativa. All three are varieties of one species, C. sativa L."


-- At this point, it's seems best to start from scratch imo. Like how can you best describe this in as few of words as possible?

Everything I am aware of in the Cannabis genus falls under a single species: Cannabis sativa

Hybrids exist in all sorts of life, including corn, and corn snakes! Corn snakes bred to king snakes to create “Jungle Corns” are hybrids. Breeding any cannabis plant to any other cannabis plant is not.

Cannabis sativa has a few ‘subspecies,’ also called ‘varieties,’ but the morphological keys we use to describe indica vs sativa are not necessarily supported by the actual genotype of the plat. There are genotypically ‘indica’ individuals that present as Cannabis sativa subsp sativa, and others that present as Cannabis subsp. indica and are more or less entirely sativa at the level of their genes. The terms indica and sativa are conventions and shorthands we use because we don’t actually know very much about the provenance of our plants.

 

[Michael Huntherz]

Thanks, it's a great conversation. I guess time will tell and if you are correct then we will see a lot more in-line breeding, which would be a good thing either way, having more stable favorite strains isn't a bad thing, more stable and better strains would be kick ass. So hopefully we do see more work done to improve on our favorite strains. I do worry though that the actual real world result will be watered down lines rather than improvements. Maybe with truly huge numbers of plants to work with it won't be a problem.

It's funny, we used the term "genetic drift" for a long time when referring to clones not seeds, but I swear I was seeing the same thing with my seeds and until I brought in fresh genetics my line was in fact losing ground, at least compared with other breeders. That could have been my breeding mistakes but I really think my mistake was not getting new genetics in sooner so that I would have kept up with the breeders who were doing just that. Part of working the same line for as long as I did was neccessity but not all of it, even after I had new strains to play with I continued to work that line hoping to get it to where it could compete but it just never really did, not on it's own. The crosses I made though were better than ever and it just keeps getting better as I slowly add in more and more genetic variation.

I still think the next big thing will almost always come from creating entirely new strains rather than trying to stabilize and improve on a strain. The possibility of a big leap forward is there with a new strain in a way it's not when working on a stable line. There isn't going to be any big surprise when working the same line not unless you get a mutation. But you always find surprises when smashing new lines together. So maybe it's looking for a big leap forward vs hoping for small improvements over time and hoping those add up to something big. Time will tell.

It's really just two different sides of the same coin and in a way it's a numbers game no matter what you do. Hopefully you are right and these lines get better and better rather than watered down as they pretty much all have so far. (There have been some good strains lost and maybe they could have been not only saved but improved on.) Better breeding might do just that and with more plants to play with it sure adds to the odds of that happening.

I actually hope you are right, thanks for the great conversation.

Most species have a recommended number of generations one can inbreed before needing to outross before resuming line breeding and I honestly don’t know that number for Cannabis, but I think it is probably fairly high. I honestly have no idea and plenty of time today to try finding out.

 

[Bakersfield]

You most definitely can hybridize 2 different types of cannabis together, it's called intraspecific hybridization.

 

[The Mantis]

Everything I am aware of in the Cannabis genus falls under a single species: Cannabis sativa

Hybrids exist in all sorts of life, including corn, and corn snakes! Corn snakes bred to king snakes to create “Jungle Corns” are hybrids. Breeding any cannabis plant to any other cannabis plant is not.

Cannabis sativa has a few ‘subspecies,’ also called ‘varieties,’ but the morphological keys we use to describe indica vs sativa are not necessarily supported by the actual genotype of the plat. There are genotypically ‘indica’ individuals that present as Cannabis sativa subsp sativa, and others that present as Cannabis subsp. indica and are more or less entirely sativa at the level of their genes. The terms indica and sativa are conventions and shorthands we use because we don’t actually know very much about the provenance of our plants.

I see. The confusion will lie in ones' definition of hybrid. Technically, no cannabis crosses can be hybrids (edit - except for intraspecific hybridization in Bakersfield's post above? - ). But it seems hard wired in the cannabis world to look at traits as belonging to a species and the word is in the industry (and will be hard to get rid of). Maybe a new classification system not using the words sativa, indica, ruderalis and hybrid needs to be in order. Or maybe just trash the whole system and point to known genetics (from which breeder/seed bank etc.) and keep track of the filial generations from there?


IMO: without an "official" guide on cannabis it seems we'll be stuck in this twilight zone of trying to classify it.

 

[Bakersfield]

I see. The confusion will lie in ones' definition of hybrid. Technically, no cannabis crosses can be hybrids (edit - except for intraspecific hybridization in Bakersfield's post above? - ). But it seems hard wired in the cannabis world to look at traits as belonging to a species and the word is in the industry (and will be hard to get rid of). Maybe a new classification system not using the words sativa, indica, ruderalis and hybrid needs to be in order. Or maybe just trash the whole system and point to known genetics (from which breeder/seed bank etc.) and keep track of the filial generations from there?


IMO: without an "official" guide on cannabis it seems we'll be stuck in this twilight zone of trying to classify it.

It's the same with most plants including corn.
There was wild corn and through intraspecific hybridization we've ended up with the varieties we have today.
Hybrids between 2 species within the same genus, Interspecific hybridization, are very often sterile, like the mule, a horse and donkey combo.

 

[Mohican]

This is a great resource for lineage:

SeedFinder - Cannabis Strain Search

Search & Find @ SeedFinder.eu - Here you have some options for finding the right strain.

en.seedfinder.eu

Cheers,
Mo