If you were a breeder, what strains would you cross?

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
So, I was sitting here smoking a bowl of shwag (that's probably the first time those words have ever been typed on here) and wondering what my chances of herms could be, BC I would really love to cross a couple of my plants that came from attitudes seeds and they're all feminized.

I've seen quite a few people on here talk about stuff that they either are breeding or will breed, or have bred or whatever, and well quite frankly I just think its cool as shit. This is how scientists learned all about genotypes and phenotypes, dominant and recessive genes and so on. I would absolutely love to get into crossing strains when I get my setup more dialed in and get my thumb a little greener, but in the meantime I can't help but sit and think of the possibilities I could have off of the 8 strains alone from attitudes.

Personally, I'm really hoping I have a chance to breed my blue dream and my white widow. I was thinking of calling it "albino nightmare" lol. I also figured while I was at it, i could breed 4 sativas (I have blue dream, sour diesel, og kush, and critical super silver haze) with either the widow or my Bubba kush and calling it "Johnny #5" or "short circuit" (one of my all time favorite movies). Sucks, I lost my northern lights when I was dealing with cold nighttime temps :(.

Aaaaanyways, I'm really interested to see what people either have the chance at breeding, and want to breed, or what people would want to breed if they could breed anything.
 

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
Nice, yeah I have never tried herijuana but I've heard its awesome.

A strain I recently fell in love with in Colorado, golden goat, is sooooo tastey and has such a unique smell, I would love to grow some of it and try crossing with lambs breath or something.
 

MYOB

Well-Known Member
You need to learn a lot about breeding & genetics. Like back to Mendel's Peas.

Simply pollinating a female with a male of a different strain isnt breeding. You dont end up with a new strain. Much more to it.

Im no breeder but I am sure they dont use feminized seeds for their stock.

I leave that stuff up to people who really devote their lives to it. I'd rather just get really good at growing it.
 

WayBaked

Active Member
You need to learn a lot about breeding & genetics. Like back to Mendel's Peas.

Simply pollinating a female with a male of a different strain isnt breeding. You dont end up with a new strain. Much more to it.

Im no breeder but I am sure they dont use feminized seeds for their stock.

I leave that stuff up to people who really devote their lives to it. I'd rather just get really good at growing it.
^

Even if you grow from reg F1 seeds and cross a male with a female, the seeds produced will be F2 not F1 so they won't be as good. Then there's a lot of back-crossing and elimination required to stabilize what you've created.

F1 hybrids are the cross of 2 unrelated seedlines, F2 hybrids are a cross of two F1 hybrids.

Technically you could call an F3 an F1 "of" the 2 F2s... but there's really no adopted standards for it... point being that the genetics still need to be stabilized and undesired phenotypes bred out before you can really call it a strain.

One of the problems being that if you crossed 2 of your plants to create a "new strain", every single one of those seeds might create a drastically different plant. It can't be considered a strain if it comes out different every time. Each seed will contain a different combination of their parents genetics, so you pick out the plants with desirable phenotypes (both the same strain, the new cross you are trying to create) and cross those again, plant those seeds, repeat the process until you've got your new strain.

(before anyone gets technical, technically no hybrids are 'true breeding', and anything F3+ can be simplified to be considered F2 of its parents, even if its parents were F2.
F1 as the heterozygous offspring between two homozygous but unrelated seedlines, which gives all of its seeds uniform phenotype but isn't true breeding, this is useful for seed customers though as they can reasonably expect what to get when they buy F1 seeds. This also protects the breeder as nobody can create F1 seeds without the P1 parents or advanced techniques)

It's definitely doable if you are interested enough just do research into it, it will be a lot of fun to learn if you had a lot of fun learning about growing.

I'd love a cross of pre98 Bubba Kush that gives it more of a light, fruity flavor, but they're already so good I don't bother to mess with the genetics, I just grow from clone or F1 seed.
 

past times

Well-Known Member
I like thinking of the new names that I would call them. Blueberry x g13 = secret service. that's the only one I have done (accidently). way bakes is right about the breeding to actuall get stable strains...but it is not like an f1 I going to be crap. just as dank as parents from what I have seen
 

WayBaked

Active Member
I like thinking of the new names that I would call them. Blueberry x g13 = secret service. that's the only one I have done (accidently). way bakes is right about the breeding to actuall get stable strains...but it is not like an f1 I going to be crap. just as dank as parents from what I have seen
F2s will indeed grow up to mimic their parents but they will not contain what is called "hybrid vigor". F1 seeds with hybrid vigor will grow up to 25% faster and larger than F2+ seeds of the same strain. YMMV.

Also I was going off on 2 separate tangents in my original post and it came out confusing. Wording could've been much better... there's 2 separate ideas there.

If you want to start crossing, you should push the strain to at least the 4th generation to breed out undesired phenotypes.

The reason F2 seeds are so much cheaper than F1 seeds is that you lose the uniform phenotype expected from F1 seeds.

After F2 you inbreed the strain with itself, and only crossbreed the plants that show the desired phenotypes, and you can just smoke the plants that show recessive phenotypes.
 

WayBaked

Active Member
what happens in the third gen?
I'm talking out of knowledge not experience here, but as I understand it:

Say I wanted to cross my White Widow with my Warlock and make... idk White Warlock.

I have F1 white widow seeds and F1 warlock seeds.

Say I get a Warlock female and a White Widow male each with my desired phenotypes, and I let the White Widow pollinate the Warlock.

Now I have a bunch of White Warlock hybrid seeds. I plant these, and grow some White Warlock females and males. I pick out the best phenotypes of this batch and in-breed those to create F2 White Warlock seeds. Or you can cross them with their parents to create BC1 seeds.

Repeat the process and within a couple more generations you should have bred out the undesired phenotypes. After extensive in-breeding your plants should become almost homogenous (90%+).

To stabilize the strain you backcross it with an earlier generation with the desired phenotypes.

It's also important to clone each generation and grow them out into full flower and cure the smoke so that you can see yields and potency of the plants so you can pick out the best genetics.
 

VV Cephei

Active Member
If I had the space to do it, I'd grow out several packs and choose the few best males and females from Northern Lights, Skunk, Afghani and Haze and start from there.
 

mr sunshine

Well-Known Member
i would mix og kush woppa and girl scoutt cookies and ak 47 and blueberry. and blue dream and grandaddy and blue smerf and pineapple kush and bannana. kush and headband with some purple kripto
 

VV Cephei

Active Member
I've had NL#5 x Haze and it was amazing. Northern Lights is one of my favorite flavors.
I had a NL#5 x Haze a long time ago, it was one of a couple of strains that I really regret not still having a clone of. But yea, NL is great!
 

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
Wow, yeah I knew that stabilizing the genetics and trying to get the right pheno took time. That actually surprises me that they can get relatively stable phenos after such few generations. The people I know that grow from seed have spent years with outdoor plants trying to keep all the good genetics.
 

ThorGanjason

Well-Known Member
If I had the space to do it, I'd grow out several packs and choose the few best males and females from Northern Lights, Skunk, Afghani and Haze and start from there.

Lost my northern lights x skunk #1 plant a week or two ago :(. I've heard they are this crazy resilient plant but even my bag seed did better.
 

WayBaked

Active Member
Wow, yeah I knew that stabilizing the genetics and trying to get the right pheno took time. That actually surprises me that they can get relatively stable phenos after such few generations. The people I know that grow from seed have spent years with outdoor plants trying to keep all the good genetics.
As I understand it you want to go for at least 4 generations, and this can take quite some time as you must clone & flower out each generation to pick out the best phenos.
 
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