breeder seeds vs crossers

missnu said:

I don't understand why it matters...
I think I have said it before, but as long as it gives me a decent amount of the caliber of MJ I have "grown" accustomed to I don't care if it is a breed or a cross, or a cross of a cross, or a cross of a breed rebred with a cross...

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i think the problem is all too often some of the variations that come out in crosses dont ALL give you that same "caliber" you want. but with a strict breeding program those traits could be more stable and dominant in offspring and it wouldn't be bullshit guesswork having to buy 3 10 packs to find one pheno your looking for is bullshit especially if the 10 packs almost cost 200!!

pron said:

Just out of curiosity. What strains have you created in 15 years of "breeding?"

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afg/afgsk x afgsk/afghz....epskhz x eq....next year imma do mhz/afgsk x afg/afgsk. wat crosses have u made?

heres a great new breeder, im sure youre all gunna be rushing to buy jointbreaths itc genetics seeds when the attitude start selling them.

[video=youtube;1rEiIhbWEDw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rEiIhbWEDw&feature=plcp[/video]

What a fucking joke. ^^^

lmao hes gunna ruin himself when everybody posts his test grows and theres a ton of variation

AlL I have to say is that I am not a beginner at growing, but I am in no way a master grower. I would think that you would have to be a master grower to become a breeder. Most people here on RIU try to act like they are breeders, but I can tell just by the way they talk on here that they aren't. As far as crossing a strain anyone can do that without much trouble. All you need is some male pollen and a female in flower, and there you go. You got yourself a cross. I don't care for such crosses because I think you will get so much variation in your phenos. I like stable strains with the same 2-4 phenos to it. I like good and stable strains that will grow to give me some big frosty buds!

variation is what's good though. that's where you get all of your phenos from. i'd have been less impressed with my masterkush were it not for that one midnight scarlet pheno and there wouldn't have been a cinnamon girl pheno of jack herer without variation.

if you truly want uniformity, you want clones.

if there's an unstable strain you want improved, just back cross it yourself & select a pheno.

i guess i'm less picky. if a plant gives me what i'm after, i don't care about the method it was bred and even accept feminized seeds.

there are definitely breeders who put serious effort into the selection process and the words gets around on their gear.

This is from that other thread about TGA genetics and stability.

Breeder vs. "Crosser" (aka "pollen chucker"):
https://www.rollitup.org/seed-strain-reviews/543083-tga-strains-stable-33.html#post7707338


Breeder: Someone who takes multiple established landrace or hybrid lines, crosses them, selects from their offspring to isolate specific desired traits from each of the parents, then recrosses (or back-crosses) and reselects from succeeding generations until the resulting progeny both have the desired traits and have been genetically stabilized into their own true-breeding line (or close to it). To do this right typically takes selections involving hundreds of plants, and at least five generations, meaning any "breeding" project intended to create a TRUE new strain will necessarily take over a year, typically closer to two years, and in some cases even longer than that. Plant count constraints mean that true breeding projects are typically not something that amateurs can undertake.

Pollen-chucker: The most blatant example of this is someone who takes two plants (which may not even themselves represent stable lines), crosses them into an F1 hybrid then renames the F1 into a "new" strain and sells it as such. The trend here has been for the new wave breeders to start these projects using elite "clone only" strains (which themselves are usually hybrids).

The "better" pollen chuckers may do some backcrossing and/or selection over a few generations to try and reduce the offspring variability.

Hybrid vigor means that its definitely possible to get exceptionally good plants this way, but without going through multiple generations of selection, they're effectively "mutts". Unless the cross was done using only F1 seeds from established true breeding lines, plants bred this way aren't stable (in the sense that many different phenotypes may occur in a pack of seeds), and since hermaphrodite-prone genes haven't been selected out over multiple generations, these plants may have a greater-than-usual chance of going hermie.

Note that in both cases, the crosser is typically starting with genetics they didn't have a hand in creating. Ultimately all medical cannabis lines go back to landrace strains that have been selectively bred by people for literally thousands of years, and nobody alive that's breeding can honestly say that they didn't originally start off with genetics that haven't been worked over many many generations before by other breeders/growers.

But there is quite a difference between the two categories in what is being done, and why.

hazey grapes said:

if there's an unstable strain you want improved, just back cross it yourself & select a pheno.

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On paper. . .maybe this sort of thing is possible. In the "real world". . .not so much.

First of all, if you're buying someone else's hybrid line (either as a clone, or as seeds) then virtually by definition you don't have access to its parents to do a true backcross. If you did have said access. . .why would you be buying the clone/seeds to begin with?. No parents, no backcross. FAIL.

If by the term "backcross" you (incorrectly) mean crossing the plant to either itself or to a "sibling" plant from its generation, then again, virtually by definition that sort of cross between two hybrids of similar lineage is a guaranteed way to get a gazillion different phenotypes in the ensuing F1 generation.

If you're really starting with an unusual (ie "elite") and interesting phenotype, more likely than not you're not going to find a better phenotype in any small number of F1 offspring. Instead of creating something better than the parent, you're quite likely to end up with something worse.

Sure, *IF* you are experienced in doing selection (which isn't always as easy as you might think) AND have the ability to do selections involving dozens or hundreds of plants, and repeat over multiple generations (or do mulitple backcrosses), it may be possible to do selections to partially stabilize hybrid genetics like this. (IE to do the work that the original breeder wouldn't/couldn't).

But how many individual growers have the ability (let alone desire) to do this?

If this were so easy to do, the original grower would have already done it, instead of leaving it for you!

kentuckyboy said:

A I would think that you would have to be a master grower to become a breeder.

