How To Become A New Seed Breeder..

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Purpletrain

Purpletrain

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At the End of the day making seeds is fun and great , with the amount of new breeders coming in , i would think there is alot better chances of creating a business in another field rather then be a short lived seed company , what were seeing to day is Novice breeders trying to cash in before corporate companies like Bayer , Monsanto take the strains to a new level of patenting, Even the old breeders are shitting there pants there DAYS are NUMBERED
People tend to forget its not about purchasing seeds 12 pack finding a male in it or feminizing a female , crossing it 2 gens then back crossing it back and
Call it a day lol
To find a true elte male species can take 10,000 seeds then once you selected that unique male it needs to be progeny tested , this is where today breeders don't bother , They find a male collect pollen and chuck
same thing applies for females finding that one special female plant
Today is cross what ever be it they have a so called Elite / stud but what happens when another male or female out shines that elite plant ??? should it still be called a elite ?? or when you have 12 so called elites
I respect all breeders, and how i determine a good breeder is looking at there strains and genetics used when i see a breeder with 15 strains and 12 of them have the same male used numerous different strains with the same dam male used or what ever unless the strain really catches my eye i walk away
the days of being a breeder are over with land races and Heirlooms being basterdized accidentally crossed bred cause that farmer decided to purchase some seeds from another stock
like In Jamaica for instance its hard to find a orginal line un molested its getting this way and where there are originals you might get lucky to get with in miles of it , but with wars going on and what have chances of you surviving is 20 percent your either kid napped beheaded or just shot
so what are new breeders doing but purchasing seeds 2 different strains not even progeny testing and crossing it
 
mancdank

mancdank

8,108
313
It was neville that realised seeds were allowed to be made/ sold legaly in holland,(why hes known as the father of dutch seedbanks)and most of sensis strains were bred by him too, sensis not what it used to be.76
Agreed back in those days u could pop a packet of beans and they were all pretty much identical and stable too. too many s1 in the gene pools these days imo
 
mancdank

mancdank

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313
Problem for me is i can only buy seeds,i have no access to clones so i have to rely on these breeders to try and get hold of some good gen.
The biggest problem i face is trying to buy seeds that are what they are described as,i have asked what breeders should i be buying off and everyone has different advice ill give an example.

Alot of people have adviced me to buy seeds off shanti and i was like whats his best strain,most people will say run ssh im like great that sounds good then when you read up on the strain you have people saying you have to run many seeds to get the true ssh pheno that is worth growning.

Why is this strain given so many thumbs up when it is soooo unstable.you would think people would be unhappy that its so hard to get a good pheno of this strain.

Thats my biggest issue with buying seeds,the lack of strains that people can agree on.

You would think that would be the easy part of growing getting strains that hold there traits.
Whinge over.
EXOTIC GENETIX :)
 
Sativied

Sativied

Ruler of the Whorled
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It was neville that realised seeds were allowed to be made/ sold legaly in holland,(why hes known as the father of dutch seedbanks)and most of sensis strains were bred by him too, sensis not what it used to be.76

Neville was the first to ship seeds worldwide from NL, including to the US, and ignored the laws anywhere doing that and he does deserve credit for that. He placed an ad in HighTimes and especially his friends at HT, GHS, and now MNS have since promoted him as the father of dutch seeds banks. It's like saying Arjan is known as the king of cannabis.

The Sensi seed club store Ben Dronkers opened in 1985, in the centre of Amsterdam sold seeds from Sensi (Dronkers) and from the Seed Bank (Neville). Both had collected seeds from abroad and bag seed from import, and like others, were already creating hybrids from those but had little good flower to offer till Sam came along. None of the real pioneers involved at the time will deny that, even the ones that don't like him. In 1991, after Neville's arrest in perth and when the FBI wanted him, Ben Dronkers bought out Neville and sensi seed club + the seed bank became the sensi seed bank.

