New Idea...

I'd like to be abel to buy pollen and skip the whole growing process for males, less time, less space, less energy!! boy would life be good if I could pollenate one plant with several types of pollen.

 

Anyone who breeds and knows what breeding is all about already keeps father plants for this purpose. The whole process of breeding is finding a good F1 mother and using the pollen from successive males to back cross into this F1 mother. A model male is much more difficult to find than a model female.

You can keep F1 pollen for using on other F1 females, however what good would it do when the whole process for finding and stabilizing a unique, and/or model female is using pollen from the well selected males from several successive back crosses.

There would be no difference in just pollinating a F1 female from an F1 male to make F2 offspring and using pollen acquired from another source of F1 pollen since you are eliminating one of the most important process of breeding; which is male selection.

I have several strains I have worked on, and the sole reason I am not working them right now is b/c I do not have the space to grow several 100 plants for the purpose of selection. Doing a true hobby breeding project takes 100's of plants, both males and females. The breeders which do serious breeding projects grow 1000's. Breeders know that the unique phenotype which all breeders seek is about 1/1000. Those of us who do finally find that unique male to match to the F1 female mother usually end up cloning this male to keep a supply of pollen available to produce more F1 seeds. This takes not only years of hard work, but 1000's upon 1000's of plants. I have 22 indoor and 8 outdoor crops of several 100 plants of each of the 3 strains use din a Thai cross I worked for over 8 yrs. This does not count the endless trail of clones both male and female, and the F1 mothers from both sets of crosses used to create the strain. So to me, pollen would be worthless b/c it would not give me the selection needed to create a new strain and/or back cross a unique & rare phenotype.

This does not include the many who will try to use feminised seeds only to see how much tme they just wasted tryng to use good F1 pollen on a chemically altered, stressed, and substandard female F1 which has gone through the process of being feminised.

 

LESSISMORE: I have made a ton of F1 crosses but now that I am a little older the lack of space to play with is a major problem. With males needing thier own area its just a bitch to pull off. if a company shipped pollen and had a good reputation I would be all over it. I mean wouldn't any breeder? I'm doing a cross right now and I have to make sacrifices that are a pain in the ass to get it done, plus if something happens to this grow I'll be set back on my outdoor grow. So you see my situation. I just make a cross and cube it out and just keep back crossing selectivly for ever. And what about "feminized pollen" that would be the shit, your F1 would be all female and you could get a quicker look at the progeny.

 

Yes, but it is still opening the door to the same problems we have now in the genetic make up of seeds. Nobody would know what was what, and most reputable breeders use their full available space to research and create new strains, and/or find new phenotypes. We would never know what was what and if we were getting exactly what we wanted. Since you breed, you would know a F1 cross is only as successful as the selections used for the parents. Male selection is far more important than female selection; i.e.: a model, and/or unique pheno F1 female can be found in about 1 out of every 50 seeds, where a model F1 male can only be found in about 1 out of every 1000 seeds. The better the male selection, the better chance we have of creating a successful F1 hybrid.

I cloned an F1 TrainWreck cut over 100 times b/c finding a male partner for her only came after growing about 400 Santa Marta plants in the search of this model male to create the F1 mother of the cross. In the successive back crossing of this strain; I grew over 1000 plants in the first 2 generations and another 300+ in the 3rd generation for the true father used in stablizing the cross. By using bulk pollen from resources outside of our breeding projects, we do not know what we are getting or how it was selected; so the selection process is cut in half and we are left with a shot in the dark as to whether the cross will be succesful or a bust. We shared pollen among ourselves in various grow circles I have been associated with; however we knew the exact source and genetics of the pollen we were getting. With all the F1 X F1 crosses, feminised seeds, and auto(Ruderalis) genetics out there, for every trustworthy breeder selling pollen, there would 50 others selling us bullshit and telling us it is the cats meow.

