seed breeding today

I just wanted to reflect on todays breeding and why i feel the magic of this plant is fading.
It seem to start declining in the late nineties and has steadily gone down from there.
Clones!!!!!
The major factor why breeding, potency and diversity is declining.
The genetics of clones are limited to whats in that clone. Some clones, used for breeding, are not sure of their own genetic material. They know that its a great clone....but not know parental material, or rely on someone to tell them what their using....but this info could be bs'd or exagerrated by the person you got it from. Then you try a breeding program with a clone. Lots of clones dont breed true or well. So now people will strart crossing everything with it, then backcrossing to the original clone mom to reinforce genetic traits of the mom.......blah blah blah......
Breeding is supposed to be progressive not regressive!!!!!!
Subcool, cali connection, gh........all use clones for breeding.
They are not breeders, they are replicaters!!!!!!
Breeders take seeds from know and unknown sources.....find the best genetic expression they feel is worth breeding and make a cross.....then take that cross and further refine it over years increasing potency ,strength, vigor, yield, flavor......
Each successful generation becoming better and better.......progression!!!!!
So what im saying is if you want a strain like blue dream......buy some seeds of blueberry and super silver haze, and give it a go....you never know, you might create something much better!!!!

I have never even seen powdery mildew until people started using clones!!

i don't agree with you totally. yes, sometimes breeders will keep a strain in circulation too long with clones and genetic waning will set in just as taking clones of clones or even bottleneck inbreeding will do too, but i think the HUGE variety of strains out there now kicks so much ass over the ORIGINAL dutch offerings with skunk #1 being "the" most sativa strain out there. eff that noise! OK skunk #1 IS better than all of the afghani dominant cash crapper strains that you can't get away from in many markets, but that ain't sayin' much!

it just so happens that TGA's jack's cleaner 2 is the best indoor strain i've ever smoked, EVER, unless the really potent and trippy bud i blazed a few years ago that i'm positive was columbian, or at least a columbian dominant haze that was very much like pure 1980s gold, but it had it's own specialness with it's cool "touch feely" aspect and very nice euphoria.

i agree that a lot of breeders are recycling inferior genes over and over. that's why most hazes don't live up to the originals and aren't particularly trippy, though most are at least fun. it depends on the breeder and what original parents they start with. cloning is a tech i think MOST breeders use once they select their parents to maintain consistency.

i have no complaints whatsoever with TGA's breeding methods as JC2 is way better than street beasters! i've never been able to buy ANYTHING better since the 80s! NEVER! i've been gifted better a few times with a gram of kali mist once on top of the "columbian" i was smoked out on, again, not being able to score weight on though. i hope sannie's jack f7 is even better, but JC2 is more than good enough for my tastes.

other than columbian gold, ALL of my top 5 strains have been ones i've tested in just the past 2 years with over 25 years of contempt for everything else up 'till then. i liked durban poison well enough around '95, but haze x skunk, sweet haze & even 8 miles high are all better too right now. well, you might still have to wait for 8mh to return as it's not supposed to be back 'till next year.

i don't care WHAT methods a breeder uses myself as long as the bud doesn't taste disgusting and i have at least a functional high

hazey grapes said:

i have no complaints whatsoever with TGA's breeding methods as JC2 is way better than street beasters!

Click to expand...

I do... I believe phone selecting should be done by the breeder, not the grower. I know your always are going to have different phenos, but they have to be somewhat stable...

kgp said:

I do... I believe phone selecting should be done by the breeder, not the grower. I know your always are going to have different phenos, but they have to be somewhat stable...

Click to expand...

Well yes and no.

Some people like other things. If TGA locked down their vars they might not lock down the one I like.

But a good true breeder (and i will never call the TGA crew breeders only hackers. ) lock down their parents and replace them every so often.
Mr nice seedbank , Shantibaba shows how he does it on his site.

and every seedbank use's clones. how else could you lockdown a variety?

Clones are neither here nor there.

Cloning is just a way to perpetuate female plants, and its one tool in the toolbox. Almost all breeders are using clones in one way or another; its the only way you can ensure exact genetic copies of a plant for backcrosses, for one example. Its also hardly a new development; breeders have been using clones for decades.

I don't think there is anything wrong with it, per se, the question is more about what exactly you're cloning and what you are doing with the clones.

