If you could only choose one strain for breeding purposes, what would it be?

With the amount of orders reportedly being confiscated in recent months, it made me wonder. I like to think I have a half decent seed collection for growing purposes. Problem is, 90% of them are feminized and most are only single seeds that I got through promos or pick and mix, or packs from which I have saved a single seed. Of the 10% I have that are regular seeds, I don't think I would want to use them for making my own seeds unless I absolutely had to. This puts me in a pretty vulnerable position. If this European seed pipeline would suddenly dry up, I wouldn't be left with much to work with. Even if I lived some place where I could walk down the street to the neighborhood dispensary and buy clones I don't think I would like being at the mercy of that either. Which brings me to my next point.

Hypothetically,If you could only order a single pack of ten regular beans to use as breeding stock for the conceivable future, what would it be? Now, I know a lot of places sell regular beans in packs of five these days and you can also buy singles from pick and mix, so let's say for the purpose of this little thought experiment you can choose a total of 2 strains, as long as the total sum does not exceed ten seeds. What strain or strains do you choose?

Wow. This hurts my brain. I need some time.

First of all, I believe the premise of this question is flawed. If US customs can't stop thousands of kilos of coke and heroin from entering the country (and empirically, they can't), then there is no way they're going to be able to stop some hemp ceeds that take up little space and are easily concealed. At worst, it will just get harder (read "more expensive") to import in good ceeds; it will never be impossible.

Next, with rise of legal cannabis in Colorado, Washington State, and probably other places over time, the amount of domestic ceed supply is only going to go up. With demand for them only increasing, if ceeds get harder and harder to import, there will probably be a proportionate increase in availability of domestic ceeds. For example, in just a years time, its probable (though not definite) that any adult will be able to legally buy ceeds over the counter in CO. If you can buy BUDS illegally (and you can) it should still be possible to get mere ceeds.

On the actual question, I believe its flawed too.

If you've only got one pack of ceeds of an inbred line to start with, the only thing you can make are F1s, and that's not really "breeding". If that's the case, the "answer" is just to pick your favorite inbred line, and have at it. For the proverbial "desert island", if you could only have one, I think a good Skunk would make a pretty good package of potency, flavor, hybrid effect, and indoor/outdoor potential that would tend to do well in most settings.

If you want to do "breeding" (ie creating or stabilizing a new line via selection) you need to start with either two different inbred lines or a hybrid line.

Taking the question seriously, if you told me I was on the proverbial "desert island" and had to do all future growing AND breeding from just one pack of ceeds, what I'd want is a REGULAR pack of MIXED hybrid ceeds. Something like that would give me the maximum possible genetic diversity to do future selection from.

As a specific example, Mr. Nice Dreamtime, would really be ideal for this, since it should contain 15 (not just 10) ceeds, all regulars, all hybrids, which are mixtures of Northern Lights, Skunk, Haze, and Afghan. I think these may also contain White Widow (Brazillian sativa) genetics as well. So you're starting with a good mix of excellent quality indica and sativa genetics to work with for future breeding.

From that sort of genetic mix, *IF* you know what you're doing, and are patient, you can generate several different lines with traits you like. First step is to do a wide open pollination to preserve max genetic diversity from your pool. Then you cross the F1s from this to create a wide-open mix of phenotypes, and run initial selections from this pool to effectively isolate out your favorite traits from the pool and stabilize them.

No, you probably wouldn't be able to exactly replicate Northern lights, haze, etc, but starting with this pool, you could probably come up with some pretty good lines in their own right.

You could basically do the exactly same thing starting with a pack of unstable polyhybrids, though you'll probably have more genetic material to work with starting from a mixed pack, and therefore a better chance at developing a whole bunch of lines.

10 beans of my fav landrace all the way.

afghan kush

or.
5/5.

tga's ...jack the ripper (5)
or gage green ...grape stomper (5)
classic seeds ...humbolt purple (5)
raskals ...fire og (5)

on & on & on

whatever floats your boat... with a sativa/indica indica/sativa vibe
and 5 afghan kush.

i would find the 3 strains 1 highest in cbd i could. find 1 highest in thc i could find. and then my personal fave strain.... 3/3/3/1 and then one single seed for fun.. that should do it...