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I'd say that on paper it isn't absolutely necessary; if you have the genetics knowledge and/or a lot of experience breeding plants in general, you wouldn't necessarily have to have a lot of experience actually cultivating cannabis in particular to be a good breeder. In fact, you could effectively "subcontract" out the actual growing part to growers you hire/work with, while you just planned out the overall breeding strategy and did the selections. So YOU wouldn't have to be a great grower to be a breeder, though you'd at least have to be working with one!

In most breeding projects, it is absolutely critical to have the ability to do good selections, and a certain amount of experience is necessary before you can do that.

In practice, even though you wouldn't necessarily "need" to be a master grower to be a good breeder, most of the top notch breeders are also themselves master growers. Even there, the bigger "name" breeders typically work with teams of growers to get the day to day "grunt" work of maintaining plants, taking clones, harvesting seeds, etc, done.

Most people here on RIU try to act like they are breeders, but I can tell just by the way they talk on here that they aren't.

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Well, I'm sure as hell NOT a breeder, don't claim nor pretend to be one.

While I think the idea of creating new strains has some appeal to any cannabis "fan", unlike some of the chatterers here, I know what it actually takes to do it, and, no thank you. . .I don't have the time, space, or inclination to mess with hundreds of plants over many generations to actually do this correctly. I'm happy to pay the real breeders to do the work for me, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel myself.

Furthermore, if you look at what's already out there, there are dozens if not dozens of dozens of excellent strains already on the market. There is precious little I'd say "needs" to exist that doesn't already. Off the top of my head, I can think of 1-2 projects to create potentially useful "niche" plants, that to the best of my knowledge don't already exist, but its not clear to me that these would be financially viable, let alone anything I would want to spend years of my life doing.

As far as crossing a strain anyone can do that without much trouble. All you need is some male pollen and a female in flower, and there you go. You got yourself a cross. I don't care for such crosses because I think you will get so much variation in your phenos.

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This depends on exactly what you are crossing. Cross hybrids, and you can end up with quite a variety of phenotypes.

On the other hand, if you're just doing a simple cross of two inbred lines, the resulting seeds you get shouldn't show much variation in phenotypes. But just about any of the "obvious" of these F1 crosses using established inbred lines have been done already, and in fact, many of them are even commercially available (eg NL#5 x everything, Big Bud x everything, White Widow x everything, Skunk #1 x everything, etc).

So while you could do these yourself, if you wanted to (ie just to see what they look like or to save money buying similar seeds), this isn't really "breeding".

Not very educational but it has been entertaining. Better than watching a monkey try to fuck a football.

I like mutts...you don't know what they will turn into...
But you know it will be a dog...
So if you were looking for a dog, and like surprises, then perhaps a "mutt" is for you...

you dont know until you germ the seeds and then harvest the buds, the smoke test will be all you need, if it smokes good, you got hundreds of f1's to pick from. home made hybrids can be great as long as you have good parents.

start with something good, get something better, as long as hybrid vigor is intact.

as to the mutt thing, that's why i'm so interested in testing my holy smokes malawi gold. it at least looks IBL and might be some seriously good breeding stock to start mutting about with. unlike reshuffled original big 5s. not in the bean selling biz either, just making my kind of head stash. if my malawi gold is as legit as it looks, then i KNOW that hit up with 9 week jack's cleaner 2 will be seriously awesome and lemony. looks like i'm influxing with the IBL invisible peeps. i'm selecting top quality genetics that have passed my personal testing too.

i keep inquiring specifically about top quality indoor sativa dominants and don't get much comparison over much beyond my own experience though i haven't gone digging through 40 pages of smoke reports either.

mutts?

call mother's finest a mutt. i seem to recall seeing all kinds of happy with all kinds of phenos there. i would have liked the juicy fruit one best myself for sure, but the maple syrup pheno was well liked too.

i wanna see Subcool and 15yob settle this with sockem-bobbers, it would make a great weed nerd episode.

Omgwtfbbq Indicaman said:

i wanna see Subcool and 15yob settle this with sockem-bobbers, it would make a great weed nerd episode.

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u think so

by the looks of everything mns seed sales are doing good. look at the attitude seed sales and many out of stock

another thread deleted.........wat the fuck happen to freedom of speech? ppl get mad and start crying bout the truth being told bout them. aint that a bitch, but u can say fuck greenhouse but u cant never say anything bad about SUB-PAR SEEDS.

So, other than talking shit, what's your point? What are you trying to accomplish with these threads? To put TGA Subcool out of business? Not gonna happen, man. The guy is too entrenched, and he's a great promoter/marketer. And despite what you would like to be true, the guy actually know his shit when it comes to soil gardening. Enough people don't care, don't know or are experienced enough to work with his seeds that it doesn't matter if they are unstable. They are still going to sell. (And from what I can tell from the reviews I have read, not all of them are hermie prone, and some are pretty potent.) To drum up business for other breeders? Then you're just a shill. To troll for fun? Well, you're OK at that but I have seen far better. You have gotten the SubHeads to circle the wagons and break out the pitchforks and torches, and that's always amusing, but hardly an accomplishment.

So what's your point man? Because so far you just look like a fairly uneducated, jealous person who is obsessed with Subcool. Before you say it, I am not a Subcool fanboy. I have bought one pack of his seeds (plushberry), and don't really plan on buying more since there are other things I want to try before TGA's stuff. So from someone who is pretty neutral... what's your point?

Also, why so focused on TGA, and not any of the dozens of other pollen chucker breeders out there?

Edit: as an aside: Your 1st amendment rights do not extend to a privately owned web forum. Your permission to be here is at the discretion of the website owner.