How To Get More Males?

[wassily]

Does anyone know a way to increase the ratio of males in a batch of sprouted seeds? That's males. not females.

Thanks

V

 

ps - sorry about the capitals - I don't know how to change it.

Edited July 29, 2003 by wassily

[Tom]

Does anyone know a way to increase the ratio of males in a batch of sprouted seeds? That's males. not females.

Thanks

When starting from seed I put a few extra in to allow for the removal of males, you could just do the same in reverse. Have you considered stressing a female to a hermie, collecting some pollen from that and fertilising a few heads, this should give you feminised seeds.

 

ps - sorry about the capitals - I don't know how to change it.

How's that?

 

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[wassily]

Thanks Tom, I'm sprouting some widows, just wanted to get a male in the bunch. Re the capitals, I put the thread topic in capitals, but can't change it. It looks like I'm shouting. I'm quite calm really.

Cheers

V

[Tom]

I meant "hows that" regarding the new look title.

 

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[Luke Skywalker]

There was a discussion about the environmental effects on male/female ratios in cannabis on planetskunk.com forums...

 

Well Wassily, here's my $2.00 (I've got some b'day money... and I'm a long winded prat too... )

 

First off I'll just say that this is just my personal opinion,which I've come to from my own research, knowledge of plants and cannabis plants in particular, as well as my experiences with cannabis growing, and other plant growing and hybridising too... If anyone out there has a different opinion, which I'm certain there will be, then by all means please share! I am always open to new ideas and theories, if we weren't able to learn from others we wouldn't know squat, and no progress would ever be made... Now, with that said, (sounded like a disclaimer, didn't it? Sort of? Didn't mean too...) I'll put forward my thoughts...

 

I am of the opinion myself that the plants sex (be that male, female or an hermaphrodite, depending on the parentage...) is determined at conception... however, environmental conditions during seed formation, collection, and germination, not to mention adverse stress effects from abnormal indoor growing conditions... and outdoor ones to some degree too. Within cannabis populations there is going to be males, females, and natural hermaphrodites. Some strains are particularly prone to being hermaphrodite, even in ideal coditions, and this is a genetic result of its breeding. There will also be some otherwise normal males or females, which will show hermaphroditism not through their genes, but as a direct result of environment. Such effects can include being a lone plant, desperate to survive and set seed, changing a small part of it's flowers to male to literally fuck itself... ,or having a branch deliberately sprayed with gibberellic acid which encourages male flowers to develop on an otherwise normal female too... Abnormal light cycles have also been know to produce male flowers on sinse plants, and interrupted light cycles have been used to effect this change by seedbanks.

 

So for you to get yourself more males, and you want to end up with good seed, which isn't inbred too much let alone from hermaphrodite flowers, then plant some more seed and select the best. The avg is about 50/50, tipped in one sides favour, I forget which... I think it can be affected by strain to some degree too, although I'm not sure on that one either. The process of making sure you get a male is essentially the same as ensuring you get a good female. More plants = more genes to choose from. And more chances of getting a male. After you start sowing batches of ten the odds of not getting a male becomes infinitesimal.

 

As to feminsed seed, I will get a bashing for this, but I think it's probabaly one of the greatest rip-offs in cannabis seed-banks today. There may be some seed banks who have genuinely taken the time to develop a pure female strain, but this isn't the easiest thing to do, and requires thousands of plants to find an appropriate female. Anyway, I don't think you, or anyone else should bother with them really, the odds are you'll get something that's not that good, and will likely end up hermaphroditic in nature. You're far better off buying a pack of ten and sowing these out, picking the best males and females and cloning them on to get what you want. You can theoretically grow forever through cloning, although it takes some effort. But growing a few different mothers to accomodate tastes is easy too, they don't need to take up much room... So now you may beat me up for airing my ignorant opinions....

 

I suppose it all boils down to this for ya wassily, if you want more males, plant more seed, you cannot affect the ratio of male/female to the seeds at all, you just have to grow enough. If you want to use hermaphrodites for seed production, go ahead, but I think you'll be dissapointed with the results. Use straight guys and gals for your hybridising.

 

I'll leave you all alone now, I'm really starting to rev up the keyboard lately... wonder why?

[wassily]

Sorry Tom, now I get it. Thanks for fixing that............ I'm really stoned.

 

Luke - thanks , I figured the best way is to just plant more seeds, so that's what I'm doing. It'll give me a bigger pool of fems to pick from if they go that way. I think I've only had like 2 males in a few years, but some of them were bagseed. But they did turn out full fem , not hermie.

Anyway cheers everyone.

Vaz

Edited July 30, 2003 by wassily

[Tom]

I'm really stoned.

Vaz

I don't have a problem with that, I'm not so straight myself at the moment. ::

 

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