chance that seeds from hermi will be fem?

Consider how selective breeding, and natural selection works... when breeding plants, you pick plants with desirable traits then allow them to reproduce, so that the offspring can have a better chance of producing those same desirable traits. Plants that breed naturally pass down the genetic traits of the parents, as well.


Same goes for undesirable traits, and unfortunately, the tendency to naturally turn hermy is very easily passed down. If one in five females went hermy, all on its own, without much prompting in that one generation, and the seeds from that hermy are germinated, then more than one in five will usually do the same, the next round.


The only hermy's used for breeding are those that almost literally won't produce male balls, regardless how much you stress them out.


I'll spend not just one, but a few flowering cycles, torturing and testing the limits of potential breeders just to be certain they won't go over easily, before I move on to tampering with their medium or spraying branches with an aspirin solution or colloidal silver to produce male parts forcibly.
And their offspring, will have the same tendency not to hermy under any amount of 'common' duress, as the parents.



But a hermy that occurs during a normal or average grow, under normal conditions, should never be used for breeding, and if you don't want to risk wasting your time, lights, nutes and money on a very seedy crop, it's best not to use them for personal grows either. They may not be a total flop, but better to be safe than sorry, especially if you already know their genetics are a bit 'suspect'.

 

Genetics is a crapshoot, nobody can tell you what or how many hermies you'll get from herm seeds, nor can they tell you the frequency at which they show up. Personally, I believe that a lot of the hype against using hermie seeds is generated by breeders, and picked up by the rest... with the exception of those who've experienced moderate to severe hermaphroditic tendencies.

I've been growing the progeny of a hermie for a year now, and the only seeds I've gotten from any crop were from the original hermie. I might have a better chance of getting a hermie, but with 100% females and nothing but fat sensimilla buds... I'm not complaining


A hermie can pollinate an entire grow, or not. A hermie (when they show up) can produce 500 seeds, 50, 5, or zero. When you're growing for personal use (as opposed to commercial or medical), it's all about what makes you happy. Considering all the hate for hermies here at the city, I must be one lucky bastard

 

Indeed, your experience is VERY unusual, except that it was very likely due to an unknown stress factor that
you were not even aware of.




Before I go too far, I'll quickly add that I've been breeding and growing for several decades now, and have seen
my fair share of oddities and genetic deformities while continent-hopping to learn from the masters, and
educate medical communities around the globe.



Genetics are not a crap-shoot.... if you are highly religious then your views may be highly skewed, but have
you ever heard of a man named Darwin?


As mentioned earlier, even normal plants can go hermy, if pushed hard enough. Their offspring are
generally (ie. virtually always) OK, so long as they are treated better.


This is all just common knowledge breeding info, from the hobbyist to the professional.





That, and all breeding aside, going back to Darwin, it's also how natural selection works in nature, which is
why a lot of wild or ditch weed will tend to hermy, as they've been given the encouragement genetically,
that, just like strong stalks, this is a useful trait that keeps their species going, on the off-chance a true male
doesn't appear, or gets killed before he blooms.


It's the very same reason some strains are known for putting out natural bananas as they reach the end of their
cycle, and if they are allowed to bloom too long and they detect they have not yet been fertilized by male pollen.


It's all about the genetics, and the information passed down by the parents... if you were going to try to breed
a trait into a plant, you wouldn't pick the plants that exhibit the opposite trait to work with, now would you?
Of course not, and if you're trying to avoid a trait, you should not be breeding with those plants that display
the trait you're trying to avoid.


Again, this is all just the most basic, simple common sense from a breeding perspective, and it goes for
both plants and animals, and plants especially tend to be very easy to manipulate in just one human's lifetime.


For instance, it only takes five to seven generations of proper selective breeding to isolate a phenotype and
unify a cross, allowing virtually all the current offspring to display the traits you intentionally selected from
their great, great, great grandparents. It can be done in a little over a year, to a year and a half! Plants work fast.



As an example... I recently (late last year) took a single tri-cotyledon/tri-foliar male from a fresh Trainwreck, POG#8
and Chocolope cross, to continue breeding with, and only selected the same male-type offspring to produce
the following generation, and just three generations later, I have virtually every male in this particular line growing
with three nodes per branch cluster... here are two from the last crop;






I use the exact same techniques to isolate and remove rare phenotypes from a main cross, to allow the 'normal' green
plants to continue with even more uniformity, and encourage anything from a high CBD content, and high THC
content, or even start news lines of purple plants, high in anthocyanins, analgesic flavanoid-derived pigments, found
to some degree in many cannabis plants, and found at the highest rate in those which naturally turn hues of red,
purple and blue.
They aren't just 'pretty' or for show; they are VERY medicinally valuable, because they contain a highly effective and
non-psychoactive, non-narcotic analegisic!