Why does everyone revert to the 'base' strains..the whites,skunks,ect..how come I can't take a seed,grow some dank,call it spacehoney or some shit,and if the powers and smokers and growers and breeders that be like it,and its uniquie and stable,can't it be accepted in cannibis societiey?...just curious...sonar..id grab whatever floats your boat the best..if your fav was NL#5 and sweettooth (just examples) then get them..play around with thhe different phenos..add a bag seed for suprises..I feel you're looking to breed for your head and not to start a seed company...

Gudkarma..I got a pure afghan on the way..just a small tester clone..well see what it does..

sonar said:

Hypothetically,If you could only order a single pack of ten regular beans to use as breeding stock for the conceivable future, what would it be? Now, I know a lot of places sell regular beans in packs of five these days and you can also buy singles from pick and mix, so let's say for the purpose of this little thought experiment you can choose a total of 2 strains, as long as the total sum does not exceed ten seeds. What strain or strains do you choose?

Click to expand...

Using these constraints (which again, I don't think are realistic), if you can only pick ten ceeds, you'd need them to be regulars, otherwise unless you had hermies, your "breeding" project would end after the first generation. With no males. . .no pollen. . .no ceeds. Note that even if you started with feminized ceeds, you might still be able to perpetuate a line by deliberately selecting for hermies. This runs contrary to how most people like to grow, but in this "desperate" circumstance, it would be the way to go.

I think the answer here is "it depends". Are you growing indoors or outdoors? Where are you growing? Are you growing for personal use or for commercial sale? On what scale? Do you have the ability to do large scale selection?

If you're growing outdoors, you have to have genetics suitable for growing in your location. EG trying to grow indicas in the tropics won't work; they'll rot. Sativas may not like temperate climates, they'll freeze before maturing, and they may not be so great for indoor cultivation either, etc.

Again, answering GENERALLY, if you're stuck in some hypothetical bottleneck where the only cannabis genetics ever available to you for the rest of your life would be these ten beans, then you'd probably want to start with the max genetic diversity possible.

So contrary to conventional breeding practice, where you'd want to start with good stable inbred lines, if you have to do large scale breeding starting with only a few beans, you'd want these to be as polyhybridized as possible to prevent genetic "bottleneck" and give you the best possible genetic diversity to proceed with your breeding. Mixed parentage unstable indica/haze crosses would probably be a good place to start.

rory420420 said:

Why does everyone revert to the 'base' strains..the whites,skunks,ect..how come I can't take a seed,grow some dank,call it spacehoney or some shit,and if the powers and smokers and growers and breeders that be like it,and its uniquie and stable,can't it be accepted in cannibis societiey?..

Click to expand...

The reason people "revert" to those strains is because unlike the vast majority of "modern" strains, these old school ones are actually genetically STABLE (ie inbred). Something like Skunk has actually been bred in serious old-school fashion from large pools of OUTDOOR grown plants, making it easy to grow, disease, and pest-resistant under a wide variety of circumstances. This is simply not true of a bunch of lines that are fashionable/popular right now.

If you take some random ceed and grow it, if you're lucky you may end up with a great plant. If you do, and the plant is good enough, by all means you could give it some fancy name, take clones of it, and sell them. Lots of famous "clone only" strains started this way.

The problem is that it takes "two to tango". The question was about breeding, and you need ANOTHER (male) plant if you're going to make conventional seeds. Unless you're starting with two plants from a worked inbred line (ie one that someone else has bred), you're not going to have stable offspring. In other words, the offspring of your kick-ass plant won't be the same as the parent, and almost certainly wont be as good.

Actually it sounds like you need a male that is proven. A good pollen from a donor or using a male that has traits it passes on that are known.
Otherwise you don't know what you will have until you sow the offspring.

