Using bananas to feminize your seeds

I read this on some other website sounds pretty cool wondering if anyone else has tried it


But, here is a cheap, very effective method a gardner like me would use, which I am sure some members will be familiar with. An organic feminising method using ripening bananas.


Before you germinate your seeds, place your seeds in a sealed plastic bag containing banana peels for 14 days. Wrap the banana skins in tissue to absorb any moisture they give off. Keep the bag in a warm place & air the seeds regularly, replacing the skins as they ripen. Ethylene, a naturally occuring gas given off by the ripening bananas causes feminisation.


Peel 2 bananas and seperate the strips. i.e you should have about 4 seperated skins from each banana.


Wrap each skin in 'one' layer of tissue & lay them inside a carrier bag, then lay one piece of tissue over all the skins & place the seeds on top & seal the bag & leave it in a warm place (room temp is fine).


You then need to open the bag once daily for about 20 minutes to release excess moisture, much the same as when your curing your buds.


You then need to change the skins for fresh ones every three days as they will turn brown & rotten after that.


You leave the seeds for about two weeks so youll need to change the skins 5 or 6 times.

Also read this on some other website


List of Plant Responses to Ethylene


* Seedling triple response, thickening and shortening of hypocotyl with pronounced apical hook. This thought to be a seedlings reaction to an obstacle in the soil such a stone, allowing it to push past the obstruction.

* In pollination, when the pollen reaches the stigma, the precursor of the ethylene, ACC, is secreted to the petal, the ACC releases ethylene with ACC oxidase.

* Stimulates leaf and flower senescence

* Stimulates senescence of mature xylem cells in preparation for plant use

* Inhibits shoot growth except in some habitually flooded plants like rice

* Induces leaf abscission

* Induces seed germination

* Induces root hair growth – increasing the efficiency of water and mineral absorption

* Induces the growth of adventitious roots during flooding

* Stimulates epinasty – leaf petiole grows out, leaf hangs down and curls into itself

* Stimulates fruit ripening

* Induces a climacteric rise in respiration in some fruit which causes a release of additional ethylene. This can be the one bad apple in a barrel spoiling the rest phenomenon.

* Affects neighboring individuals

* Disease/wounding resistance

* Triple response when applied to seedlings – stem elongation slows, the stem thickens, and curvature causes the stem to start growing horizontally. This strategy is thought to allow a seedling grow around an obstacle

* Inhibits stem growth outside of seedling stage

* Stimulates stem and cell broadening and lateral branch growth also outside of seedling stage

* Synthesis is stimulated by auxin and maybe cytokinin as well

* Ethylene levels are decreased by light

* The flooding of roots stimulates the production of ACC which travels through the xylem to the stem and leaves where it is converted to the gas

* Interference with auxin transport (with high auxin concentrations)

* Inhibits stomatal closing except in some water plants or habitually flooded ones such as some rice varieties, where the opposite occurs (conserving CO2 and O2)

* Where ethylene induces stomatal closing, it also induces stem elongation

* Induces flowering in pineapples

very nice info, thanks for posting, have not tried this, but good to know. + rep

interesting
makes sense
but i thought the sex was already encoded in the seed

moash said:

interesting
makes sense
but i thought the sex was already encoded in the seed

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I was also under this assumption.

so meaning to say that commercial breeders use this kind of method or maybe they came up with a more professional method using ethylene to make seeds feminized? then if so of all the benefits listed, feminized seeds are enhanced compared to regular seeds? would this work for all seeds that was taken from a hermie plant, in order for it not to hermie and make it feminized?

i.m trying this tonight thanks flounder

"sounds" like a bunch of bs,

but could be legit I sure as hell don't know. Never wrapped seeds in a banner before.

id like to hear more as well before trying...if this is the case i will NEVER buy a fem seed again. especially when you can get 10 regular ones for half the price of 10 fems (usually)

I'm actually trying it tonight too for my first grow hopefully it works

sorry to burst your bubble, but it seems more teasable not feasable. the way breeders make fems is hormone. they force a female to produce pollen, this pollen comes from a female and contains no male dna. thus the seeds are Fem

Check this out
Treatment of seeds with ethylene gas will increase the resulting number of female plants by about 50%. Ethylene is produced by certain plants (i.e., bananas, cucumbers and melons), and these can be used to treat hempseed in a simple manner. About two weeks before you plan to sprout the seeds, place them in a paper bag, and put that in a plastic bag with the peels of a ripening banana or cucumber. Replace the peels after a couple of days, and change the bags to prevent mould.


Ethylene: One of the 5 plant hormones. The levels and ratios of these 5 hormones has a huge impact on the shape, strucutre, aroma, flavor, flowering time, and disease resistance of the plant. Hormones are the chemical messengers that allow DNA to 'talk' to plant tissues and determine the phenotype. Ethylene is primarily involved in flowering, sex determination, fruit ripening, and sensescence (rot). Ethylene is a simple organic molecule, C2 H4, which can also be represented as H2C=CH2.

In cannabis, female plants will produce male flowers if not enough ethylene is present, or if too much gibberellic acid is present. The intersex condition is due to a combination of genetic and environemental factors. Some plants will not turn male under the most extreme stress, and some plants, especially stretchy tropical sativas, will turn with no stress at all. It is my belief that the stress of severe inbreeding, compounded over several generations, is responsible for the majority of hermaphrodites in the drug cannabis gene pool (DCG) today.


