Observations on the Hermie Issue of Feminized Seeds

As far as I know, that is considered a hermy. If it can self pollinate itself, why wouldn't it be? So now my question arises, in the wild if you have just a female plant. That plant will pollinate itself and throw seeds all over the ground. All the seeds from that self pollinated female should also be female right?

Sorry for all the questions XD

P&P Errbody

ifit was herm then theoffspring will herm. not 100% of them. it produces pollen at the END OF THE CYCLE in the banana shell.

Not trying to bash on your or anything, but I am really having a hard time reading your posts.

but, apart from mostly agreeing with what has been said about the curious things,

fancy rats do not have any ability to stress induce asexual reproduction

and id assume that 50%> of threads about hermies were due to the plant being in less then great conditions and stressing itself out.


and now my mind has wandered....soo...i dont rem. what i was gettin at... lol

Lol oh no! So in that sense, you could say that the cannabis plant is more developed then the fancy rats. Cannabis plants have the safety mechanism to further the species if no male is present and fancy rats do not. Interesting...

Intensive: The parallel I was drawing between the rats and hermie-ism was not the asexual reproduction itself, rather a genetic weakness/resistance to stress (which triggers a herm episode) that mirrors the presentation of the rats' known genetic weakness/resistance to the respiratory illness.

rzza: Herming itself doesn't cause more herming unless you're looking at a genetic predisposition to the trait to begin with. It can be argued that the hormone release during herming influences the future of seeds in a manner similar that specific nutes and temperatures during germination influences the gender of a plant. Because we don't see this uniformly across strains, however, we can safely conclude that it is NOT the herming/femming process (insert ANY of the techniques here, overripe, hormonal, chemical... etc) that is the problem. The lack of uniformity tells us that something is going on in the genetics of the plants. If this were not the case, herming in femmed seeds would be far more predictable.

The fact is that the genetics on nearly ALL the strains we have are fuzzy when you try to look beyond the initial breeding of the people who brought these strains to light. No matter what kind of work they did, if they didn't have the goal of breeding hermie-ism OUT, then it's still there in some degree. I say this because if you don't specifically breed a trait out, then you leave it behind to surface again in future generations. Most breeders these days find an ideal F1 cross and send that shit to market and forget any further breeding, leaving us to deal with the sloppy genetics. Hermies from femmed seeds are the result.

I feel that I have a very decent understanding, as much as I could get without experiencing breeding myself. You sir get another +Rep

Thanks kadajett. I'm hoping some of the vets with more experience in heredity will pop in here and help with some of the fuzzy areas. For instance, I know it's a genetic trait... but are we looking to breed OUT a herming tendency, or are we looking to breed IN a stronger resistance to stress? Is the trait recessive, co-dominant, etc...? I can only infer so much from what I see without requiring some experience in breeding cannabis, and I'm currently on my first grow... haven't even gotten into breeding yet.

I am on my first grow also, good luck! It is all so interesting to learn.

I'm fascinated by animal and plant husbandry. The things you can bring out with selective breeding are amazing. And good luck to you, too.

The respiratory illness in rats is a destructive mechanism within it's genetic make up, where as , the hermieing of a plant is not a weakness, but a survival mechanism that can not be phased out.

It's actually a bacteria that is passed from mother to pup in the womb. It is hereditary because they can't get rid of it. It is as natural in their system as the bacteria in their gut that aid digestion. I believe it's the disease responsible for rat bite fever in humans.

If herming itself cannot be phased out, then it HAS to be a weakness in the plant to stress. Stress and extended flowering are known causes of hermaphroditism. If a total noob can do everything wrong and still have a plant NOT display bananas by a femmed seed, then hardiness is what we've got to breed for.

Not anywhere near an expert, just a question. Why is it such a huge deal to breed it out? It seems like more of a safety measure than anything else and it seems kinda counterproductive to the species to do so. It seems to me that it would be more important to breed IN new traits like resistance to weather or nute burn, or a really strong root system or a fast grower. As long aas it doesn't hermy every time you miss a watering, I think it is a valuable trait.

All of this is in my opinion, of course. Looking forward to hearing your response

It's like the difference between Deputy Fife and Sheriff Taylor. One is ready to draw the gun at the drop of the hat, the other is calm and cool and doesn't bring the gun out unless necessary. The herming tendency is a lot like this. You have some plants that drop bananas over the slightest stress, yet others can be damn near dipped in a vat of acid and not show a single banana.

An overripe herm is acceptable because you've triggered the last-chance part of the plant's makeup. This is just a last attempt at producing offspring. Stress herms disrupt the grow operation, and should be bred out through whatever mechanism is available in the plant's genetics.

Also, keep in mind that we're also domesticating the plant. Not many folks realize it, but that is what is happening all around us right now with all the strains, and in captivity, you'll always be guaranteed to produce offspring. After all, crops ALWAYS get re-planted.