In my opinion, one big issue with a lot of the so called "breeders", is that lots of them just find cuts of other people's "clone only" strains, cross them, then release the F1s or unstable later generations as a new "strain".

You can get great plants this way, but unless you're doing both selection and genetic stabilization, its not really "breeding" in the true sense of the term.

If you look at certain "breeders", their entire lineups are basically just crosses of a few "elite" clones with other lines. OG Kush may be a great plant in its own right, but if/when half of the new "strains" are just crosses and backcrosses of that one with something else, well, that's just not that interesting.

Not incidentally, I don't think any of this sort of thing really weakens the "genetic pool" so to speak, because as long as there are SOME people out there maintaining pure genetic lines (and there are), then those genetics could be available to interested parties. IE, even if every grower on the West Coast were growing nothing but "OG kush", there are still plenty of places on the globe where people are doing their own thing.

Also, its been alleged that most of the interesting landrace genetics on the planet have already been exploited commercially. In other words, while there probably are a few strains out there that haven't made it into the seedbanks in pure or hybridized form, many of those probably aren't all that different than what already has. In short, there very well may not be any more truly "new" strains, just new combinations of traits from lines that are already commercially available.

I really liked your guys responses.....especially Hazy Grapes and Jogrow's.
Great stuff......and lots of great points!!!!!
Only thing i want to add are:
Remenber that all the great sativa and indica landraces that we collected in the early years, were all bred through seed crossing.
They did not use clones....but many families maintained and improved their strains over generations of seed selection.....NOT BACKCROSSING!!!!!!
We took the strains....which were worked like this....and tried to preserve them through clones and backcrossing.....not improve them!
That why most people agree that the earliest form of these genetics are better than what we can reproduce now! Thats because we have not progressed these lines by seed selection within each individuale line.

Thats why i feel clones have diluted breeding and these strains.
I dont dis clones.....i use them all the time....so i can be consistent on the produce...then do my seeds on the side!!!

kona gold said:

Remenber that all the great sativa and indica landraces that we collected in the early years, were all bred through seed crossing.

Click to expand...

Well, these were probably all bred in the most "old school" way possible. By simple selection of open-pollinated plants.

EG: Every year, the old farmer in charge of the family plot would choose the best plants from his crop and use the ceeds [sic!] from those for next years plot.

Do that over 20 generations (let alone 200) and you are quite likely to get something great that's perfectly adapted to your grow conditions.

They did not use clones....but many families maintained and improved their strains over generations of seed selection.....NOT BACKCROSSING!!!!!!

Click to expand...

Yes, they didn't use "backcrossing", though when you're dealing with largely inbred lines and not trying to come up with something totally new/different, there is no point to "backcrossing".

Don't forget, that out of 10,000 years of human history, cannabis was perfectly legal to grow anywhere you liked, in any quantity you liked for roughly 9930 of those years.

Indoor growing is almost entirely an artifact of prohibition. If it weren't for that, people would STILL be growing outdoor landraces in quantity, because that's the easiest, cheapest, and largest yield way to grow.

Consequently, most of the breeding that was done over the last 50 years was designed specifically to improve the quality of INDOOR grown cultivars. To create what amounts to eclectic hybrids (eg Mexican plants x Indian x Columbian x Brazillian, etc), then stabilize the traits you are interested in *can* be done without clones or backcrossing, just those tools make it MUCH easier and let you do it in many fewer cycles using less selection.

That why most people agree that the earliest form of these genetics are better than what we can reproduce now! Thats because we have not progressed these lines by seed selection within each individuale line.

Click to expand...

"Better" in what way? The modern hybrid plants fundamentally have the same genes, just scrambled in different combinations.

Columbian Gold/Santa Marta is a GREAT strain. . .*IF* you happen to be growing it in the mountains of Columbia! In your backyard or closet? Not so good anymore.

Its different horses for different courses. Many/most of the modern strains you see in the seedbanks were specifically bred for seedless INDOOR growing under artificial lighting, because that's how most people are growing nowadays. If that's the kind of growing you want to do, these are good strains. If you want to grow in the mountains. . .not so good.

Thats why i feel clones have diluted breeding and these strains.
I dont dis clones.....i use them all the time....so i can be consistent on the produce...then do my seeds on the side!!!

Click to expand...

