most male plants will put out pollen in veg. just not alot...if it smells really good,
clone and flower him to see how much pollen he makes in flower..if he puts out a
goodamount then you wont have to worry about which trait to pick for..you can
even keep him and backcross to him untill you get that smell trait from him. at the
sametime work on the pollen production..
my males dont put out pollen in veg... i believe your talking perhaps of a preflower breaking.. yes this can happen but the damage is minimal and its normally at most only a few. i stay away from any autoflowering traits as to me this is indicating autoflowering traits and ass far as i know there hasnt been a good stable (strong) autoflowering strain yet... meaning they are made with ruderalis genetics and are unstable i am unaware of any strains were selected ver many years for there early flowering abilities and constant strong stable plants. this would take to long afterall the ruderalis is a by product of a plant hiding out escaping eradication over time and its very unstable
Jester - I actually meant a few weeks into veg. Maybe it is an autoflower strain but thats not what I was told. You dont think its a good choice for a male? It has the most smell by far but not a huge distribution of pollen sacs. If you were to choose plant smell versus pollen sac production which would you say is more important for overall quality?
so its getting clusters of balls and the light schedule isnt in flower... meaning its starting to flower in veg??
umm if its autoflowering i would get rid of it personally because as ive said before its a trait im not really too keen on... the plants are sposed to change on photoperiod as far as im concerned. do a brief look on ruderalis. sorry im not going to give an in debth as i usually would as im very medicated and it would all just get confusing.
but to answer your question
i go for smell and pollen sack production... i also like to see nice tight clusters with nice (not necisarrily big or huge) pollen sacks. you know just an all round nice plant.. if your plants doing this wierd shit i wouldnt use it. i mean its not even just flowering faster than the rest (
if it was in flower id say it could possibly be a different strain or lead more to a certain parents side of the genepool per se' and flowered faster than the rest).
i make sure theres no autoflowering or ruderalis traits i my males and females... also hermies. if i think it was hermie it will never be looked at seriously again. (except rhodelized and maybe on the side of a hill but then id stress and try find true females as well).. the hermy trait can be bread out but its hard and may pop up later if you dont make the right decisionss and are unlucky..
id wait and see what elso mother nature decided to hand u first bro but you could alsways collect and store the pollen or preserve the plant as previously mentioned just in case