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A syk outdoor grow


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Yahoooo, my seeds sprouted about 2wks ago and I was able to successfully transplant them to larger pots now there should be nothing to stop them except cops, theives, bugs, diseases, my own incompetence etc oh well with the help of ppl on this site perhaps some of these problems won't be as detrimental and I may have a half successful grow. I'll post a pic of the seedling later in the week when the 2 plants have developed 4 sets of leaves each, Just a quick question though all things being equal and a good space between the plants what ratio of males to females are expected from seeds.

Thanks

PS in later posts with pics i will describe the conditions I grow the plants under and I hope for as much feedback as possible

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Guest Wilderbud

I usually see females but half are usually hemmies so its about 2/5 female IMO although Ive only ever grown bag seeds [non-seedy bud which supposedly explains the 1:1 female:hemmie ratio].

 

Stress can cause hemmies but I doubt it causes males.

 

Keep an eye on your plants sex all through the grow if youre wondering about producing seeds or grow a stabilized (real) strain (Afghani/Skunk/NL) and preflower some clones. :)

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Ya know, I think this is an issue that needs to be explored and solved on a scientific basis... A crapload of people are finding different results to the 50/50... now I'm quite an avid studier of plants and their nature, and I always thought, quite reasonably, that any seed produced from the sexual crossing between a male and female cannabis plant would result in an approximate 50/50 ratio of males to females... If it was tipped to one side or the other, I figured it would be something like 48/52 male female, or the reverse...

 

But it would appear that on most anectodal evidence, we aren't getting these results... Now, statistically, you should be getting a male half the time, and a female half the time... Although it would be possible for you to get a significant abberation, like planting 10 seeds and getting mostly males or females, it's unlikely. I myself only saw a male for the first time after sowing about 40 plants in my first season... And I've only seen 3 since. All the rest have been female, which pretty much destroys my statistical odds... doesn't it...

 

When you start to introduce hermaphroditism into the genetic mix, you're getting much different results, aren't ya? I mean, you have to take into account the individual genetics of the plant before you can truly predict a male/female ratio... Let me try and put it like this... An in-bred line strain which is stable and able to produce similar if not identical plants from crossings within their line, is IMO probably going to produce that 50/50 rough male/female ratio... These lines are usually produced by professional breeders, who are able to use multiple mothers and fathers, and have the resources and space to truly do a worthwhile plant selection... These seeds, because the genetics are stable, regular and professionally produced, are more genetically "pure" (a relative term there) than other strains which aren't IBL's... When you start looking at random or small selection crosses, made by gifted amateurs,( heck some pro's don't use very large selections for their breeding purposes, so I'd put some of the smaller breeders here too,) or even start looking at the sex ratio's of bagseed, you'll get a very different result...

 

This is all just thoughts and theory here, so everyone should feel free to correct me should I be making false or incorrect assumtions... anyway, if you deal with let's say seed created from a smaller selection... and using new breeds created either from F1 or further down the cross line. These seeds will show a fair uniformity, but nothing like the IBL's... they'll have their differences in the F1 gen, but they'll generally be a half/half of the parents... because they don't have a large selection to pick a good mum and dad for the cross, there is more chance that this cross will involve genes which are faulty or undesirable... and if there is no further research on the cross through test growing and examining the minutae of the strain, then you're more likely to end up with a hermi or otherwise lesser quality plant. Of course, the cross could be bloody fantastic, really well selected as far as parentage and further stabilised through crossing off and selecting from further gens offspring... but if you get your seed from someone without a totally professional outlook and good setup, you're looking at a genetic minefield...

 

When you deal with bagseed, you've got it even worse.... Bagseed is usually either coming from seeded bud, which could be okay but is likely to be lesser in quality, or it could be one or two seeds in a whole bag or ounce, caused by either stray and thus unknown pollen or even self fertilisation. Now, not going too deep into all the potential genetic screw-ups which could result from "selfing" a plant like MJ (although it does have it's place in breeding, just a very specific one) the seed coming from such sources is extremely likely to be either undesirable in characteristics generally because of the random and unknown nature of the crossing, but it's also likely to be hermaphroditic, as it could be the result of a selfing cross late in flower, and these crossings invariably bring out hermie traits in further offspring... This is where you'll get bad genes entering the collective cannabis genepool, and this I believe is where the alteration to the "normal" sexual reproduction of cannabis has come over time...

 

As man proceeded to cultivate and further breed cannabis, and as wild populations developed as well, the MJ plant diverged it's genetic code into several thousand, if not millions of directions... These became general "types" of cannabis, and then you could further subclassify them down into "strains".... They're all able to cross with each other, so they're still defined as the same genus, but as cannabis spread with man it began to change.... The genes related to sex have been mutated over time through mans intervention in it's reproduction... We've crossed out accidentally and deliberately, trying to get new types and strains, trying to increase THC levels, decrease them, make it more flavourful, make it produce better fiber, make it produce larger and more nutritious seed... you name it, man has tried to bring it out in MJ. But not all humans who were doing this work knew much about it... and not all humans did it well either... Mutations which are not only beneficial to man, in one way or another, but detrimental have been bred into the genepool... accidentally one of these traits which has been spread to a fair proportion of the MJ genetic pool is hermaphroditism... the bane of the sinse grower...

