Breeding for whorls

Looks like I may not have to test for gender... the one I expected would be a male because it's going so fast looks to be a male too. Left in the tube in front on the group shot above. Pre-flowers 4 weeks after popping the seeds :cool:



Let's check roots... I think I can still remove it from the tubes.



Apparently that worked :) Better shot:




One of the two look-a-likes, let's check the other one:

Too soon, could spawn pistils. Being that it's also a big one, preflowers forming so fast, it's probably a male too. Will transplant them to hempy once sure. need to pick two from the small DWC to replace them.

One of the better males so far:



Just transplanted from tubes to bucket, it is the one on the right:


Following is the one that showed preflowers the first, but... although I think it will be male (all my females always start out with a calyx and pistil visible with scope the next day or so), it looks odd:



It's like a beak, like two halfs of an open non-twisted calyx, or two sides of the male umbrella-ball... :confused: Same thing on other nodes...

It's an awesome plant though, good chance I'll use it.


AAO (topped, no idea of sex yet, I hope female)

Next is the ugliest mj plant I've grown, a female. Huge leaves, long petioles, stretchy, ugly leaves, seemingly more indica-dom than the rest. It's a good example of what I don't want. I want the branches to grow above the fans before they get huge and without having to tuck leaves down (like that bushy male above AAO). Will trim this one down to 4 maybe 6 bud sites. Don't know the sex of the ones in DWC so if I replace it I risk replacing with male. This will likely be just a jar filler. Fat stem though.


The ones in the tubes grow so fast I forgot I'm still running 400watt... will switch to 600 watt tonight.

Missing 1 leaf but not topped or trained. 5 weeks after germinating and I could take 10 or 12 good clones of it.... if it were a female.

I obviously don't know how many of the ones that survived that dwc setup are females, I hope I have enough in the tubes so in in addition to selecting further I can get the closet full with buds as well. :) I still don't know what sex the AAO is. I topped it, so the part where the preflowers show first is gone and I'll have to wait a bit longer. Will be disappointed if that one isn't female.

Colors bleached from light, they are in fact quite dark. The male above was the one in the tubes top right.

Same as first pic in previous post, day after transplant to hempy. Still no training/cropping/pruning, not even tucking leaves down.


Leaves smell really good (skunky pine-pineapple light fresh... dunno :) ) stem smells even better/stronger.... I think I'm developing a man crush :joyful:

Male, male, male, male, female, probably male, female (but a Late Night not P6-F2), female (soil1), male (freak in soil2), female (ugly), and still a bunch unknown. I hope the unknown are mostly females. I really really hope AAO is female, here's she is:



When I replaced the males in the tubes it occurred to me that by picking the best looking plants structure-wise I end up picking more males. When I removed them from the hydro raft setup and killed about half the plants I didn't consider that... they weren't that large back then, but still, I did pick the best structure-wise which may have led to picking more males.



The one top left in the group shot above is likely a male too. Which is a shame, cause I already have a better version of it. And worse, the last one in DWC I got to replace it looks very similar. The males got longer stipules... The three buckets contain males removed out of the tubes, don't know yet what their replacements are.

Still a couple I'm not sure about and 3 or 4 without preflowers yet but it looks like at least 8-10 out of 20 are female, maybe a couple of more.

Placing the females that are in 1ltr bottles on top of a 2ltr bottle, about time too:


I noticed that in small narrow tall bottles the plants also get longer and less branching than in a wide pot... This skews my perception of the females that are in the bottles and in the tubes (which will look better). The upside is that the Late Night is perhaps not as stretchy as I thought, the one I have now is similar to the P6-F2 females in the bottles.

Sativied said:

I really really hope AAO is female, here's she is:

Click to expand...

Positive thinking always helps...

Had too look hard but found a preflower with a pistil on AAO :D Let's hope it stays a full blown female.

Loving the short internode spacing (one of the 7 branches)



One of the males:

Oh man... I mean woman... the big one left in the back in the group shot is a female :eek: It's one of the plants I expect to be hazy. As I mentioned earlier

"The one top left in the group shot above is likely a male too. Which is a shame, cause I already have a better version of it."

That "better version" is a male. They're like twins, except the female is bigger by now (NFT > hempy :)), in fact, it's the largest of the bunch. It's not topped so to make sure it's not going to get too large compared to the rest I'm going to bend it over.




This is the ugly one, still not my thing, too indica yet not a lot of internodes. Better now it's topped though. (lime green mostly from flash)


Still 2 in the tubes I'm not sure about yet, but happy with the results so far.

