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Can I Turn A Scrawny, Ugly Plant into Something Better?


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I purchased about 5 seeds last year, one I screwed up so I was left with 4 seedlings. One was a male which was great and it was a really nice looking aromatic male too, So the male has been kept as a breeder and I now have a slowly growing stash of seeds. I crossed the make with the 3 females. 

 

One of the females is an ugly plant but it has one heck of a kick when I smoke it. The branches are bare with few nodes and  it would be the type of plant you would weed out but as it has such a nice smoke. It also gets what looks like nutrient burn really easy and many of the leaves get brown and crisp but I give the same nutrients to the other plants and they love them.  it's also very leafy, even the buds but it's a fast productive grower in the veg stage.. I would like to maybe see if I can breed out the bad qualities of this plant and produce a plant with the best parts (the smoke).

 

Has anyone else tried this, if I get bunch of seeds from it will I be able to get some nice plants out of them or will they all be the same as the mother?

Edited by TAdams
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Gotta go backwards to go forward...Backcross.. Ya really need to know what stage of breeding the seeds you bought were in.. Like F1,F2..Bx S1 S2? IBL?

 

I never looked into breeding but I searched about what you write and I'm now learning about backcrossing and breeding, found this page http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2004/03/08/3378 which seems to give me a good run through. will be interesting to learn more, cheers!

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what would be recommended to breed from my limited stock? As I mentioned I only have one male (1st clone from the original seed) and 3 females which are all now 3rd or 4th round clones off the original 3 female seeds.

 

I have a bunch of seeds from these 3 females all crossed with the same male which is a very nice plant too, green, fast grower, lots of dense seed pods, healthy and does not get nute burn easy. 

 

Should I be inbreeding these 3 females or what would be the best method for me to start?

Edited by TAdams
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You won't know what you have until you plant them simple because genetics are a bitch.  See each individual female flower will pass on a very slightly different set of genes than the flower directly next to it while every single male flower will produce something like 30,000 grains of pollen all of which are slightly different from the next as well.  It's like that because a seeded lady that reaches maturity is a winning end state for the species and any males that can alter that already proven baseline has the best potential for increasing the odds of future survival.  The plant cares not about potency, yield, etc. and with that breeding strategy and only survival in mind it doesn't have to.

 

Since we care about things other than survival though we need to lock those traits in place and the only way to do that is to breed generation after generation of seed until you reduce the genepool to the point those traits breed dominantly.  There are plenty of ways to go about it like inbreeding, backcrossing, etc. but essentially you're just aiming to reduce the genetic potential so the plant can only grow the way you want it to.  Once you get a few generations down a line those traits will start to really become dominant and become much easier to pass on to even first generation hybrids but it takes a serious amount of time, effort and most importantly plant numbers to get to that point.  You need to be extremely targeted in your breeding efforts and test absolutely everything because every single avenue of approach you take towards breeding will yield different results and only with hands on experience will you know which lines to move on with. 

 

I wish I could tell you it was as easy as just selecting the stinkiest males and most desirable females to do their thing but that kind of good enough breeding is reserved for pollen chuckers who'll make do with good enough.  If you want more you have to be willing to take things far more seriously and spend years on it if not the rest of your life because like any artist you'll forever feel as though your creation is missing something lol

 

Good luck, you're gonna need it going down this rabbit hole lol

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ah well thanks, it certainly does not sound easy but it it will be interesting anyway. I might just forget the lab experiments and getting too technical and just keep planting seeds and picking the best plants to keep for the next batch and so on until like you say I will get more dominant features in the plants I want. 

 

The seeds I got were all from Yantra, the were some of the cheapest ones they had, one is their purple bud and the others are somewhat unknown as I lost my receipt but mainly sativa/indica hybrids. 2 of the females already have nice features so there is not much to try to change with them and the male looks great so it's just one plant that needs some work. I'm not sure how I would keep the 2 good females from changing too much as they seem nice now other than just to continue to use cuttings but I would like to build a nice stash of seeds as I will be traveling in the future so will need to start again when I return.

Edited by TAdams
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