 

So, humans are responsible, IMO, for the abberation in the "normal" results of a species sexual reproduction. To avoid it, the only way to go is getting seed from a reputable, and well regarded professional breeder or seller... Bagseed may be a good practice, and hell, I'm not going to tell you that you won't get a harvest, or won't get a fantastic and potent harvest from a bagseed plant or plants... but it's less likely... And you're more likely to end up with either directly hermaphroditic or passing those genes onto the next generation of plants... Humanity has altered the genepool enough that a lot of strains which are otherwise fine as females in a growroom have hermaphroditic or stress-related hermaphroditic traits in them... I hear time and again about stress turning Sinse buds into banana production factories... IMHO this isn't a normal trait of cannabis, it may appear to be an emergency survival trait of a plant, but if it was, it would have resulted in the strains destruction... the genetic pool would be so damaged within that small colony of wild plants where it would have originated that they would have died out before the trait could be spread to other plant colonies elsewhere... although pollen travels a long way on the wind, that's why the plant makes it so small, such a trait doesn't in the end help survival of the plant, it actually damages it... as no gene acts on it's own... most, if not all traits in the gentic code aren't determined by just one protein code, it's in interactions of many genes in which traits are shown... Even if such a trait was evolved naturally, I highly doubt it would have survived to modern day cannabis to change it's sexual reproduction soooo much just through natural wild breeding.... We had to come into it somewhere, and there's where the trait has been carried on, and that's how modern strains of cannabis have to the large extent been contaminated with hermaphroditic or stress induced hermaphroditic traits.... Then again, if it was a natural trait, maybe humans were responsible for bringing it into cultivation through either stupidity or with a deliberate intent... Not sure what that would have been, any one here know if that was really the case? I understand that some hemp strains have been deliberately hermaphroditised, but I doubt the present extent of hermies in the general drug-type population would have come from that particular route... please correct me if I'm wrong there tho.

 

All of that was just my own stoned rambling on a subject I think a lot about, but don't have much hard backing for. I'd like to see anything that anyone has on substantial research done into the cannabis sex genome and hermaphroditic expression in weed... I don't know of any professional studies into it, although I am aware that some are starting to do genetic engineering work on cannabis... It's early days, of course, but I'm sure we'll be discussing GE weed soon, and it's effects on the greater gene pool too..... Bloody heck, I just can't bloody stop myself here can I? Well, that's my thoughts, if anyone has any info they think may be relevant re: studies on "true" M - F ratios in differing strains of MJ, on large enough scales to make the results reasonably accurate, then I'd be most appreciative if you could post it somewhere here.... I'm fascinated by the sexual reproduction of plants, I guess coz I don't get much nookie myself... hee hee...

 

If I didn't make any sense too, let me know, I'm pretty damn wasted right now.... :)

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hey luke,

That is a great post, a few things that do come to me is .....

if the offspring and original parents growing conditions are the same... Indoors its pretty much the same, nutrients, lights, air and temp are all controllable so less variants.. but if you had some outdoor thai landrace theres no way it will grow well in colder or shorter climates... It is possible to adapt any strain to new conditions but variation or stress is a concern...

Dominance to parents... by knowing the traits or look of the mother & father you will be able to pick the offspring alot easier.. Then its just tagging dominance for each trait your concerned with... leaf shape/uniformity/vein to serate.. node distance.. smell ...colouration...etc etc

 

Hope that helps.. time for breaky bongs :) stonedas

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I dunno, I believe hermaphrodism is a survival mechanism.

 

Hermaphrodism is most common in sativas, particularily equatorial sativas, it seems strange that equatorial growers all would've used the same breeding methods.

Makes sense that they would want bulk female flowers over male flowers such as seen in many SE asian cannabis which have sex ratios like 70% reverse female, 20% female, 10% males and reverse males.

 

But why didn't indica farmers do the same??

 

also IBLs are not less likely to hermy unless resistance to herm was a characteristic bred for, strains like white widow, romulan, flo all have high hermy ratios.

 

a true-breeding is only stable for specific traits, if any strain gave 100% pure males and females generation after generation it would be considered IBL, the same way skunk continues to give high calyx to leaf ratios, that doesn't mean they haven't used a hermy with a high calyx to leaf ratio along the way.

 

while you could make an F1 between say ww and rom and create a seedline with much fewer herms, especially if that was your only goal in the strain. By selecting a female with resistance to herm, and progeny testing the males to see resistance to herm. Which I'd say isnt done very often. It dont matter, traits such as potency and yield are what matters as most seeds are grown to keep the one exceptional mother these days.

 

It would be great if breeders did put interest into resistance to hermaphrodism, but would take huge test fields to find a plant with both the best resistance to hermy and best potency also. Finding out a males parenting abilities towards the trait of resistance to herm could only be done by progeny testing, and I believe it would be a waste of time.

 

When gene mapping becomes realistic in the cannabis breeding world it will probably become an essential part of breeding, because there will be no need to do progeny tests of 100's of males. Still they'd need to increase the test fields from 10000 to 100000.

 

seeds are seeds, sometimes you get a whole pack of males sometimes you get a whole pack of females.

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Thanks for all the info this is great I haven't had a chance to have a real close look but I am overwhelmed by the response, once again thank you.

This info is a little lost here in this tread and I can't work out how to edit the comments or name of the thread, perhaps a mod might move or copy the relevant info on sex ratios to a more approriate forum with a more informative name for the tread.

Thanks again for all the help!

PS a third seed sprout from the 3 seeds planted pics to follow soon :rolleyes:

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