Sensi would still be one of the seedbanks without Neville and thanks to Ben, yet Neville would not get so much credit from you if it weren't for the success and efforts of Ben Dronkers and several actual breeders (Sam, Haze Bros, the indian who created NL, the breeder of early pearl).

Sensi is pretty much what it used to be, not much more either. What others failed to be and what many others tried to become or mimic since. Including Arjan, Shanti, and Neville again with ghs, and later MNS, and several people who worked at sensi. Everywhere Neville worked after Sensi led to false claims about how they supposedly had more original originals than Sam's stock that Neville sold to Sensi and the haze Sam sold to Eddie, the Flying Dutchmen. It's really no mystery where they all got their seeds, the same place most people did. Neville posted he bought the haze and several skunk lines from Sam, early pearl from Rob, and the early girl, afghani #1, californian orange and many others were already available from other seedbanks and used to create hybrids.

Watch the Green Avalanche docu on youtube for a more factual representation of history than mns or wiki. Wernard, Old Ed, Kees Hoekert, Eddie, Sam the Skunkman, and several others are the fathers of both the dutch cannabis and seed scene. Those guys changed and initiated everything and Neville's role in it is just one of many, but more than any, distorted by an exceptional amount of lies originating from Neville and friends.

Wernard Bruining, founder of positronics, and first coffeeshop and grow shop was already selling seeds as the Lowland seed company too, years before Ben opened the store and Neville placed that ad that made him famous. Sam together with Ed Rosenthal was invited to join the green team (see www.olded.nl) by Wernard. Before that coffeeshops primarily sold hash and the weed was imported or outdoor crap.

"He [Wernard Bruining] mouthed off about me in one or two of the popular magazines and for a while I was planning to punch him in the guts, but I never saw him again." - Neville

Anyone who wants to punch Wernard can only be a major douchebag. Without the efforts from him and others Neville would be irrelevant and/or in jail. Coffeeshops in Amsterdam, again Wernard being the first, were tolerated, the entire distinction between soft and harddrugs, and everything that followed is because happy hash smokers like Wernard didn't cause trouble and the overhelming amount of heroin addicts back then, like Neville was, did.
 
Krypto

Krypto

1,162
263
You could also just beg for elite cuts find a random male and pollen chuck the hell outta them make a few handles online and hype everything super hard test nothing then fall off the planet when the hermagedon happens oh you need a snazzy name and a ridiculous price tag too .
Sounds like ya got burned. Dude, that sucks!
 
Avalonian

Avalonian

17
13
Can't resist ... and i hope that people that i will quote will take it with a bit of backward. Everything is rationnalized totally outside any form of hobby, more a testimony of "how to feed your family with it if you're not allready rich" lol

GT21 said:
It takes years to truly work a strain when working with all allele frequencies.

As hobbyist, it take me around 5 years to develop a decent hybrid. A competitive one i mean, and with lines that i don't have to fully map from scratch (mostly IBLs).

As seedman, you have from 6 months to one year max to stay on the track or you're out. No one will pay a R&D like before, no one will pay a R&D at all. It mean, by example, that if you live in East Spain you have to cross the bilbo's critical with everything you have to the point to vomit when you smell its odor. Now they are after all US cuts, trust me it change the life of many seedmans that continue to work today lol

But the reality is that between the marketing and the reality, you have a lot more gap that before. Breeding today is more the Nasdaq of elite cuts that anything else.

GT21 said:
Open pollination is best.

I can agree for the preservation projects, but the guy seem to want to live from it ^^

symbiot420 said:
Honestly not many of the people calling themselves breeders these days are willing to put in the kind of work it takes to produce quality strains/crosses but then again no one seems to care about that anymore just hype it and let the fanboys take over lol

In substance, i totally agree. btw, I will push more far the consideration in saying without any shame that today only hobbyists are able to produce triple A stuff. Because they have the time that companies no longer have.