This is the problem with inbreeding. A landrace has many different parents and many different gene combinations and weaker useless traits are naturally bred out of the species in favor of the stronger genetics. The problem lies when bad genes are continuously introduced and new better alleles are no longer present in the donors. So when your breeding a plant to itself or when using a single donor for breedig you will end up with more stability in every aspect even the bad ones. If you have a plant that has no tolerance for disease and you breed it with itself, the offspring are more often than not going to be equally or more prone to it than other strains. Hermaphroditism is a very useful tool for the plants in nature but is a trait that we want to breed out, so the solution is to use plants that are less prone to flip under natural circumstances to create feminized seeds. Obviously the trait cannot be totally bred out if we are making feminized seeds so all you can do is look for those that resist it.

Here's where the parallel lies. I got about 1 pup in 4 that had varying degrees of lessened resistance to the illness

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Although that is a very small sample to really make any concrete statements, this is the kind of ratio that is the problem. If something is recessive and parent is heterozygous for it (meaning it has one recessive gene and one dominant gene) and then is bred with itself than 25% of the offspring will actually have both of those recessive genes and be homozygous for that trait while still 2/3 that aren't will still carry the gene and you wouldn't know which ones were which, so even your breeding with seemingly unaffected specimens, it is very difficult to totally breed out these kind of traits without outcrossing. Obviously, if the parent your selfing is homozygous than every single one of it's offspring will be too.

This is the problem with inbreeding. A landrace has many different parents and many different gene combinations and weaker useless traits are naturally bred out of the species in favor of the stronger genetics. The problem lies when bad genes are continuously introduced and new better alleles are no longer present in the donors. So when your breeding a plant to itself or when using a single donor for breedig you will end up with more stability in every aspect even the bad ones. If you have a plant that has no tolerance for disease and you breed it with itself, the offspring are more often than not going to be equally or more prone to it than other strains. Hermaphroditism is a very useful tool for the plants in nature but is a trait that we want to breed out, so the solution is to use plants that are less prone to flip under natural circumstances to create feminized seeds. Obviously the trait cannot be totally bred out if we are making feminized seeds so all you can do is look for those that resist it.

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What I come away from this statement with is this: Our genetics are already more diverse than we know what to do with. Why should we continue to muddy the waters with all the hybrids when we really haven't put our landraces under the microscope to see what's really in them?

And yes, inbreeding is as much a problem as a solution. This is because there are so many breeders that don't understand cannabis genetics well enough to see these hidden factors coming.

Although that is a very small sample to really make any concrete statements, this is the kind of ratio that is the problem. If something is recessive and parent is heterozygous for it (meaning it has one recessive gene and one dominant gene) and then is bred with itself than 25% of the offspring will actually have both of those recessive genes and be homozygous for that trait while still 2/3 that aren't will still carry the gene and you wouldn't know which ones were which, so even your breeding with seemingly unaffected specimens, it is very difficult to totally breed out these kind of traits without outcrossing. Obviously, if the parent your selfing is homozygous than every single one of it's offspring will be too.

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I agree, it's a small sample, even when you consider that in my days of breeding rats, I produced almost 1000 fancies. It's still a tiny cross section. Sometimes, even that tiny amount of data is enough to draw valuable inferences. I was fortunate in this case, but you're right to point out that it won't always work out so easily.

The part about the ratio is exactly the point I was trying to make in my initial post. Your words put it into crystal clarity, though. It comes down to reminding ourselves that we are breeding this plant into domestication, and should follow a set of goals that leads us to that end result. Right now we're just settling for experimental strains for the most part. Hardiness, resistance to stress, potency, speed of growth, and yield: ALL of these traits should be focused on and not just potency, growth, and yield. If we don't focus on resistance to stress and overall hardiness, we're going to end up right back at the beginning and have to start over, sooner or later.

Never really thought of it that way LordWinter. The hermy trait is only useful in the wild but in our grow rooms for instance we do all the reproductive work for them. If we want them to have offspring, we mate them. Any hermy trait would, like you said, mess up an operation.

And as for pipe dream or anyone else that wants to answer the question. Can a male hermy? It should also have the ability to further the race right, under certain circumstances?

Damn good question. Never thought of that. +rep, my friend.

kadajett said:

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And as for pipe dream or anyone else that wants to answer the question. Can a male hermy? It should also have the ability to further the race right, under certain circumstances?

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a male can hermie, and it doesn't seem to be all that rare
i've seen a few male hermies, and that's out of a small number of plants
one male had some stress, i cut off the tops so i could put them in a pollen isolation chamber
i kept the plant around just in case the pollen harvesting didn't work(which it didn't)
anyways, that male responded to the cutting but throwing out pistils all over, quite the sight
the other male hermie appeared spontaneously at the very tip of the plant, a teensy, weensy little cola(1/2 inch)
as far as fertile male hermies, supposedly these are special plants according to DJ Short, and their pollen has desirable traits

Thanks for sharing that, grow. Definitely the kind of information that new breeders need to know.