BullDozeThePJs

Im looking to buy some seeds in the coming months, Im looking at c99 and northern lights to give me a good selection of good indica and good sativa buds to smoke. My question is this pertaining to the NL seeds, I see that some seed banks will have the same strain with a huge price difference, for example not to name names but this one seed bank has some nirvana NL seeds 10 for approx 9 euros and they have some other NL seeds by sensi 10 for approx 70 euros. Is there that much difference between the two or is it more a marketing ploy. How can there be such a cost difference between the same strain? any one know what some of the diffeneces between the two might be?

Magical Cabinet

I have wondered the same thing, and am currently looking for seeds for my next grow- hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject will chime in.....while we wait though......

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SkallaGrim

I believe the main reason is that the higher price comes from the original breeder while nirvanas are the same strain but breed from seeds or clones and then used to make seed . I think that they are basicly a knock off . Like a gucci bag for 10 bucks . It looks and feels like the same thing but without the high gucci price.
Personally, I like em. In fact i just ordered about 6 pacs of nothing but nirvanas ,$120 after shipping but if i would have paid for the original breeders it would have been around a grand .

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Skip Intro

In general, Nirvana seeds are f2 copies of the original, which can mean the plant is exactly like the f1 or it may differ significantly, depending on what phenotypes are expressed. Doing an f2 with a hybrid can cause strange and unexpected things to happen which is sometimes a very cool thing but more often frustrating.

With a long-running strain like NL, though, they've probably back-crossed and cubed it enough to make it pretty stable. I don't think spending the extra cash on Sensi's version will make a whole lot of difference in this case. I should say I haven't grown either Nirvana's or Sensi's NL and I may be full of crap on this point.

When you buy from a top-line breeder like Sensi, you're paying for the original genetics and, honestly, their reputation as a solid breeder. You know the seeds are going to be what they advertised and will perform as they claim.

One more note: as a practical matter, there are no more f1 C99 seeds. The original breeders, The Brothers Grimm, have been out of the business for a few years and the original seeds have all been spoken for. Crosses and f2s are the only way to get those fabulous genetics and many are quite good.

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friction2k

what skip said...

more expensive seeds will be more uniform and little variation to pheno's
less expensive/nirvana seeds are more like to have a wide variation to pheno's. i don't think anything is wrong with that IMO.
the bud outcome should be excellent considering you buy a $15 strain opposed to the same one for $150

if you're a newbie, go buy a bunch of cheapo genetics to get the ball rolling and gain some experience. later in time when you're more experience and got the art down, go buy some expensive beans.

Rivercat96

I ran across this thread and thought I'd second what Skipintro and Friction said about there being a slight variation in characteristics among seeds that are not from the original strains. Most F2's from reputable breeders are quite good and they are cheap not because of any problems but because they can't claim to be the original owners of the strain. Translation, you get great seeds on the cheap. I think starting with some cheaper seeds is a great idea, if you screw something up you won't be as pissed off. Now if you spent a few hundred bucks on some seeds from Sensi or another big player you're gonna be kicking yourself if things don't go as planned. Good luck on the growing and check out the seed bank strain rating website: Green man's Seedbank Update This is very useful IMHO. One last thing, NL and C-99 are easy to grow plants and they are considered low odor strains, best of luck.

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BullDozeThePJs

Thanks for the link, Im 95% certain that I'll be doing nirvana's papaya and k2 my next time around.

pumpkin2006

Hi welcome, I might be able to shed some light.

When Sensi created NL they crossed multiple phenotypes of NL. There we're multiple varieties of NL back in the day that had different properties that certain growers would and would not like.

Thing about breeding is that your going to backcross your strains to create stablity and make a strain consistent with what properties you want. If someone (nirvana) buys that same strain from a large grower (sensi) they're going to have a very stable strain that has dominant genes in the allele's and the only way that the smaller company is going to change the strain is by finding a mutation or a potential dominant gene that hasn't be expressed. Now where nirvana got there NL strain originally, god knows... but what I can tell you is that NL#5 is the most common on the NL's which is a cross of NL 9, 3 and some other number (I could be wrong on the numbers). With that being said, I would say you would see very little genetic difference between the expensive NL and the inexpensive NL.

Breeding takes at least 4 years to create a stable strain and if you can make sure that the qualities that you want are all dominant genes than the offspring will rarely drift from that. If its co-dominant that theres not going to be any change at all.

BTW on this subject I suggest a great book by the name of Marijuana breeders bible. I picked it up at boarders about 2 weeks ago and cant stop reading it. It basically covers every aspect of breeding.

GoldenNug

I would say that it takes four generations, rather than four years to stabilize a new strain. But again, I'd like to second what everybody else just said.

Getting seed stock from the original breeders is the only way to be really sure what you're getting, but there a lot of great F2's and hybrids done by other breeders than the one that did the original strain.

I'm really not sure about Nirvana and where all their NL genetics come from, but I have heard that the original NL5 was a NL with a slight Thai sativa influence bred into it 4 or more generations back. It's hard to know for sure, there's no licensing of new cannabis genetics, and I don't know when that'll be arranged!


-the man with the golden nug

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