sorry for bumping a 7 year old thread but since there has not been any new breakthroughs with autos and since i dont want to start a new thread i figured a comment shouldnt hurt.
- autoflowering strains - are only good for outdoor growing if you live at a 40 or higher latitude especially if you are looking for a strain that has a 60+ day flowering time. this will give us more northern growers a chance to complete a grow without worrying about late august and september frost at which point your plant will normally only be 2-3 weeks into flower at this point and latitude this far north. but other than that they are completely useless and i believe a complete and total waste of breeders time to even meddle with when they could be using their time perfecting and stabilizing current strains and creating new crossbreeds.
i personally dont grow outside because the weather is to unpredictable and in my 25 years of growing over 2000 different strain types and varieties indoor is vastly superior than outdoor when it comes to quality and potency so i would never have a need for autoflower. i personally like to be in control of my plants and grow them to their maximum potential.
so in conclusion unless you live in the borean tundra and the frost will hit the grow before the daylight hours get short enough to trigger plant flowering then autoflower is a joke and a complete waste of time. personally i believe that the creation of autoflowering strains is a step backwards in cannabis culture and research because we have something called light timers that cancels out the need for autoflowering strains and the thing that is really annoying is that many many breeders and seedbanks are flooding their stores with this thrash making people like me not even want to deal with them or say anything good about them.