Understanding dominant vs. recessive

Hey all,

I'm reading through "The Cannabis Breeders Bible", and for some reason, I'm having a brain fart trying to wrap my head around understanding how to identify recessive traits.

Say for example I have an Afghani #1 female plant. The plant has dark green leaves. If I create an F1 with a different plant that has bright green leaves and the F1 has bright green leaves, does that mean that the dark green mother has light green recessive genes?

I don't know why this recessive concept is difficult to grasp right now. Can someone explain, perhaps with real-life example(s) for me? I'm sure I'll be like "d'oh!" when it clicks.

-spek

Yes, that is a great book by the way. Glad to some people around here still crack a book open every now and then

The only way to do true proper breeding is to have populations of thousands of plants.

P1 is female with dark green leaves
P2 is male with bright green leaves

You cross these two, and when you do the pollination you create AS MANY SEEDS AS POSSIBLE ON THE FEMALE. Hundreds, if not thousands of these F1 seeds should be created.

Next step, plant all 1000 seeds in a greenhouse, observe how they grow. If 800 of the 1000 plants have plants have DARK GREEn leaves, and 200 plants have BRIGHT green leaves, it means that the Mother P1 plant has the dominant gene for LEAF COLOR trait.

To do proper breeding, you must grow out a huge amount of F1 plants (the more the better) to do your selection and determine which traits are DOMINANT. In the real world, this rarely happens, that is why modern seeds in all the seedbanks often show different "phenos" this is because the breeder only Did a F1 or F2 selection. Normally to be labelled a "true breeding strain" the grower will go to F6 to ensure all traits are true breeding. All the F6 seeds will grow the same with very few pheno variations. This is know as an IBL. InBredLine.

Make sense?

spek9 said:

Hey all,

I'm reading through "The Cannabis Breeders Bible", and for some reason, I'm having a brain fart trying to wrap my head around understanding how to identify recessive traits.

Say for example I have an Afghani #1 female plant. The plant has dark green leaves. If I create an F1 with a different plant that has bright green leaves and the F1 has bright green leaves, does that mean that the dark green mother has light green recessive genes?

I don't know why this recessive concept is difficult to grasp right now. Can someone explain, perhaps with real-life example(s) for me? I'm sure I'll be like "d'oh!" when it clicks.

-spek

Click to expand...

Lets start at the beginning to try and simplify this as best as possible,
If I have an Afghani #1 female clone that I have selected because it breeds true for purple flowers ( well only be dealing with this one trait [bud color]) and a male of a line well call master kush which breeds true for green flowers and I cross the 2 wee need only make a few punnett squares and then perform some progeny tests to determine whether or not the trait in question is dominant or recessive, if when you grow out 100 females 1/2 are purple well say that the afghani probably had PP genotype for purple and the master kush had pp for its genotype, and the purple flower trait is dominant over the green if we get 100% green flowers then the genotype for the afghani is probably pp and the master kush is PP which means green would be dominant.
then we have partial dominance and lines that are heterozygous for certain traits and although it may breed rtelatively true to the next generation the trait your after may not be fixed and will take much more work to lockdown.

for instance lets say that afghani is purple budded but its genotype is Pp for purple and the master kush carries the pp for green buds, if we cross the 2 youd end up with 2 green, 2 purple and one of those purple plants would probably exhibit a much deeper purple where the mother afghani would have exhibited a light purps effect. this is because that plant is homozygous dominant for that trait now, PP-Pp-pp-pp
does any of that make sense? lol

lol

btw i am a real life, in the flesh breeder with 2 of my crosses at the F6 and F4 an auto from auto x 14week sativa and a sativa dom photo strain 9-11 weeks
so ive tried whats in these books and found whats bullshit and whats legit.

bf80255 said:

btw i am a real life, in the flesh breeder with 2 of my crosses at the F6 and F4 an auto from auto x 14week sativa and a sativa dom photo strain 9-11 weeks
so ive tried whats in these books and found whats bullshit and whats legit.

Click to expand...

I'm curious about bull shizz and legit part, I would like to know more details if you don't mind, please ? Thanks.

To OP, hope you got it now ?

spek9 said:

Say for example I have an Afghani #1 female plant. The plant has dark green leaves. If I create an F1 with a different plant that has bright green leaves and the F1 has bright green leaves, does that mean that the dark green mother has light green recessive genes?

Click to expand...

No that's not something you can derive from that scenario with certainty. What it means is that if the genotypes for the trait were homozygous in the parents, and all the offspring turns out light, bright/light green is dominant in the resulting offspring.

If you however cross the plant with itself, the afghani #1 that is, or another with the same genotype, and you get a ratio 25% light and 75% dark, THEN you know there is a recessive allele for light in the parent. See "test cross".

Izoc666 said:

I'm curious about bull shizz and legit part, I would like to know more details if you don't mind, please ? Thanks.

To OP, hope you got it now ?

Click to expand...

are you referring specifically to the canni breeders bible?
its a pretty solid read for a beginner just really limited and most of the info is free on the web.

my number one piece of advice to those interested in breeding is... just do it! its really fun and a great way to save money on buying seeds.