I totally agree too that you have to take in consideration the incredible pressure and by extension the shared responsabilities of the equation. You will find a million of trolls threads on quality, pedigree madness, fights on who have the real deal etc ... but behind the troll's scene they all ask massively feminized ruderalis as hell. That's the hyprocrisis of our green world since it becomed a bit more democratized.

In another hand, to survive, you have to bend the knee in face of the demand. Even the most radical "i will never release fem or ruds, i promise on my blood" have gave out. In the same vein, i can't blame "serial outcrossers" that surf on the cuts wave.

In both case, the seed production with wholesalers constraints stay a job that ask organization, timing, and a minimum of skills to don't finish homeless.

symbiot420 said:
Imho if someone hasn't been growing atleast 5 - 10 years they shouldn't even be thinking about becoming one.

I agree, if you don't known how to react this plant to its environment, you're unable to handle a selection.
I add to it that to known a minimum of classics is an insurance to don't swim in all bs and legends without backward.

gravekat303 said:
You could also just beg for elite cuts find a random male and pollen chuck the hell outta them make a few handles online and hype everything super hard test nothing then fall off the planet when the hermagedon happens oh you need a snazzy name and a ridiculous price tag too .

Lol it's a bit pushy readed like that, but yes that's the most secure way actually to live from it. Diluted with a hint of diplomacy and cold head ... it's what people ask the more actually, after all. I've nothing against one breeder that decide to do it with high grade standarts, at the moment that the final product stay competitive and not only a name. I will just consider that he's not pissing against the wind.

Purpletrain said:
Today's era of breeder is all about cashing in taking last years elte winning cup strain and crossing it with this years elite cup strain or more or less taking someone else's years of work and passing it off as there with crossing two elite strains most thought after :) these breeders are not true breeders , in my books there just lucky to be able to have the resources to get most sought after cup winning strains and crossing them before the next Hill billy does and putting it to market
true breeding is a lost art and why so many hermie prone genetics are out in the public to day

One more time, i agree on the substance but i can't say enough that breeders are forced to do what customers ask, today. And if they become more and more uneducated on quality grades, the demand follow in this vein too.

The competition is rude and if you don't want to do what people ask, someone else will and you will lose quickly your momentum and hype. In 90's the market was totally different and less messy in a way, if you wanted to impose a standart, a specific catalog of genotypes, it was possible. Today it's just boring slavery "ad vomitum" if you want stay in official networks (EU ones, idk the US ground from the core).

For the hermie's age, that's the price of the feminized compromission. And Nostradaweed will say that potency and long lasting highs/stones will follow with the ruds age. It's a radical opinion and i will understand well all advanced people that handle it in decent conditions, if ever they feel hurted or indirectly blamed by this opinion. But the industry is no longer decent, and i'm talking more about the mass effect that it represent over individual exceptions of people wich do it in a responsible way.

knoturstyle said:
For me creating that elite is what I will stride for.

It's the mistake of all newcomers in this game to think that. But i respect this ambition.

In the facts, a cut will become elite only by the weed business. And you can be sure that you will never be credited for that. Now the cuts are named in function of the growers that share them, just like warez releases lol At the difference that with a warez release, you known the source. You known what it is. With weed you have to deal generally with fancy pedigree and incredible stories. That's not new, it always existed. It's just more present and frequent with the democratization today.

We Solidarity said:
Cannabis breeders ruined the cannabis plant, through single plant selection in small quantity we choked out any hope of stabilizing lines.

The demand for inferior and cheaper products done it, not the breeders that followed this massive demand. I think that it is unfair to present the story like that. Breeders don't have produced uneducated people that want stay uneducated at all price, wich represent today the main flow of the market. Our weeds was luxury and rare products, it is now just a product on a shelve of a supermarket, marketing is theyr only knownledge. It's sad maybe, but they wanted it more that anything else. I consider that to rage after the breeders for the actual situation is to reinforce this trend in letting customers totally free of any responsabilities.