As far as strain I would first look for something that is bx squared.
Bog has a few good ones and so do a few others. C-99 comes to mind if it's not feminized.

or
dare I say it make your own feminized seeds using the reverse methods that are proven not to make hermi's.

sonar said:

With the amount of orders reportedly being confiscated in recent months, it made me wonder. I like to think I have a half decent seed collection for growing purposes. Problem is, 90% of them are feminized and most are only single seeds that I got through promos or pick and mix, or packs from which I have saved a single seed. Of the 10% I have that are regular seeds, I don't think I would want to use them for making my own seeds unless I absolutely had to. This puts me in a pretty vulnerable position. If this European seed pipeline would suddenly dry up, I wouldn't be left with much to work with. Even if I lived some place where I could walk down the street to the neighborhood dispensary and buy clones I don't think I would like being at the mercy of that either. Which brings me to my next point.

Hypothetically,If you could only order a single pack of ten regular beans to use as breeding stock for the conceivable future, what would it be? Now, I know a lot of places sell regular beans in packs of five these days and you can also buy singles from pick and mix, so let's say for the purpose of this little thought experiment you can choose a total of 2 strains, as long as the total sum does not exceed ten seeds. What strain or strains do you choose?

Click to expand...

Even though its not likely that access to seed will go anywhere anytime soon....I like the question and that is partially why I started to breed years ago and still breed today. The question is somewhat complicated because its not just as easy as saying I'm going to cross Krystillica with OG Kush....the whole purpose for you wanting to breed is so that you can continue to grow without having to be at the mercy of the seed companies if something was to happen that it became difficult to aquire seed. So the first thing I would take into consideration for my breeding project is the climate where I live because I would base my selections on strains that will survive in my climate outdoors. You can always choose to grow indoors if you so desire later on but if you started with the wrong strains that are not capable of growing in your outdoor climate then you loose that option from the word GO. I would select a highly potent Indica that has strong tolerence for cool weather and finishes in a short season....as that is a key requirement in my area. I would do the same for the Sativa strain I choose for this project. 10 seeds of each strain...I know you said 5 of each but thats just to small a number to achieve the goal. Pop 5 indica seeds and cross your best male out of whatever you have to select from and choose the female the same way...two females if the numbers allow. Then do the same with your Sativa beans. If all goes well...by the end of your grow you should have several thousand F2s of your Indica strain and the same for your Sativa strain. Now...at a later time I pop the remaining 10...5 of each and do a hybreed cross of the Indica/sativa strains I had chose for the breeding project....now you have several thousand newly created F1 hybreeds to wk with....and that is your start. Obviously breeding and stabelizing hybreed strains is much more involved then that....but this answers your question....how far you take your breeding project from there is up to you!!!!

Its just one way to consider starting a breeding project on a beginner scale....breeding is a tremendous amount of wk and things dont always turn out the way you want or even remotely the way you might have thought. Thats why I admire many of the TRUE breeders who have dedicated thier lives to breeding and creating good, solid, stable strains for all of us to enjoy. Its easy to make a quick hybreed or an F2 but its far from easy to stabelize and select for the best traits within a certain gene pool. So hats off to those GUYS!!!!

Bear

PS...I guess I still didnt answer your question...as to What strains they would be...I to have to give that some thought....hmmmm again in choosing those strains ...it would certainly be based on the climate where I live...Fuck....you stumped me!!! LOL

Jogro said:

Using these constraints (which again, I don't think are realistic), if you can only pick ten ceeds, you'd need them to be regulars, otherwise unless you had hermies, your "breeding" project would end after the first generation. With no males. . .no pollen. . .no ceeds. Note that even if you started with feminized ceeds, you might still be able to perpetuate a line by deliberately selecting for hermies. This runs contrary to how most people like to grow, but in this "desperate" circumstance, it would be the way to go.

I think the answer here is "it depends". Are you growing indoors or outdoors? Where are you growing? Are you growing for personal use or for commercial sale? On what scale? Do you have the ability to do large scale selection?