I put 4 CHxCH in small soil pots in case I wouldn't have enough females in the P6-F2 and 2, maybe 3, turn out to be perfect examples of my strong whorlers.

The best looking one, about 2inch diameter so still small:


Started out as dicot. First set of true leaves are normal regular opposite phyllotaxy, with the typical single leaflet (not in visible in pic).

Second set of leaves, 3 leaflets as usual. 3rd set of leaves, 3 leaflets... 4th... hey, still 3 leaflets... double-sport or just a little unhappy. I think the latter, it's in a small wet pot under low light conditions, didn't think I'd need them after finding more females in the P6-F2.

Anyway, that was not my point. Point was 1st and 2nd set are regular opposite, notice the 3rd set has one leaf that is at an offset angle. Looking straight from the top, it is again a golden angle. And as with the strong whorlers in the other F1 crosses, the set after the golden angle is a tri. It's just beautiful, not just the plant/result, but how it evolves into tri-whorled, the behavior. Really happy to see it occur so consistent again. I hadn't grown any CHxCH to this point yet and did expect there to be a good chance of whorlers in it.

ICExCH, ChunkxCH, CHxCH, they all contain strong and late whorlers (like those that form tri branches after topping). Only grown two Late Night so don't know about those yet. The Chunk x CH F2 contains not strong whorlers, and seemingly so far only 1 very late whorler, actually (@geologic: ) that one didn't start whorling until it started alternating.

Obviously not surprising, but quad x normal lead to strong and late tri whorled as well as normal and late whorl x normal reduced whorling occurrence even further in F2.

So, these new whorlers are in CHxCH and not in the P6-F2. And that actually might not be a bad thing. Because I got worried I wouldn't have enough females to select from I popped some of those CHxCH. The reason I picked those instead seeds of the other 3 crosses is cause I had an option in the back of my mind. Although I don't have the original CH quad male parent of the ChunkxCH, I do have these CHxCH (from same quad male). I could still do a backcross to a genetically similar individual that may actually even be more stable. That is, to one of these CHxCH whorlers.

Things are looking up. Still two I'm unsure about but I probably got at least 11 females. That's no less than I initially expected, ending up flowering half of the initial group, of which half are males. 9 males, 11 females, and still 2 to go.

Just found and removed the last male from the tubes, the others are all female. The removed male I replaced with the last one I had in dwc, which turns out to be female. So the tubes are filled with females only now :)

Almost @ my 3rd full season and have only been lucky once with the tri or multi leaf with the perfect angles and then due to it not being a strong dominant genetic trait, Seems I lost it in clone form, I dont understand to what level the dominant gene needs be present to stay with the clones during the life cycle of a three or even 4 branch plant but what I am is fascinated by anything different and fun to grow.
@Sativied
Im just a fan of your work subbed in fer the grow.
Keepin it Dank
+++++Vibes Mr S
FlyJ

Thanks FlyJ :)

FlyinJStable said:

I dont understand to what level the dominant gene needs be present to stay with the clones during the life cycle of a three or even 4 branch plant

Click to expand...

geologic and I talked a little about that (retaining whorling in clones) in his thread. The thing is that clones have alternating nodes so it can no longer have whorled phyllotaxy (which is non-alternating by definition). It can still spiral, which means from the top it looks like a tri, but the three leaves are not at the same level.

I noticed that not every whorl is the same whorl though, as they say, your miles may vary. I noticed I can keep the whorling in clones if I clone early, i.e. before alternating.

I haven't checked enough to confirm it but I noticed some revegged buds that instead of like an alternating clone grew out into regular opposite (non-alternating) like a plant from seed.



Of the 58 P6-F2 I popped, 44 went in the large dwc/swc/hydro float setup, after dismantling that I kept the best 22 and moved those into the tubes/small dwc and hempy and of those 22 I now have 14 females, the other 8 are male so all sexed now. Needless to say I'm happy with the results. 4 of the females don't look like what I want so far, same goes for 3 of the males.

I have two similar plants I think will be sativa dom hazy (male and female) and the AAO with a matching male. Going to cross multiple males with multiple females and decide afterwards which seeds to use for next gen, and obviously I need to see how they all turn out but those pairs are begging to mate.

P6-F2-23, the large seemingly sativa dom and hopefully hazy female left in the back, the main bud site:



Exaggerated by the flash...

The one Late Night plant, very sativa dom, looks similar, couple of days ahead of the rest as last round, more pistols.


P6-F2-19, another female:


Bottom-side male leaf:

Heads up, this is going to be a little long....