You can take a single pack of non-uniform seeds, all of whom had the same mother and father, and in less than two
years, if you know what you're doing, you'll have several distinct and wildly different variations that all
technically share the same name.


A revegging Red Crown widow cutting, isolated and removed from pure White Widow, with new branches just
popping out...




A 'Purple' POG#8...




A normal Frost POG... ten years ago, their ancestors came from the same pack of seeds. It's why they are numbered,
before eventually having an entirely new name applied.





And a second generation Frost POG X Purple Widow (the Red Crown's predecessor).





All that was accomplished by taking the rare blue-to-purple hued plants, from strains not commonly known for
exhibiting much color, and using them as the sole breeders to begin new lineages. It took less than two years to
achieve uniformity, and less than five years to perfect in (and in all honestly) quite a pathetically-small grow space
of less than 30 - 50 plants of multiple heritage per each rotation.



As a matter of fact, if genetics didn't matter, and somehow were not passed down to the next generations,
cross-breeding would be a big waste of time.



Not to mention the new tests that can confirm whether or not your plant has the hermaphroditic gene, during
the first week of germination... those would be a huge waste of time, if such a genetic trait didn't exist and could
somehow 'magically' not be passed down!



Even humans now have their genes screened, to prevent inadvertently passing down certain illnesses, cancers, deformities
and diseases. If the two people with just the wrong genetic makeup have children, it can create a medical nightmare for
the child.
Even people of certain ethnic backgrounds, have higher and lower occurrences of various illnesses, due to the localization
of their families, which ultimately leads to passing those traits down from one generation, to the next.




Try using the search feature here, or better you should use google, and try broadening your horizons beyond
cannabis while you research if you need to have a look at the bigger picture before you understand... it's not a 'magic'
plant, in that broadly, it does not deviate that far from the way genetics work with any species.



Finalizing your opinions, based solely on a random, or happenstance-occurrence in your own grow room without any
control to compare it to, is certainly not the most scientific approach.


It's definitely not how I accomplished any of my own breeding, I'm not embarrassed to admit that I had to learn from
both my own experiences, and by taking advantage of all the knowledge, already available on the topic.



You'll find there's a TON of better-tested information out there, just waiting for you, if you have a small read around.

 

My last grow hermied a little bit on me. (Feminised blue mystic from nirvana.) So far I have found a dozen or so seeds but he bud is still very smokeable. I saved most of the seeds but only as backups in case my next order doesn't make it to my mailbox. For what it costs to grow them out, I don't mind taking my chances with it.
I should add that I only grow one plant at a time so I am not worried about mass pollination and I am not breeding at all, just growing smoke.

 

Absolutely, I agree completely. However, that doesn't invalidate my post.

Again, if anything this validates my post about breeders being biased. With all due respect, of course.

As much as I don't want to talk genetics with a breeder, I do know that genetic mutations happen by chance. Matter of fact, Darwin's theory is based on random mutations that either survive in the next generation or die off. Natural selection is the complete opposite of selective breeding, as much as I appreciate your insight into my personal beliefs. Anybody who has gotten a runt from a breeder knows that it's a crapshoot for those who aren't fully licensed, globe-trotting cannabis breeders.

Good traits can be passed on to the next generation, again, nothing that you've posted here invalidates my post. With genetic manipulation you can predict an outcome with a certain degree of probability, absolutely. What you are showing with your pics is nothing new.

What you aren't considering is that YOU know your genetics because YOU'VE traveled the globe doing what most of us can only dream of doing. What if you came across a new strain tomorrow? Would you tell me then that the chances of it being a hermie AREN'T some random percentage? Well, that's the position that everybody who DOESN'T BREED THEIR OWN SEEDS finds themselves in. I'm very happy for you, that you can manipulate and predict genetic patterns across generations of cannabis plants, but most of us don't.

I'm terribly sorry that I found a hermie that doesn't produce all hermie seeds, contrary to popular (breeder) lore. Must be that somebody manipulated it's DNA because it's impossible for something like that to happen naturally, right?

Again, all due respect bad kitty, love all your other posts.