Breading usimg feminized female

beardo

Well-Known Member
Why does everyone advise against using plants grown from feminized seeds in breeding projects? I am thinking of using a male from a non feminized strain to pollinate a female of a feminized strain to make seed.
 

beardo

Well-Known Member
Does the feminization create a hermaphrodite gene or tendency that passes on? I was under the impression that the seed created by self polination was a genetic copy of the mother plant that would never have hermaphrodited unless chemically induced to do so.
 

mauichronic808

Well-Known Member
hahah love a ferris bueller joke. anyways i dont know if this will help or not but i had a female that hermied and created hermy seeds so check yo self
 

TaoWolf

Active Member
It's ok to use a female grown from feminized seeds from a breeder. The reason: Breeders collect the pollen from a female plant that they induce to become hermaphroditic, breeders then use that 'feminized' pollen on a *different* female plant (usually of the same strain that also displays the favorable characteristics they want to see in the offspring). In any case, the resulting seeds are feminized and contain genetic information from two different parents. There is no real difference biologically between feminized seeds made in this manner (except that all the seeds will be female) than from seeds made from one male plant and one female plant (except that about half the seeds will be male).

The arguments that is bad to use feminized seeds seem to come from: If a female plant self-pollinates itself, it will basically be making identical clones of itself in seed form. The possible unwanted trait (that which caused the mother to exhibit hermaphroditism and self-pollinate thereby destroying sensimilla crops) would likely be carried forward into the seeds produced - which would then likely do the same thing with their off-spring, and so on. *However* it's not unnatural for cannabis plants to self-pollinate and produce a small number of seeds under certain conditions (especially if flowered for an extended period), so even if you get a seed in a bag that was supposedly sensimilla that was produced from self-pollination, it doesn't mean that the plant grown from that seed is 'bad' or even that it is necessarily going to become hermaphroditic itself.

Otherwise, just as a general rule with breeding, plants/animals with the combined genetics of a large gene-pool are more likely to produce off-spring with favorable characteristics and tend to be healthier- aka 'hybrid vigor'. A common example of this can be seen in the difference between pure-bred dogs and dogs that had parents of different breeds (usually called 'muts'). Muts tend to have less health problems and live longer because the successful traits from the combined gene-pools of both breeds are more likely to be dominant over double recessive bad traits that appear in most purebreds that come from a smaller gene pool. *However* this doesn't mean that purebred strains or dogs are going to be 'bad' or have bad traits/characteristics. On the contrary, good breeding practices will minimize the bad and maximize the good. In the end, it just means that in-breeding is not good over time and having a diverse gene pool is beneficial over time and through successive generations.
 
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