Just look at one reseller; Attitude. 64 seperate companies, over 40 of them sell female seeds as well. Out of the 64, there are only 5 or 6 I would personally deal with for seeds; out of the 40+ selling female seeds, there are only 3 I would deal with. I have grown seeds from over 100 seed companies since they started to establish themselves in 1985. Most of these companies sell on the fact that most who purchase seeds have never grown a true F1 hybrid, furthermore they trust the fact that less than 1% have ever grown a true breeding line. They also know that even if there is that slight chance this customer is one of those less than 1% growers, it will be at least 2 months before they realize they were duped; also considering germinating cannabis seeds is illegal in most countries, they have the cop-out of "you just broke the law" and have this in their disclaimer on their sites. So please explain to me how dealing with pollen would be different? How could you promise me I'm getting what I paid for? You can't, just like you cannot promise me a White Widow from one producer will grow just as true as a White Widow from another; in fact, you cannot even promise me one or both of the places are even selling me White Widow genetics. Pollen would open this up to even more disparity and more tainting of the gene pool than what we have already witnessed over the last 15 yrs or so.

That is just my personal feelings on the subject.

 

Well put lessismore. First off, and probably much more important to anyone else reading than the rest of this message... which seed banks you trust?

Also, I have a friend back home who grows TrainWreck (sounds like if you were doing TrainWreck breeding programs you were obviously not using the bullshit fem job Greenhouse is trying to sell, so you may be from far northern California too... or you took a trip for a clone. Thats an assumption and you know what is said about assumptions), anyway, my buddy has this kick ass, gooey, smelly, pure TW strain under a small 12 light setup (along with some old school norcal Purps too), and he just clones each successive generation a couple of weeks before he throws them into bud. He has been doing this for five years, and our buddy in Arcata he got the cuttings of both strains from had them going that way for at least three or four years too.

Will this weaken the plant? Does it become more succeptable to mold, mites, or any other harmful influence (even fert. burn, or slower recovery from wilting, etc.)? There is no such thing as a male TW, so will my favorite weed in the universe evenually disappear? I am really concerned about this!

You know after trimming, smoking, hashing, and doing whatever else I could with that weed for most of my teenage and young adult years, I never once found a seed in any indoor stuff, but I have found some seeds in some outdoor TrainWreck grown above a little town called montgomery creek in Shasta County, California. It was dubbed "The Kill From The Hill", and the seeds grew into medium sized, beautiful, seemingly stabilized outdoor plants that were aparantly 100% wreck. Eventually the same growers in Montgomery Creek were growing some of the most beautiful pot I have ever seen. Baseball sized nuggets that were mistakably indoor super-hydro looking, and it was all outdoor TW. I miss that fucking weed so much, and I have never seen anything close to it in 15 years.

 

Well, GHSC claim TW is of Kush origin, and in the same description claim it to be the true Arcata cut. You seem to know TW and know it is a sativa dom. strain w/ no Kush lineages at all in it's genetic make-up. I have true cut I acquired form an old grow asociate in Trinity Co. and for fear of losing my mother, I used a Santa Marta Columbian landrace to recreate the strain; true cut mother pollinated by numerous successive back crosses fom F1-F4 males, then a father was kept form the F5 and it was inbred with the true mother for 6 generations now. The Columbian TW cross is slightly different, for I used cuts off the same true TW mother, but I pollenated her with the Santa Marta and then selected a F1 mother from this offspring to back cross into. The recreated TW has a diesel/pinesol scent; a true trademark of the true TW cut, it is dark green with hues of blue when properly dried and cured.

GHSC's TrainWreck is just another example of fuking up the gene pool of a very nice strain. The claim it is from the true Arcata cut in the description, then contradit themselve sin the Attitude video to claim it came from unknown origin and is of Kush lineages. Just another example of Franco not knowing WTF he is taking about; which has to make on like myself question his breeding capablities and exprience.

This is why the commercial distribution of pollen is a bad idea. Anyone can pollen chuck and call themselves a breeder. Commercial sources for pollen would not only take out the selection process of breeding, it would begin to taint gene pools of true breeding lines b/c none of us would now exactly what we are getting. Trading pollen mong various grow circles and among hobby breeders is common and anyon doin any kind of real breeding project(hobby and/or serious) knows another which they can acquire pollen from. OG Kush was created this way, a very special Chemdawg cut was pollinated by very spcial Lemon Thai/Old World Pakistani male which was acquired from another grower/breeder in the area.

 

Thanks. I'm heading back home in a month or two to pick up some clones. TW, Fire OG, and this local norcal bud called Eraser that nobody has ever heard of.

Two questions are left unanswered though:

Which seed banks do you trust?

Will a multi-generation cloned plant lose vigor and potency?