The second is to use a hormone called ethylene, which inhibits the development of male pollen bearing flowers. Ethylene should be sprayed upon the leaves and flowers of your plants, and is commonly found in plant shops as a flower boosting agent. Ethylene has been in use for the last twenty or more years, and comes in many brand names and concentrations. Check with your local plant shop on brands and methods of using flowering agents.

Feminized seeds are the result of a female plant producing pollen and then pollinating a different female plant with that pollen to produce seeds without any Y chromosomal information.

There's really no voodoo, transmutation, or magic that will produce feminized seeds beyond this. The chemicals/hormones that you hear about being used sometimes in this process are used on a female plant (to manipulate the production of pollen), they are not used on the seeds themselves.

Seeds are either male or female based upon whether they have two X chromosomes (females) or one X and one Y chromosome (male). Just like with people.

Another misconception and/or poor use of wording (like in the text above) is that female plants can turn male. However, a female cannabis plant can not change sex - they sometimes just become hermaphroditic (big difference). Could you cite or credit the author?

TaoWolf said:

Feminized seeds are the result of a female plant producing pollen and then pollinating a different female plant with that pollen to produce seeds without any Y chromosomal information.

There's really no voodoo, transmutation, or magic that will produce feminized seeds beyond this. The chemicals/hormones that you hear about being used sometimes in this process are used on a female plant (to manipulate the production of pollen), they are not used on the seeds themselves.

Seeds are either male or female based upon whether they have two X chromosomes (females) or one X and one Y chromosome (male). Just like with people.

Another misconception and/or poor use of wording (like in the text above) is that female plants can turn male. However, a female cannabis plant can not change sex - they sometimes just become hermaphroditic (big difference). Could you cite or credit the author?

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I would also like to know the source of all this mumbo-jumbo.

Uhh lol just go to Google n type in ethylene to feminize seeds n a lot of shit pops up I ain't making this up but it don't hurt to try so Ima try it

Have you ever tried just going 12/12 from start. my friend just did it and got 8 out 10 female. I also heard estrogen from birth control pills if you desolve them in water than wet the paper towel with it???? any other methods anyone have heard of???

chrizzg2121 said:

Uhh lol just go to Google n type in ethylene to feminize seeds n a lot of shit pops up I ain't making this up but it don't hurt to try so Ima try it

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I'm not accusing you of making it up (or even trying to dissuade you from experimenting), but this myth keeps perpetuating itself time and time again, over and over again, and I'm just pointing that out. A lot like the "give your plants birth-control pills and they'll probably become female." It's just an internet myth that won't go away because people don't want or can't educate themselves beyond using Google.

If male or female was encypted in the DNA then why would you have hermies? There are quite a few things that can turn a plant like heat, humidity, stress, pretty much there overall growing enviroment. Dont get me wrong i know genetics have to with it but not everything.

I've done research in the past involving ethylene. While ethylene is involved in the sex determination, I never heard the seed thing. Ethylene can be ordered from your local welding shop, as can propylene gas, which is much less effective.

Of note, in the late 60s there was a scientific publication demonstrating the changing of male to female plants using ethylene. The diecious examples were cannabis and cucurbits. While in black and white, the publication does have pics.

BigBudE said:

If male or female was encypted in the DNA then why would you have hermies? There are quite a few things that can turn a plant like heat, humidity, stress, pretty much there overall growing enviroment. Dont get me wrong i know genetics have to with it but not everything.

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Hermaphroditus is a survival mechanism for the plant. By reproducing with itself it can prolong the survival of its gene's. It does this in a response to the conditions you described, because the plant will believe it's life is in danger. Somebody previously stated this.

Sensitivity to dangerous stimuli like those you listed are genetic. Strains like Trainwreck have a higher probability of going hermies. Maybe thats slander. It's the internet, people make a lot of stuff up here. Always take caution.

BigBudE said:

If male or female was encypted in the DNA then why would you have hermies? There are quite a few things that can turn a plant like heat, humidity, stress, pretty much there overall growing enviroment. Dont get me wrong i know genetics have to with it but not everything.

Click to expand...

Again, it is just a misconception or poor use of wording to call a hermaphroditic plant 'turning male' or to think they have truly reversed their sex. Hermaphroditic cannabis plants are *always* female and will *always* be female until death. That is, all hermaphroditic cannabis plants are devoid of Y chromosomes that result in an animal or plant being male. The repercussions of that is that XX plants/animals cannot pass on the genetic information required to produce offspring with male traits (the information found in Y chromosomes is what results in the differences between being male or female). There are no male hermaphroditic cannabis plants because all males (and what makes them have the attributes of being male) have a Y chromosome that came from having a male parent.

Or in other words, the true test of being male or female is the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. An X chromosome is a given, because X chromosomes contain the basic genetic information that instruct cells in how they carry out their basic life functions as a part of a larger organism. Without the information contained within X chromosomes, cells will not function and they die. In comparison, Y chromosomes are almost inconsequential in the big picture of genetics and in cell function and survival and can be seen as more of an add-on that alters things a bit. But they do alter things enough to make a male different from a female in some very basic ways.