If you're growing outdoors, you have to have genetics suitable for growing in your location. EG trying to grow indicas in the tropics won't work; they'll rot. Sativas may not like temperate climates, they'll freeze before maturing, and they may not be so great for indoor cultivation either, etc.

Again, answering GENERALLY, if you're stuck in some hypothetical bottleneck where the only cannabis genetics ever available to you for the rest of your life would be these ten beans, then you'd probably want to start with the max genetic diversity possible.

So contrary to conventional breeding practice, where you'd want to start with good stable inbred lines, if you have to do large scale breeding starting with only a few beans, you'd want these to be as polyhybridized as possible to prevent genetic "bottleneck" and give you the best possible genetic diversity to proceed with your breeding. Mixed parentage unstable indica/haze crosses would probably be a good place to start.

Click to expand...

I agree it is a highly unlikely scenario. Like I said, this is a hypothetical situation where you can only choose a single pack of regular beans (I believe I did say regs in the op) to breed with your personal bean stash to propagate your seed supply. Of course "it depends," I think that's what I thought the fun of this would be. There is no right or wrong answer really. What you would do given the seed stash you have now, considering your personal growing condition, and your personal preferences. Kind of like if I said, hypothetically, if you could have sex with any woman (or guy) in the world who would it be.

For me, If I could only buy one pack of seeds for the rest of my days as a grower, I think I would choose a pack a Serious Seeds White Russian. Think I would crack about 6 or 7 of them and look for a stud male and try to keep a clone growing as long a possible. I'd use that pollen to knock up any female I grow from my seed stash that had the characteristics that I like. Even if I only did that to 4 or 5 ladies, that would leave me with hundreds of seeds that I could just simply grow out, or use for some different crosses.

Lol..I seriously was gonna reccomend the white russian,but then I was curious as to why you can't grow a stable strain of your own choice,so I asked questions instead..I guess growing weed in the seventies produced better strains..when did white russian come about? I know great white shark is some hearty growing plants for sure.

SAGE by th seeds

If femmed seeds are made with silver thiosulfate or colloidal silver there is no reason to believe the offspring will be any more likely to herm than if you used a natural male. It also means you need a lot less plants for a breeding project.
If I could only have one plant it would be my Blue Dream clone because she has done so much for me medicinally and is great smoke that is easy to grow and yields really well. I'm just waiting on some STS to show up so I can self her, then I plan to cube her to try to come up with a reasonably stable representation in seed form. I also want to try some crosses to then cube to try to come up with some slightly different variations of her.
As far as breeders whose stock I would pick to start working with I've been very impressed by a cross a buddy made of AK47 x Kali Mist (both Serious Seeds) so Serious makes that list, Classic Seeds plants have been almost universally impressive, I've been impressed by many Female Seeds products. I really don't think I could pick one!

MrEDuck said:

If femmed seeds are made with silver thiosulfate or colloidal silver there is no reason to believe the offspring will be any more likely to herm than if you used a natural male. It also means you need a lot less plants for a breeding project.
If I could only have one plant it would be my Blue Dream clone because she has done so much for me medicinally and is great smoke that is easy to grow and yields really well. I'm just waiting on some STS to show up so I can self her, then I plan to cube her to try to come up with a reasonably stable representation in seed form. I also want to try some crosses to then cube to try to come up with some slightly different variations of her.
As far as breeders whose stock I would pick to start working with I've been very impressed by a cross a buddy made of AK47 x Kali Mist (both Serious Seeds) so Serious makes that list, Classic Seeds plants have been almost universally impressive, I've been impressed by many Female Seeds products. I really don't think I could pick one!

Click to expand...