 

I trust Flying Dutchman(Eddie is a good guy, and I would trust several strains they carry, but not all.), Mr. Nice(Shanti & Neville are ncredible breeders and probably the most experienced out of all the breeders w/ the exception of Sam; plus they have all the true mothers and fathers which were used in the strains they carry.), TGA(Mz Jill & Subcool are both very good breeders.), DJ Shorts(what can anyne say, one of the best.), Serious Seeds(Simon is a very good breeder, and I would trust any strain they carry.), Sensi(Ben is great guy and been in the game a very long time; however I would only trust the true genetics he acquired from Neville; G-13, NL, Skunk #1, Haze), Mandala(Simone is a very good breeder and understands fair prices and well bred & stablized strains keep business.), Nirvana(he may have started by creating and distributing F2's but he stills puts out some very fine strains and breeds with very fine genetics.).

I kept my TW cut for about 5 yrs by successively cloning her. I never noticed any variation in gene expression, and no loss of potency; of course she was the queen of the mother room and was pampered a little more than the others. I would have to say it all depends on the conditions one keeps their mothers in. I have seen frm other growers once a mother is stressed or poorly taken care of the cuts will show very different phenos, however I never ask if the potency was effected.

Hope this answers your questions. I have a few other laces I would somewhat trust on certain strains, but these are the ons I trust the most overall.

 

are you saying (LESSISMORE) that if your favorite breeder, who has already done a fine job "selectively" breeding and chosing his male stock, offered "select pollen" you would'nt use it? and you had a bad ass strain of ww, for example, you wouldnt want to cross it with a new male that is a few more gererations in to the selection process. It took forever for me to stablize and cube out booth my strains and they were VERY uniform when I started. The selection process was done in 3 locations with help from friends. HOWEVER! if your backing an F1 Than any male you have will do the job as long as to keep crossing the progeny back to the original mother. were not talking about breeding the next white widow, just obtaining a worthwhile F1 and accessing High quality pollen to make the F1 with, then the back crosses are made with that progeny for future generations (cubeing) also, if that same TRUSTED breeder offered the pollen as FEMINIZED then you would get an all female F1 and you would not even have to grow the male strain at all. at that point you would be sitting on a ton of great fems. Remember that untill recently all our MJ was breed guerilla style with exactly the same methods I am using today. The "circle of friends" gets your numbers up for selecting mates. This is how we got strains like NORTHERN LIGHTS and even CHEESE they were UNDERGROUND strains grown in many small batches and crossed wisely over time.

 

The male selection is important regardless. I have discussed this with many breeders and most agree it is just not as simple as passing along F1 pollen. Too many variables, and the shelf life of pollen is not good, nor is the stability.

As for Cheese, it is not, and never will be a hybrid. UK Cheese was not a bred strain, it was a unique pheno discovered when growing out some Skunk #1 seeds from the Seed Bank. Places selling Cheese may have acquired true cuts, but anything they are selling is not true UK Cheese. Northern Lights was created as an outdoor strain by some lower Northern Michigan growers b/c the grow season is limited. Many rumors surround it's exact lineage, but Cambodian and Viet Nam strains seem to come up most.

My breeding projects have always been part guerilla style and part indoors. When I was busted in 87 I was using an old abandoned house, a 24 X 60 pole barn, and the 12.5 acres it all sat on; about 8 of the acres were wooded. Saying stabilizing a strain takes forever is an understatement. It is like saying you can grow 50 plants of various strains and breed them and have a new hybrid. Thai X took me over 6 yrs just on the first half of the cross; it has now been close to 10 yrs and I think the last group of plants I grew finally are showing very uniform development.

Acquiring pollen would be great in collectives, growing communities, as you put it; "close circle of friends" but not by means where it has to be handled and shipped. It is just not that stable and does not have the best shelf life IMHO.

I did some work making my own female seeds just to keep a good stock of seeds on the chance I lost my mothers, as I did back in 87, and as I recently did over the past 1.5 yrs. Having feminised seeds, if produced correctly, gives you almost an exact duplicate of the F1 mother that produced them. I'm not a fan of fem seeds, however if I want to keep certain characterisitics of a strain in case I lose the mother, it has to be done.

You are basically missing my point in all this though. It is not about being a good and/or bad idea. It is about what will develop once one breeder begins to make a profit off pollen. With pollen, it will snowball quicker due to the internet and greed it will create just as it has with seeds. That is my point. We will begin to see 100 places claiming to have this or that strain of pollen with no promises it is what they say. One bad batch of pollen, or using pollen which is not what we were led to believe to be this, could be just some feral hemp pollen and our F1 mother is now geneticaly fucked. We are seeing thi in uto-flowerng strains now. In order to keep the auto gene consistent in any of the now 100's of auto hybrids out there, 20% of the genetic make up has to be Ruderalis, so that means auto strains are 20% feral hemp.