Breeding is hard work, and on top of that, the plant counts required to do it right also pose increased legal risk. These are two major reasons why there are so few true breeders.

Again, I think the problem with modern "breeding" is mostly that you have a lot of people just recombining what amount to the same strains in various permutations. How many hands can you deal with 15 cards? To get something truly new/different requires different original source material. You can either get that new genetic diversity from isolated landraces (which, as I mentioned earlier, simply may not exist anymore), or *maybe* you can get it from de-novo plant mutation.

In some sci-fi future you may be able to introduce new genetics into cannabis plants by genetically splicing in genes from OTHER plants, but I don't think this is on the horizon any time in the next 20 years.

hazey grapes said:

i think the HUGE variety of strains out there now kicks so much ass over the ORIGINAL dutch offerings

Click to expand...

Well, first of all virtually ALL of the "original Dutch" offerings as you put it, aren't really "Dutch".

These classic strains including Northern Lights, the original Haze, Bubblegum, and Skunk #1, were all originally bred in the USA. The genetics just made their way over to Holland, because that particular jurisdiction was legally friendly and served as a "Mecca" for seed distribution. Most of these strains were, in fact, selectively bred the old-fashioned way, outdoors using hand selection of plants over may generations.

Anyway, bluntly, I don't think most of the current selection is really all that much better than the true best representations of the strains you're referring to. A good cut of Skunk #1 will get up to 18% THC and will still beat most modern strains in terms of pure toughness and ease of growth, for example. A good Northern lights can exceed 20% THC, and while the flavor is nothing to write home about, again, in terms of yield, toughness, ease of growth, etc, its going to embarrass a lot of "super" strains. In terms of flavor and effect, a good Jack Herer/Super Silver Haze is still probably about as good as anything out there.

Ultimately, most of the "new" strains are still highly selected crosses of those original strains anyway.

For example, if you look at the genetics of your favorite Jack's Cleaner 2, its still Northern lights, Haze, Jack Herer (which itself is Haze, Skunk and Northern lights), plus Jamaican lambsbread, and Pluton (which IIRC is one of the '80s SSSC strains and a just a pure Afghani). Its a selected mix of the best 20+ year old strains, that you would call "Dutch".

I think one of the biggest hurtles to overcome is the fact that one cannot grow out the amount of plants required to find and lock down amazing traits (potency,vigor,pest/disease resistance)

Imagine if one could just simply grow out a couple thousand plants of different varieties in a big field, have them all open pollinate and go from there...

Diversity and Novelty are what nature THRIVES on. The future for these plants is HUGE, and the best is yet to come.

Once legalization happens, and people can grow out fields and fields of plants, some very interesting traits will start to arise.

I do... I believe phone selecting should be done by the breeder, not the grower.

Click to expand...

huh?!!! whah?!!! oh, maybe you mean the breeder should make a stable enough strain so that there's minimal pheno expression. it reads like "growers should just STFU as they aren't worthy to pick & chose their favorite phenos". that ought to really whiz of a few breeder worshippers here that have contempt for anyone that makes crosses. personally, i like crosses better as there's more hybrid vigor than when you BX to clamp down on traits. eventually, a breeder HAS TO re-invigorate their strains with fresh genes whether they like it or not once waning sets in.

whoever wants to, or especially even CAN, should select favorite phenos. that's precisely why skunk #1 has now also become lemon skunk, UK cheese, & roadkill plus a few others i bet. i REALLY wish i'd had a chance to try the real undiluted cinnamon girl pheno of jack herer.

you can't control phenos no matter how hard you try. genetic drift is a law of nature. we wouldn't even be here having this discussion were it not for pheno variation when you think about it. evolution happens. the alternative is inferior recessive traits piling up, and then, in breeding at least, un-natural selection takes over.

anything's better than the bad old days when there were less than a dozen strains available in seed form and they all sucked. i'm happy as a clam to see indicas slowly getting put back in their place with all of the jumbling that's resulted in the many faces of haze like jack & cindy. variety beats lack thereof every time for me. i KNEW that dude named kees that kept arguing with me that i'd love skunk #1 because thai, haze, columbian & kali mist etc. weren't around yet was 100% full of shit. skunk #1 is neither motivational nor trippy. now there are literally hundreds of different highs available. i'm a really big fan of "touchy feely" buzzes like onyx & jack's cleaner 2. gotta love that pheno expression