Poke Smot

I know most seedbanks have the ability to better their product through planting thousands of individuals and choosing the best one or two with the desired traits (i.e. the largest flowering, early blooming, stinkiest) for purposes of breeding.

Unfortunately, the modest home grower doesn't have the room in his closet/spare room for a good breeding project. The chances of the average homegrower of having exceptional breeding partners is drastically reduced.

Question: If Johnny homegrower wanted to make a few hundred seed for himself for future use would it would be detrimental to strain quality and potency if you only had a few plants from which to mate and make seed? Especially considering that any individuals he chooses for mating would probably not be the 1 in 1,000 exceptional plant and would most likely be an average representative of the strain? Would the flowers from the seed of those plants be of lower quality than the flowers of the seed purchased from the breeder/seedbank? What about after a number of generations?

n_d_shadows

Lets start with the quality of the seeds that will be making the future seeds. If they are of high quality genetics, say Sensi seeds, then chances are any same strain breeding will produce somewhat uniform offspring. If you cross 2 strains the variables in the offspring will be higher. example being if you crossed a strong indica with a strong sativa. Some seeds would be indica dominant, some sativa dominant and pretty much everywhere inbetween.
If the strains you are growing from seed are unknown bagseed it will really be a crap shoot. You may end up with an amazing cross worthy of breeding, and you may end up with stuff thats better suited for making rope.
Potency of seeded MJ, will again have to do with the genetics first, better genetics = better pot (in most cases), but it will drop in the buds that are pollinated. The buds that are not pollinated should not see a drop in potency.

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Poke Smot

Thank you. That was very easy to understand. My second question is what if I inbreed two f1 hybrid plants of the same quality genetics? For example if I obtained a high quality f1 strain like Ak-47 and made homemade seed it. The seed would be f2's, right? (From what I understand, variation will be greater in the f2 than in the f1's, right?) If I continue inbreeding these seeds (f3, f4, f5, etc) would the vigor and/or potency decline after being inbred many times? Would it be wise to keep a few of the F1 seeds to backcross to preserve vigor/potency?

penguin

Greeting, Smot poker

Correct. IBL x IBL = F1. F1 x F1 = F2.


F1's are highly uniform, F2's are highly variable.


If you select poor quality parents then you will degrade the line. If you select good parents, you could remain stable or even improve. Of course you could also hit the "negative recessive " lottery. Male selection is difficult and using whatever random male happens to be handy will not necessarily have good results.

It would be better if you could backcross to the original IBL. True breeding IBL are pretty much homozygous, where F1s are mostly heterozygous.

Actually, for a small scale breeding program where the breeder is mostly just concerned about not losing quality, the breeder could start with 2 reputable high-quality stable IBLs (truly true-breeding). Say NL#5 and Skunk#1 for the purposes of discussion. Each generation, breed (NL x NL), (S1xS1), (NLxS1), and (S1xNL). That way the IBL breeding stock is maintained, and shouldn't degrade much even without rigourous parent selection. And the F1 hybrid should have a lot of vigor while being very uniform. A few generations into it when things look stable, a third IBL could be added to increase variety.

Or you could just use clones

bigred6703

wow, thanks nd and penguin. i was going to ask something like this but wasnt quite sure how to word it. big help. thanks guys.

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SGTQUICK420

Buying top quatily genetics to start would also be a big plus. There are seed companies that are selling seeds like your afraid of... Look around read up there's at least 1 may 2 treads now about this problem........... I paid a fair amount of coin to purchase mine... My seeds from my White Widow are better than when i got them/ every plant shows same growth/flowering times almost to the day/ all show sex with in 6/7 days of entering flower chamber// show active crystle formation by 14 days flower{not just a dust} a few males show crystle formations on fan leaves not spunk and there seeds well .................... OK i am a small closet grower / but made my sellections from outstanding parents it may cost a few more bucks to start but think clones / more good seeds / you bought it once got it for years ahead.... Ever wish you could regrow a strain but no seeds now if you had breed a little you could after your clone/s died or 4 a million other reasons something happened..... got a few hot strains want to mix them
never now might have the next super strain// PEACE SGTQUICK420

Poke Smot

This is exactly what I'd like to do, breed my plants to secure good seed for years to come. I will be a closet grower with limited space for plants (about 10 square foot closet) and I'm just afraid that since I will only have a few parents to select from that my plants will degrade in quality after a generation or two. I know all seedbanks/breeders are not created equal either and that you get what you pay for. Unfortunately I am quite broke and cand only afford nirvana genetics for $15 a pop. I plan on WW, WR, BG. I also have some durban poison pure from "high quality seeds."