I just think it is a bad idea and we should stick to our basics. I do not have room just as you do not, however laws are changing everyday, which I feel will open many doors for people like us to breed, and preserve various strains.

Now what about this idea; using male cuts rather than just the pollen. The male clusters could be cut and shipped just as clones are. We have the option of rooting it and growing it as a father, or we could simply place it in a cup of water and allow the custers to open and collect fresh pollen. Now that would work better IMHO, not to mention take out the stability issues and increase the shelf life of the pollen itself.

 

LESSISMORE: I guess I should make my basic Idea of breeding more clear as I now realize that I may have confused you by not being as clear as I should have been.
First I would NEVER use F1 pollen for anything, My need for the pollen is to create the F1 not change or enhance it in any way. A good example of this is making a good sativa/indica cross for the purpose of an F1 of my own. I dont have the space to grow out two strains and separate males and get all scientific with it , I dont run a labratory style breeding facility. so my plan would be to grow out the indica strain because it usually takes less time and space than the sativa. Now with the STABLE indica in hand it would save me the time and energy and potential of mishap to just order the pollen of the sativa strain (from a trusted sorce) to complete the cross now with my F1 in hand cubeing can be accomplished in 4-5 generations (I know cubeing means 3 but...) Also as a breeder you know that enviornmental influences can hide a lot of things and influence the phenos you will see, that being said, it would be nonproductive to choose any progeny for back crossing that was not of your own enviornment. A lot of strains will "landrace" very quickly Afgahni is a good example, in northern climates affy can adapt very quickly to its surroundings and in a few generations it can look like a totally different plant even though the gene pool has not changed. As I select males for cubeing the F1 I am not so picky about it because the goal is 3-5 backcrosses from it own progeny in this stage of breeding the male influences are being removed from consideration. The mission here is to pull "ALL" the character of the F1 mother into the progeny, nothing of the male is usefull to me as I am after the F1 qualities ONLY. After I am Happy with the unifority of the progeny (about 5 backcrosses) I start to selectively choose male with phenotypes of interest to me, doing so before cubeing is done is just plain fruitless, and I dont try to enhance a pheno that the F1 mother dosen't already show because it becomes a huge mundane project at that point.

 

i see what yous are sayin and i have to be with the opinion that if you want pollen. you dont buy fem seeds . it seemed simple enough to me . geting good males to start hobbyst breed is almost as easy as finding a good mother . if your not growing out a bunch of plants at one time just for breeding . it seems kinda pointless to buy some shit of the shelf as a qiuck fix . i like the idea of buying whatever i want but i am kind of an old school guy when it comes to things like pedigree. like with my pitbulls i just wouldnt want to buy dog sperm off the internet. i want that doggy to be up close n personal . i want to look in his eyes so to speak before i think yep, this is the one.

as a new grower i find all these seed bank wars n femminized this n that to quite apolling . to me its just a trend to super dunk a bud so to speek n think youve got the next best thing. n yet all the retarded stoneheads buy the shit because they think its gonna blow their mind . truth is its just a blown market and they cater to idiots n businessmen. i dont think arjon can grow for shit but i bet a pinkie that that dude thats in those video's next to him can. it simply doesnt matter to them anymore i guess.

they are in control of thier demographic . what about the fifty other places doing the same shit . n u want to buy more shit fro them.

i started growing to become independant from all that.
all i want from a seed bank . first n foremost what they tell me what i am realy buying . second the traditional pure oldschool strains , and the hybrids, pure sativas, pure indicas .

not all the bubble doubl chocochunks every tard n highschool who hasnt aquired a taste for life yet wants n raves about.

i think it would be so much better if we had the choice to cross what we wanted . not have them bred to extiction because no one bought them anymore.

i dont want you to get me wrong here i am not bashing you by any means . i would do the same things that you are doing in breeding if i was .

i want to buy solid n get solid . its hard enough let alone destroy whats left . i havent even gotten to try some land races yet n the way people think about strains n quality ,not to mention how most people do business,

it seems i will never be able to have any pure breeds .