You are correct in saying that if the fem seeds were created by method of STS or CS that the odds of hermie are equal to or the same as if you had bred from reg seed. Especially if the strain that was feminized was already stable and hermie traits or other bad traits bred out of it. You would just end up with F1 regular seeds. I am in the same delima.....Because I have so many strains ....I just could not pick one....lol

Great question and indeed thought provoking. LOL I basically started this several years ago and have changed a few times and in the process of changing again. Currently just started Colombian Gold x Lamsbread, supposedly about 6 phenos in this run......I live in the mountains now in Costa Rica and figured this was two good mountain strains to base my future on. The other is Sannie's Jack which I have grown since the f2s where offered, can't say what his new f7s are like but I like the lower fs just for the variety of phenos to pick and choose from. I love escobar's Lady Cane but if I had to choose only two I would take the Colombian Gold x Lambsbread and my Sannies Jack which both do well in my location and grow set up.
I am just not a big seed buyer in the first place and probably missing out in many of these newer strains but what I have keeps me happy and medicated.

MrEDuck said:

If femmed seeds are made with silver thiosulfate or colloidal silver there is no reason to believe the offspring will be any more likely to herm than if you used a natural male. It also means you need a lot less plants for a breeding project.
If I could only have one plant it would be my Blue Dream clone because she has done so much for me medicinally and is great smoke that is easy to grow and yields really well. I'm just waiting on some STS to show up so I can self her, then I plan to cube her to try to come up with a reasonably stable representation in seed form. I also want to try some crosses to then cube to try to come up with some slightly different variations of her.
As far as breeders whose stock I would pick to start working with I've been very impressed by a cross a buddy made of AK47 x Kali Mist (both Serious Seeds) so Serious makes that list, Classic Seeds plants have been almost universally impressive, I've been impressed by many Female Seeds products. I really don't think I could pick one!

Click to expand...

I'd very much like to get my hands on a Blue Dream cut. Unfortunately that just isn't possible in these parts.

What have you grown from Female seeds that you could recommend? I like hard hitting indicas that are great producers. I'll trade some smell/taste for yield if I have to, but in general tend to go with sweet/fruity strains. You can't beat their price, that's for sure. I almost went with I think it was Purple Maroc a few years back for outdoor, but I heard a few bad reviews about their outdoors strains not finishing anywhere near when they say they did, so I didn't want to take the chance. Can't say I've looked into their gear since then.

Not to get too far off topic, but speaking of bang for your buck, Emerald Triangle has some excellent gear for very reasonable prices. Everyone seems to love Lost Coast OG and Mastodon Kush. Grapefruit Krush is super tasty and my friends and I all enjoyed that one, but it didn't yield near as much as Lost Coast or Mastodon, and was the only fem to ever throw a few pollen sack out on me.

I haven't personally grown their gear but I've watched a lot of people who I trust grow it and it's good stuff. I have a buddy who they have just asked to test grow new strains for them. He's Kite High on here, his grow of their C99 was pretty amazing.
I'm not a hard hitting indica man so I can't give many recommendations. I just had a little of Afgooie from Classic Seeds from a buddy and I think you would love it. A little bowl kicked my ass for like an hour. And you can get 3 packs of Classic's seeds for like $90 at TSD.

MrEDuck said:

I haven't personally grown their gear but I've watched a lot of people who I trust grow it and it's good stuff. I have a buddy who they have just asked to test grow new strains for them. He's Kite High on here, his grow of their C99 was pretty amazing.
I'm not a hard hitting indica man so I can't give many recommendations. I just had a little of Afgooie from Classic Seeds from a buddy and I think you would love it. A little bowl kicked my ass for like an hour. And you can get 3 packs of Classic's seeds for like $90 at TSD.

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I saw a post of Kite's on a defoliation thread....his grow was impressive. Very knowledgeable guy and in fact has helped me solve some questions, which I much appreciate. My skills were geared towards outdoors for years until my state went medical then I transitioned indoors....(during winter months ) quite the learning curve but thanks to experienced growers who are not greedy with thier knowledge I'm pleased to say that I am achieving great results myself....that coulped with the fact that I had the space and funds to create as close to optimum conditions!! Now I am trying to focus on max yeild per plant in my space.....that seems to be a much discussed topic but as some have proved ..Pics dont lie!! Sorry to get off topic!