Finding that pheno...

I have been interested in a few different exotic varieties, but starting with a 10 (or 12) seed/plant base, what are the chances of getting that perfect pheno? Not very likely IMHO, as stability does not seem to be the commercial breeders strongest skills. How about starting 10 packs instead of 1 - well 10 times the chance to find an outstanding candidate.. but cost is much increased to start, as well as space and equipment needed, and it seems like the same crapshoot, just a slightly larger scale and slightly better odds..

Lets say you start with those 10 seeds (1 pack), grow them to maturity and then were to cross the 2 strongest candidates from each sex to make seeds among themselves - will the original mother and father genes be expressed somewhere in the heap in this way (not guaranteed, but is there a chance?)

Not interested in doing this for sale purposes, but more for getting a better chance in finding that keeper mom/outstanding pheno. I ask because instead of spending $1K+ on seeds, I want to know if can I produce 100's (if not thousands) of seeds of the same lineage for myself, in search of that ultimate candidate, and still have a chance to make "the one" that has the qualities the breeder noticed and tried to breed in the first place?

I certainly hope so :D , because that's my plan for the future ... I'm tired of buying seeds ... how uniform the results will be from your inbred cross, will depend on the stability of the parent strain ... I have a plant I have been growing thru 3 generations, that consistently looks the same ... like cookie-cutters, so, I "assume", the next generation will be as stable and uniform... usually, though, hybrids will show marked differences, 'phenotypes', before going thru a few generations of careful selection, to stabilize the strain ... :smokin:

The process starts with identifying what traits are most important for your 'ideal' pheno, and doing enough crosses with plants that display that trait to get it to breed true.

You're going to be going through each individual desirable trait, and getting it to be homozygous.

Then start doing test crosses and testing the offspring until you find plants that are homozygous for multiple desirable traits.

It will take a while... but eventually you will with LOTS of patience stabilize your ideal strain.

When that happens, congratulations, you get naming rights on the beast and SHOULD sell seeds.

What is better than a good, true-breeding strain? :D

I've read that it goes something like this, you find a perfect female, then a male from a female line that also has charactersitics that you want. You breed these, and you get the F1 generation, which will all have relatively similar characteristics, like brothers and sisters, but they're not twins. However, you don't want to breed these brothers and sisters, because then their offspring will have much more variable characteristics. Expensive seeds will be F1s, so you will be getting the best genetics possible, and while you may be able to create a new strain, you will still never get anything better than F1 per se. If you want to keep creating F1s, then of course you need to keep cloning your chosen femal and male parents to breed the clones and make more F1 seeds. It's my understanding that in order to create a very stable strain and breed for seeds, it may take years to breed and select the right parents.

better yet, forsake profit, and give the seeds away, and plant your leftovers in the wilderness ... and to add something to Phytokind's response ... sometimes there is a trait that comes across better, stronger in the F2, than both or either of the parents possessed, an anomaly the botanists call 'vigor', if I remember right (I may be wrong about the term, I just now woke up) ... :smokin:

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Originally Posted by the image reaper

better yet, forsake profit, and give the seeds away, and plant your leftovers in the wilderness ... and to add something to Phytokind's response ... sometimes there is a trait that comes across better, stronger in the F2, than both or either of the parents possessed, an anomaly the botanists call 'vigor', if I remember right (I may be wrong about the term, I just now woke up) ... :smokin:

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Yeah there's some kind of vigor that happens with hybrids. I presume that the best breeders can breed this into at least some of their plants.

I have been trying to read as much as I can about breeding and the accompanying literature/charts by people like Mendel, and am about my third time through of Marijuana Botany. It seems the hardest part is identifying the traits you are looking to isolate, there are so many desirable characteristics.

So far my plan is to pop a pack of 10 seeds.. (These would be F1's correct?).. clone them all before flowering, labeling accurately with notes on growth/times/food/leaf sets/etc.. Then flower them out (taking notes also), saving the strongest/most vigorous/stinkiest/healthiest.. lets just say desirable male (eww did I say that?)

Once flowered and cured, try them all and see which has what I am looking for. Then breed the "best" male and female from that batch (cloning again, to save the parents)...

With the resulting seeds (F2's?), germinate dozens of them and by referring back to my notes, try and identify the ones that resemble the best female from the first batch (of 10) by using growth rate,leaf size/shape, color, aroma, etc...

Identify, say 10 (or 20) or so candidates and clone and flower them. After harvest, sample them and again try to find what I am looking for. Lets say I find one that is almost perfect. This one I keep as the mommy I was looking for..

Now, to create seed with more chance to be this similar, would I breed it with the original male plant (the "grandfather"), and go through the same process of elimination with the resulting seeds? Or are these seeds, ones I would consider "stabilized".

I believe this is called backcrossing (right?), and should further stabilize the offspring, resulting in a line with fewer variations (for both good and bad characteristics), but not neccessarily a true breeding (IBL) strain. This is where it gets confusing to me.... Seems to me to get a true breeding strain, many many generations must be manipulated in this way..

Hmm well I've only skimmed through Marijuana Botany but my impression that it would be best to find the best parent F1s of two different awesome strains, breed them, and create a new strain, and use the resulting F1 seeds. I don't see why there would be a need to breed the same strain to get F2s, as F2s are the less reliable, cheaper seeds.

Well sure - if you had 2 different awesome strains. I'm not neccessarily trying to make a new strain, just to find a mommy and make more seeds that have a better chance of being like her...

Lets use a retail strain - Bogbubble - for example.. rather than buy 10 packs of seeds ($$$$$) and flower them all, looking for the one that Bog had in mind for the lineage, can I get away with using 1 pack of ten seeds ($), then inter-breed them, to get a chance at that same plant that Bog liked?

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Originally Posted by Tokudai

Well sure - if you had 2 different awesome strains. I'm not neccessarily trying to make a new strain, just to find a mommy and make more seeds that have a better chance of being like her...

Lets use a retail strain - Bogbubble - for example.. rather than buy 10 packs of seeds ($$$$$) and flower them all, looking for the one that Bog had in mind for the lineage, can I get away with using 1 pack of ten seeds ($), then inter-breed them, to get a chance at that same plant that Bog liked?

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Yeah I guess that makes sense, and the only way to find out for sure is try it.

F1s are not always the best.
They just display something called 'hybrid vigor'.
And expensive seeds are not always F1s.
And if you want to stabilize a strain that is an F1 that you enjoy, you are going to have to go back and do backcrosses to the parents and grandparents, as Tokudai said.