What to look for when pheno hunting?

GrowmezCannabis

GrowmezCannabis

Member
I'm looking to get into collecting my own personal line of genetics. I've never really ventured into the world of breeding. I understand basics such as nodal spacing and stress testing but does anyone have any tips or things to watch out for when trying to select ideal candidates for future breeding?
 
You should have grown enough plants to be able to say "this is a good plant"...or that the plant isn't all that great before you do this. Every grower should know that first. Practice and perfect cloning if you feel you can't confidently say whether a particular plant is a juice factory or lackluster waste of space. Those lackluster plants may have the trait you need to improve the other plant you love, but that is missing something, would you be able to identify this in your runs confidently going forward from here?
Beyond the cookie cutter answer like vigor, height limits, yield, etc is hard.You see there is no answer to ur question until you have a plant in hand, know what it looks like and does, and what you want it to do in next generations.
 
mudballs said:
You should have grown enough plants to be able to say "this is a good plant"...or that the plant isn't all that great before you do this. Every grower should know that first. Practice and perfect cloning if you feel you can't confidently say whether a particular plant is a juice factory or lackluster waste of space. Those lackluster plants may have the trait you need to improve the other plant you love, but that is missing something, would you be able to identify this in your runs confidently going forward from here?
Beyond the cookie cutter answer like vigor, height limits, yield, etc is hard.You see there is no answer to ur question until you have a plant in hand, know what it looks like and does, and what you want it to do in next generations.
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Thanks for taking the time!
 
Sounds crazy but in my experience you don't really get to know a particular phenotypes true potential until after several runs.

I mean I used to go by the old adages of short internodal spacing, not too much stretch, bug and disease resistance...yadda yadda yadda. That was when I was a new grower.

Now. After....lets say thousands of phenos gone through. I have changed my tune a bit.

Proper phenotype hunting in VERY time consuming. Its all about getting each one "dialed in" to its specific needs. (Everyone is different.) This can take several runs or can, has, and does occur with the seedlings.

I mean lets say stretch for instance. I thought it was mostly a bad thing and signaled an unruly plant. lol Wrong. I now know some phenos stretch to allow for massive flowers. I mean only makes sense they have to make room to but on those donkey dicks. lol

So although us indoor guys all have height restrictions stretch can be a beautiful thing in the hands of a skilled grower. Some phenos literally stretch the whole 10-12 week flower and WOW the colas they put on. Others stretch then put on little tiny buds. No good for me.

Then insect resistance. I used to only look for phenos that had natural resistance to pest. No longer. I have a strain that thrips absolutely LOVE. Bad? NO. She keeps the thrips off everything else in the garden she is so sweet. Bait plant.

Then when treated and put into flower she proceeds to put on MASSIVE raspberry flavored crystal coated nugs. Worth fucking with the bugs. Stands to reason the bugs would like her, like I said she is SWEET. lol

Its really all about what your looking for. I personally am using the plant as medicine for myself and others, so I am looking for lots of the good stuff. Regular variety. That's it. Pheno hunting although time consuming is very rewarding and when you do get those "keepers" that are dialed in and growing to their absolute potential. What a rush! lol Good luck.
 
Max Ehrmann said:
Sounds crazy but in my experience you don't really get to know a particular phenotypes true potential until after several runs.

I mean I used to go by the old adages of short internodal spacing, not too much stretch, bug and disease resistance...yadda yadda yadda. That was when I was a new grower.

Now. After....lets say thousands of phenos gone through. I have changed my tune a bit.

Proper phenotype hunting in VERY time consuming. Its all about getting each one "dialed in" to its specific needs. (Everyone is different.) This can take several runs or can, has, and does occur with the seedlings.

I mean lets say stretch for instance. I thought it was mostly a bad thing and signaled an unruly plant. lol Wrong. I now know some phenos stretch to allow for massive flowers. I mean only makes sense they have to make room to but on those donkey dicks. lol

So although us indoor guys all have height restrictions stretch can be a beautiful thing in the hands of a skilled grower. Some phenos literally stretch the whole 10-12 week flower and WOW the colas they put on. Others stretch then put on little tiny buds. No good for me.

Then insect resistance. I used to only look for phenos that had natural resistance to pest. No longer. I have a strain that thrips absolutely LOVE. Bad? NO. She keeps the thrips off everything else in the garden she is so sweet. Bait plant.

Then when treated and put into flower she proceeds to put on MASSIVE raspberry flavored crystal coated nugs. Worth fucking with the bugs. Stands to reason the bugs would like her, like I said she is SWEET. lol

Its really all about what your looking for. I personally am using the plant as medicine for myself and others, so I am looking for lots of the good stuff. Regular variety. That's it. Pheno hunting although time consuming is very rewarding and when you do get those "keepers" that are dialed in and growing to their absolute potential. What a rush! lol Good luck.
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That's a great breakdown of things to remember going into this, I've got all my equipment to get going so by what your saying I just gotta start getting my hands dirty. Wow I'm excited but terrified, popping 25 ghost train seeds today, hoping I have success
 
25 is good number to see just about everything that a line is gonna give you to work with. If you look at Mendel pea stuff or Punnett square, there's really no reason to go beyond 25 or thereabouts. Unless you are an extremophile looking at terp profiles.
 
mudballs said:
25 is good number to see just about everything that a line is gonna give you to work with. If you look at Mendel pea stuff or Punnett square, there's really no reason to go beyond 25 or thereabouts. Unless you are an extremophile looking at terp profiles.
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Hoping to find a candidate that has a prolific veg growth, nice flower structure and resistant to low humidity due to my grow environment being dryer than your social life in highschool, hoping to be able to half the heard by flower to not have to veg out like 100 clones lol.
 