We Solidarity said:
The Dutch created great seed because they had the opportunity to pick through thousands of seeds, not for just one plant, but to pick every plant showing the desirable phenotype. An open pollination between dozens and dozens of plants showing identical phenotypic expression is how you stabilize a line, not by inbreeding and back crossing your best plants.

It can be an interresting debate on methodologies if we enter in the details of the selection. The practical ones only, not the supposed ones. But it's way too absolute to convince a breeder with dirty hands that must face a different equation near to each generation, and that need to choose the right tool at the right moment to perform a true stabilization. To reduce a practice to only one tool is for me a kind of religious believe. I can respect that, but at the moment it's clearly announced before being developed. Yes, you can theorically build a house with only one hammer. But it's not necessary the best way to do it with an human lifespan.

We Solidarity said:
Real breeders haven't existed since the 80s outside of medical research farms in Europe and Israel...whatever the fuck we call breeding today is just amateur pollen chucking even if you have an internationally branded seed company...its complete greed and narrow-sightedness, with a lack of actual horticultural knowledge, that compels the seed market today. If you don't believe me just ask any breeder how many times he's found his stud pheno. Because chances are they stopped looking soon as they found it the first time.

The most advanced breeders of the world are in the hemp industry since centuries. And it gived us mens like RC Clarke for the psychoactive side of this world, if i can say. In another hands i've knowned little guys that produced incredible "homecross" in theyr garden without a 1M$ genetic lab, and i will always tend to trust the bud instead anything else.

I understand what you're saying in substance, that's respectable, but i think that a middle between these twos extrems can exist and produce jewels.

We Solidarity said:
But yeah...to answer the op- if you want to breed you need a team of exceptional badasses to test your lines for you, and you also need the patience/capital to grow cannabis for 8-12 months without seeing a profit.

I totally agree, to the maximum timing that the market will let you to develop a strain today. Accurate.

Purpletrain said:
For me there another thing I consider certainly important in cannabis breeding: the breeder's taste and signature.

Rockin sentence. But you stay one of these last mohicans that will care about that. Welcome in the rushy and neverending "black friday" of genetics world of today ... but everything have an end. Specially when the next gens customers eat more "hyped phenotypes" stock that it is able to create each year. One time that they will suck this vein to the bones, i think that it will be an eldorado for anyone able to truly refine a line to its genetical limits. Maybe i'm innocent to think that, but i like to stay positive by nature.

Sativied said:
Also, Ben Dronkers has been arrested over 80 times defying cops and laws and without his efforts most of the varieties today would not have become so widely available, including for many "breeders". Cannabis is illegal in NL opposed to what many believe. It was Ben Dronkers who figured out seeds were excluded from the ban and didn't capitulate. I don't think sensi has great breeders but you call him an opportunist, I call him a goddamn hero with a good business instinct. Yes, I agree growers should learn more about the history.

I agree with this fair judgement. And i will push it in saying that Sensi Seeds started to fall in quality when he dedicated his time for the Hempflax project. He was not only a good business man and a cocky entrepeneur for sensi seeds, but a good boss also. No one care today that the good dutch seedbanks spread of 90's was in fact just the solo version of his own employees ...

Sativied said:
Breeding true is a means, never a goal by itself. Homozygosity is a road to homogeneity. Higher filial generations do not equate to more "real" breeding. Creating an F5 is not more "real" breeding than trying and testing different F1 hybrids. Problem there is the lack of effort gone into trying and testing.

I agree totally in the practical side. Specially when you make these F1 with IBLs.

Keekee said:
Alot of people have adviced me to buy seeds off shanti and i was like whats his best strain,most people will say run ssh im like great that sounds good then when you read up on the strain you have people saying you have to run many seeds to get the true ssh pheno that is worth growning.

