From my understanding the way it's done with a hermaphrodite plant is one female is stressed into producing male flowers and then using the pollen on another female, or just on itself. The idea being that if they're both genetically female then there would be no male dna present to produce male offspring. Although most people avoid this, as the hermaphrodite trait can be passed off into the offspring, even though it won't necessarily display. This can also be induced chemically, as Ganoo said, using colloidal silver, or giberallic acid to induce male flowering without actually making the plant into a hermaphrodite. I'm not 100% on the process, but there is plenty of information available around the internet.
Damn, I can't find it now, but last night as I was browsing 100s of seeds online, I read a description from one place of how they had gotten naturally occuring femized seeds through breeding techniques without using any chemicals or stressors. I will link it if I can find it again.
Let's see if this works...some useful info here...Yayyy! My first colloidal silver generator (photo) - International Cannagraphic Magazine Forums
Ok, I think I found the one, and I misunderstood a little bit. Sounds like actually all they do is stabilize it a little bit by taking am extra step. They cut clones from one mother, then of sounds like they use colloidal silver most likely on half of them to produce 'female pollen' they call it, but instead of using the seeds from the treated cuttings, they use the pollen from them on the other half of the untreated cuttings, and those are the femized seeds they sell. They are supposedly more stable. Is this a common and accepted way of backcrossing???
In the articles I have read from breeders regarding feminized seeds, they never pollinate the same plants that they have sprayed...they use the pollen from those to pollinate untreated plants only... Don't know if others do it differently, but that's what I have read...never tried it myself, so I have no first hand knowledge...
Agreed. The process is to first induce male flowers on a female plant but not to push the whole plant to hermie -- that is a common misconception. Only select budsites. This female's male flowers will produce feminized pollen because, as IF said, that female only has female DNA (X-chromosome) available to create the pollen, it has no Y chromosomes to create pollen that will spawn a male. That pollen is then used to pollinate a different female, not the same plant that produced the pollen. There is a trait in some MJ plants to produce seeds without pollination if the plant goes late into flowering without being pollinated. It's a survival trait -- the plant senses that the end of flower is near and thus death, and it "knows" it isn't pollinated so in a last-ditch effort to pass on its genes, strains with this trait can produce seeds on their own. Such seeds are female, in fact they are a virtual clone of the mother. You used to see some feminized seeds produced this way, but not much anymore because this tendency to produce seeds is passed on, so plants you try to grow from such seeds can bust out in seeds themselves, so ultimately an undesirable trait.
From what I have read about it, the forcing of the male sacks does introduce a Y chromosome to the pollen produced. To be more specific, the pollen looks like XX, but is actually XXy, where as the y is recessive/dormant. Once the y is in there, it cannot be bred or crossed out. I've heard this a few times, and I personally always stay away from any genetics that have been femmed at any point.
One question I've had about this, is should you use regular seeds then choose 2 females, or if you had fem seeds could you just use 2 of those. I've heard that has a greater chance for hermies than using regular seeds. If anyone knows about this please let me know. Also, The sites that you spray with the CS obviously can't be smoked, and I've read that you can't smoke anything that you used the CS on, but if you take a fem plant that has a dozen bud sites and spray 2 of them with the CS are the other 10 smokable? Also, the pollen you get from the plant after isn't laced with CS or anything is it? Does it infect the plant that gets pollinated at all? Thanks for any answers you guys have.
Putting seeds in a jar closed with banana peels and a wet paper towel around the seed (not completely) is known to cause more female seeds. The theory is that banana peels emit ethylene gas as it ripens. /edit - I'm high.
Ethylene gas has been shown to influence gender in some plants -- but not MJ. With many plants the gender is determined by environmental factors and, in fact, many plants the natural state is to be both male and female. MJ, on the other hand, is like humans, XX or XY chromosomes provide the genetic determination for gender. No banana peel can change that.
Well three for three is hard to argue with. I have never heard of banana peels in germination, and never tried it. However as an engineer I will just say that for me three data points, while significant is simply not enough data to draw any conclusion from. I myself germinated four regular O.G. Kush seeds. Planned on two males, all four were female. Now logically, think man I have 9 seeds left in that vile, how many males? I am almost afraid to plant more. But then again, my odds have not changed still 50/50. So 4 maybe 5 males left in the vile.
Jorge Cervantes writes about several successful strategies for increasing your female to male ratio, including higher temps and humidity while germinating. medical marijuana horticulture is the reference material.