What Is The Average Number Of Plants Needed To Create A New Strain?

[Norby]

Everyone wants something different in their seeds.  There are only a few that do what you are considering.

Most seed companies get 1-3 males and buy cuts and cross their males into the award winning cut.

Most of Rare Dankness is one of 2 males(Rare Dankness 1 and 2), that they keep, crossed with OG ghost or Bubba Kush, etc.

TGA just has Jack the Ripper male and Space Queen male and has crossed them with Bubba Kush, Black Cherry Soda, Orange Skunk, Purple Urkle.   For instance, I crossed Jilly Bean(orange skunk x Space Queen) with Querkle(Purple Urkle x Space Queen) which was a cross of 2 F1's and called it Orange and Purple Space Queen because it was 1/4 Orange Skunk and 1/4 Purple Urkle and 1/2 Space Queen since it was the father of both crosses.  I never sold any of them but gave some away and told the person exactly what the cross was.  As long as people know what they are getting, none is underhanded.  A lot of seed companies don't choose from a bunch of seeds beyond the males they have.  They buy their cuts for crossing.  That's the easiest way to do it and that's what some people like and what a LOT of breeders do.

Crossing Bubble gum and "kush" and calling it Bubba Kush is another story.  I called my strains "diesel, Juicy fruit, etc. because I was naming them for taste and had no idea there was a diesel strain or juicy fruit strain out there.

Edited February 3, 2015 by Norby

[pic book]

"Most seed companies get 1-3 males and buy cuts and cross their males into the award winning cut...Rare Dankness, TGA....a few kept males crossed into OG Ghost or Bubba Kush."
This is what i was looking for, cause it explains how to keep plant numbers down, yet create a "new strain."  Hooray.  

Also, it is clear that Jorge ultra-complicated his chapter by choosing chimera as an old-schooler for his degree in neuroscience and post-graduate research in biotechnology and his color pix of trays of thousands of little plants.  Jorge doesn't anywhere reference strategy employed by Rare Dankness and TGA.

[Dlo]

I thought this was interesting.

1:1 matings is something I'd like to address. People suggest that I'm creating a bottleneck and it's true. A bottleneck of quality. Seeds are usually produced by using two parents. With a 1:1 mating you know which ones they were.

As a seed breeder, the job as I see it is to ensure that the customer has the highest chance of producing a keeper pheno, whilst at the same time keeping the median a high standard. Every packet should produce top shelf plants. These guys who say you have to buy numerous packets of seed to get a keeper, crack me up. The job is not to save the gene pool, but to satisfy the guy who gave you the money. Few people want to give you money to save the genepool (but I am taking donations) Haha!

If I'm making Early Skunk and the mother EP has been chosen. Which Skunk male fathers the seeds does make a difference. Single progeny tested males is your best guarantee of quality and crop uniformity.

Nevil

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If you are trying to stabilise an indica sativa hybrid and you believe the pheno you are looking for is the narrow leafed type, then culling broad leafed types is a perfectly valid tool.

Selecting females for next years crop from open pollinated fields is traditional farming practice. There is little or no selection with males but this is compensated by being able to pick the best females out of often tens of thousands of plants.

Modern growers, limited by prohibition are not able to grow in these kind of numbers, nevertheless, the results achieved by small scale operations has out stripped those achieved by their traditional counterparts. IMO, it is precisely the extreme narrowing of the gene pool which has caused these rapid advancements. It is rare for more than the single best female to get used for breeding each generation. Small numbers allow for much more attention to be given to males. Bottlenecking is a negatively laden term for intense selection, we call it the latter if it is successful and bottlenecking if we wish to imply that it's not. Heavy inbreeding is the way pure strains are created, not that I see the market flooded with pure strains.

Skunk#1 is a classic case of a heavily inbred strain. I wonder how many 1:1 matings is behind that strain. It has it's problems, but it is still an industry standard. My own skunk line was the result of 5 or 6 generations brother to sister matings. The Early Pearl I used for breeding has been inbred for more than 20 years, starting from about 40 seeds, probably siblings to start with.

Anyone who considers 1:1 F1 hybrids with two unrelated strains bottlenecking, doesn't really know what they are talking about. There is a huge difference between F2s of hybrids and pure strains.

Most of the work I did was with batches of 40-50 seeds at a time. Space constraints did not allow for more. The best plant out of 20 females will be pretty close in quality to the best out of a 1000. Many of my cuttings, still considered elite, came out of similar sized batches.

The fact is that intense selection of small numbers of plants over many generations is what has caused rapid advancement in cannabis genetics and the fixing of type.

Nevil

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Most of the work I did was with batches of 40-50 seeds at a time.

The variety I grew the most of was NL5xHzC. No.1 came out in the first batch of about 20 females. Over the years I've grown many 1000s. In most respects, it was still the best. No.122, the one Shanti dubbed the Mango, came after years of searching, a tireless quest on my part. Aspiring growers often came to me and I regularly made them start with 5Hz seed. There are a few cuts around from those exploits, but they weren't as good as 1 and 122. But almost. As I said before, there's not a sea of difference between the best out of 50 and the best out of 1000. But there is a difference for the most discerning.

Nevil

[Seefdro]

Right, I side with GM...

 

ok, but one crop of seeds resulting from a male and a female of unknown genetics can be called a "new strain" right?

Reason being if one still pops so called "stable strains" there is not true duplication occurring in offspring. Rather a higher percentage of selected traits from breeder's description of traits... The breeders showcase their mouthwatering best of the best when they exhibit photos and testing results. Chances are if you were going to pop 72 beans not one would show EXACT qualities to the what is being showcased/exhibited.

 

A good analogy of this would be the Galápagos Islands. If in time one was to inbred the same genetics for years common traits would become prevalent based on conditions of the island in question in the Galapagos... In essence the same could be said of a breeder and their island or grow room.

This is stability occurring though evolution. Much of it pending on island's conditions to thrive, etc. After many years certain traits would prove stronger and become common place in offsprings... Stability happening naturally, a good breeder replicates these selections in nature.

 

So... If a bird with pollen on its wings flew from another island and spread alternative pollen traits do you have a new strain?... Absolutely.

 

It might be a super model of sorts? Maybe not... Is it stable, NO... Hard to say what happens from this point as the possibilities are limitless.

 

That understood, it's amazing and unique in its attributes and impossible to replicate... Unless you clone OR tissue culture....

 

The combination has forged a new strain.

 

TC would be the optimum method to replicate these unique traits for years. As cloning, may in time cause genetic drift.

 

So yes, in today's plant realm of tracking and storing these desired traits... I say YES, but one must understand as to why.

[pic book]

i like the bird as a random pollen chucker.

i learn i bits and pieces.  thanks for the nugget concepts you've contributed.

[greenleaf]

I don't know about all this breeding mumbo jumbo, I just need to know what happens when you mate two plants of the same strain.

For example, Free Leonard is Butterscotch Hawaiian crossed with G-13. If I mate a male and a female Free Leonard will I get Free Leonard seeds from this pairing. In other words, will the plants I grow from this cross be identical to the parents?

No

[pic book]

Where'd jorge cervantes' favorite cannabis breeder get his name?  Well look at this.  'Chimera' is the latin word for a plant or organism with tissues from at least two genetically distinct parents.