GrowmezCannabis said:
Hoping to find a candidate that has a prolific veg growth, nice flower structure and resistant to low humidity due to my grow environment being dryer than your social life in highschool, hoping to be able to half the heard by flower to not have to veg out like 100 clones lol.
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I think you mean seeds not clones.
 
GrowmezCannabis said:
Nah I'm taking cuttings and I'm gonna self the clones whose mother showed positive traits, probably unnecessary but it's the plan I had.
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I thought you said 100 clones. They would have to come from 100 different plants. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding.
 
xtsho said:
I thought you said 100 clones. They would have to come from 100 different plants. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding.
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Taking multiple cuts from the same mother, take 100 and cull the ones who aren't up to par, just a way to make sure there aren't any undesirable traits that I didn't notice the first run before I commit to making and sorting through hundreds of seeds. That was my plan at least, it might be bat shit insane and I'm just clueless lol.
 
GrowmezCannabis said:
Taking multiple cuts from the same mother, take 100 and cull the ones who aren't up to par, just a way to make sure there aren't any undesirable traits that I didn't notice the first run before I commit to making and sorting through hundreds of seeds. That was my plan at least, it might be bat shit insane and I'm just clueless lol.
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Clones from the same mother are going to be the same.
 
xtsho said:
Clones from the same mother are going to be the same.
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I figured I'd make clones as I want to put them through various stressors and I want extras incase I push some a lil too far. first run of the pheno will be checking growth rates and ratios and second run will be stress tests to see how each pheno responds. Might just skip that step though and self the first run of them if I find I don't want to bother with it.
 
Ah! I just found this forum. Nice to be around people who are doing some breeding.

I've been reading about breeding and YouTube has some nice videos. ( Plug "Mr.Growit" )
The latest advice is to start with stable strains. They should be ones you like because the work goes on for years I understand. I too am just learning.

So anytime we take one one strain and cross it with a different strain the offspring are called F1s'
I understand that in the F1s' the variation is less than with F2s generation so F2 is where I understand the selection process really starts basically and the phenotype and traits will more diverse in F2.

So, I believe we make the F1cross then see if we like what we get. I am assuming this is regular male + female and not feminized or "male-anized" seeds. ( I have heard we can take males and spray them with colloidal silver too and make Male seeds ). <-- Is that true?
Out of those, we grow them out and select for what we like best.
Then growing out F2 it is time to do some hunting. From those F2s' we select what we believe is best for what our idea or goal is.
So wash, rinse and repeat; F2, F3 and they say about F4 we can have a stabilized strain. I assume that from starting with stable genetics it's good around F4. We are the evolutionary pressure on the plant hence we select what we deem worthy generation after generation.

For me, climate change forced me to quit growing in my 20 foot trailer over ten years ago because it no longer got cold enough where I lived to cool down a 1k HPS. It simply was too dangerous to trust that it was not going to cause a fire and besides do you know how hard it was to grow in a trailer park and keep it from the dozen or so people around my trailer? I couldn't have vents sucking outside air. No way!

For my medical strain I started with GreehHouse seeds "The Doctor' and an unnamed super-up ( maybe a Haze ) that was gifted to me directly by the breeder. This is my cross. Today ten years later I finally have a real house to live in and I am legal to grow here in Illinois so now is the time to get on to the F2 level. Amazingly those F1 seeds that were kept in a jar under no special storage conditions for a decade germinated. Well some did anyway.

Anyway, the best recommendation I know of so far, is to start with stable genetics right from the start. Then make your selection for male and female. I understand it is harder to know what a male is contributing but a stem rub can be some help. Also I nibble on the unripe pollen sacs to get an idea. Yep I nibble balls ( beat someone to that ). Not Human ones however.
Then once there are F1s, the diversity it seems to be suggested, is not all that much so I believe I can get a good idea of what I will want to keep and what I wouldn't want to keep. In this case it is more a seed rescue than a selection process. By the grace of the Cannabis gods I got two boys and two girls. How lucky. One was my lovely S1.
This whole grow season is all about growing out a thousand seeds. I hope to have viable seeds ten years from now as well.
For any meaningful stash I await next winter's grow of these F2s' Until ten I am going to be a good customer at the dispensary.

Now I did learn to make feminized seeds and I did make S1s that have the trait of at lights out those girls emit Cherry Scent. The bud doesn't have a cherry scent but the plants emit cherry when under1k HPS and cold ambient air, at lights out. I think the Stomata closes fast when the HPS goes off, the air is cold and that is when a wafting of wonderful Cherry scent can be enjoyed. It only lasts a minute.

I don't know about fem X fem only breeding but I made an experimental cross with my S1s and Blue Dream that was very nice. I plan to redo that since I believe I have an S1-Cherry in my clone tent. Once I have that S1 grown out I will then hit them with two different F1 males of the Cherry Phenotype. Question: if I make the S1 from cherry-fem X Blue Dream fem and hit it with the male of one of the parents is that F1 or F2?

I don't think I can handle any more breeding lines than two. Two may be asking a bit much. It can take years to get to a stabilized strain I understand.

That is all I know so far. I don't know about a fem X fem only program. I would fear that the genetics might not be stable after gen-4. Then again, I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
 
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