Actually i prefer ten times to work with a mango haze that with this washed ssh ^^ But it's a matter of preference, taste. And after all it's just a variation of the same sensi seeds P1. With this name dropping/switch game, everyone have forgot that the critical is just a big bud mostly used by cash croppers for entry grades (you call it "mids" i think in US) in his time lol

Now, seriously, if you want to be able to drive your own project on long term ... you have to be a little more strong than that. You will always find someone somewhere that will say that what you have done or want to do is impossible, dumb, out of the trend etc ... in talking about strains comparisons without really knowning that they have the same P1 sources generally. And sometimes produced exactly in the same physicall location under twos differents brand name too ^^

Taste the weeds yourself, do your own mental "cannabis cups" of it and fix your goals for good until your reach them. The more you're unstable and reluctant to your own initial choices, the more it will be expressed in your own genetic. Following absolutly "what people generally think" will only lead today to a vomiting point, as breeder or "wannabe" etc ...

Purpletrain said:
I respect all breeders, and how i determine a good breeder is looking at there strains and genetics used when i see a breeder with 15 strains and 12 of them have the same male used numerous different strains with the same dam male used or what ever unless the strain really catches my eye i walk away

This is a "black listing" condition for me too. In this specific case, i will react like with hyped cuts : searching an oz well grown somewhere before the seeds, or any deep searches.

Sativied said:
Sensi is pretty much what it used to be, not much more either. What others failed to be and what many others tried to become or mimic since. Including Arjan, Shanti, and Neville again with ghs, and later MNS, and several people who worked at sensi. Everywhere Neville worked after Sensi led to false claims about how they supposedly had more original originals than Sam's stock that Neville sold to Sensi and the haze Sam sold to Eddie, the Flying Dutchmen. It's really no mystery where they all got their seeds, the same place most people did. Neville posted he bought the haze and several skunk lines from Sam, early pearl from Rob, and the early girl, afghani #1, californian orange and many others were already available from other seedbanks and used to create hybrids.

Quoted just because it's freaking good to read this type of input sometimes. Behind the marketing, there is one reality that none lies can change.

Sorry for the big post, can't resist ^^
 
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Krypto

Krypto

1,162
263
Jesus Harold Christ!!! Soooo much to take in. So many sides to the story. I agree with much of what's being said here. I'm not a breeder, or seedmaker. I've made a couple crosses. And a few batches of seeds for myself. I've been doing this long enough to know...
- there's a ton of DRAMA in this circle. Way more than i expected.
- also I think people are under the impression that the more strains you cross the better it's going to be (hybrid vigor) . But obviously so many people have beat that horse to death over and over and over.
- the most important thing I've learned is forget about brand names forget about Cup winners, forget about everything except what you want to get out of doing this. And if you have a cut of THC bomb... And it grows well clones easy and produces medicine that helps you then fuck everybody else.
I'm saying that partially because I just was gifted cuts of THC bomb, critical hog, and Amnesia lemon.
So far they have outperformed everything else that I have had in the last 5 years. Especially the Bomb!!!
 
Krippie94

Krippie94

104
43
So, if I have seeds that I made by proper breeding. How do I sell them...I don't know the first step.
 
GeneticGiant

GeneticGiant

54
33
Patience, dedication, and drive. It also helps if you have a team working with you instead of trying to be a one man seed bank.
Like others have said, theres a lot of drama and backlash to fight against if you want to make it in this industry. Just remember to keep your name out there, show your work and be honest about what you have produced. I have been asked a few times now, "when will this be available?"
I think a lot of people here have said the same thing in different ways and I'm probably about to do the same thing.
As a fellow new kid on the block. Take it from me. Don't rush. Take your time and invest it in testing your genetics, making sure you have a solid pheno and work on that. Show the stages of your work, show the lineage, prove your strain is stable and then consider marketing.
If you can't take the time to test your own genetics, don't expect other people to invest money in them.
 

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