I'm always trying to expand my knowledge on breeding and in particular the basic/foundational stuff (easy to get lost in all the new high tech stuff) and something I've been thinking about several times is variety vs stability and open pollination (OP) vs a more intense selection. After a long discussion with another small breeder and some more reading I ran into an article that sums it up quite nicely. Figured I share them here:

http://howtosaveseeds.com/breeding.php - About selecting (individuals) and the effect on the genetic diversity.

http://www.garden.org/subchannels/care/seeds?q=show&id=293 - Hybrid or Open Pollinated

An OP strain is more like a population than a variety (what in cannabis world is a strain), the latter requires more intense selection and is more uniform. The OP is however more genetically diverse which apart from possibly being less uniform also has its advantages, like more possible new combinations of genes.

The reason for the interest is to deal with the risk of inbreeding depression. Assuming I find some great plants amongst the F3, I want to continue stabilizing it (basically the non-whorling line) till it's suitable for creating an F1 hybrid and function as the recurrent parent in backcrossing, ie. till it's homozygous for its key traits. So I want it to be stable for growing and breeding. Given limited space and plant count the risk of selecting out good traits increases with every generation. That can be somewhat prevented by doing an extra round of the same generation if the current batch doesn't produce enough plants that have the desired traits. And also be using multiple females/males. Creating two or more lines and crossing those together later in the line would be another option. What inherently cannot be avoided when locking in genes is locking out some others by locking in inferior genes. For example for something less visible like pest or disease resistance.

It always starts with an IBL (ideally, which I'm aiming for). In case of backcrossing one can, and in many cases should, cross multiple plants back to the recurrent parent. That way you can select intensely yet retain genetic diversity, i.e. without narrowing the gene pool. I can see why backcrossing is so attractive :) In case of creating the IBL itself, the pool becomes more narrow by default... hence, hybrid vigor once you introduce another.

Obviously it's already limited to the genetic pool based on the original parents (CH and chunk). I want to narrow it as little as possible, while locking in the important traits (like same structure, flowering time, frostiness, bud structure, yield etc.). When it comes to inbreed generations, sometimes less is more. Ideally one picks two homozygous (for the relevant traits) plants in F2 already (since the traits are segregated they are rare but do exist), and then in case of a small plant count going from F4 isn't necessarily an improvement unless the goal is to lock in more traits.

In practice the amount it matters depends obviously on what I cross the P with once homozygous. If that one has a narrow genep ool (like a cross from a cross from a cross)... So if I get to the point of creating a F1 hybrid, I need to get and stabilize something very old and or diverse (like a double cross, crossing two different F1s, or land race even).

However, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis : "Dutch Cannabis researcher E.P.M. de Meijer and coworkers described some of their RAPD studies as showing an "extremely high" degree of genetic polymorphism between and within populations, suggesting a high degree of potential variation for selection, even in heavily selected hemp cultivars."

Amount of smell is certainly living up to the "skunk" genes. Just a small male stinks up my living room in no time. Will take some pics of the males first but will prune them heavily cause I only need a few branches.

*Whorl-alert* *Whorl-alert*

I just noticed two of the main three males are tri-whorled. One started at node 9, the other at node 11.



1 and 3, the two largest, are tris. The one in the center is however actually more bushy (shorter internods). I will probably use that one on AAO (very similar, also no whorling) and use the tri pollen for backcrossing to one of the tris I recently found in the CHxCH, which are doing like expected, pretty good:

Obviously need a female, but have so many CHxCH seed I'm confident I can find one.

The largest male, clearly sativa dom stretchy and by no very slender leaflets:

Hard to see on this one it's a tri, reloading camera battery, will take some shots of the tri nodes tomorrow.

I noticed something that reminded me of the quad male. The three leafs don't alternate separately (at least not always), two stay together.

I checked all the females and notice 1 whorled bud site which might as well be a fluke.

Luv them *Whorl-alert*s...

@Sativied just stubled upon this thread, fantastic stuff buddy! i'm following with great inerest and will go back and read the entire thread tonight.
I remember reading about WP about ten years ago but haven't thought too much aboutit until the other day when i noticed i have 3 whorled phenos of Hazmat og(archive seeds). All 3 are female: 2 are the runts of the pack, and are the only ones with pole straight growth with little to no diagonal/side branching. Both females only have partial WP and it's inconsistant from node to node.
The 3rd female has full on whorled phyllotaxy- she's big, vigorious, has a great lime + kush smell, lots of side branching and has very thick stem walls. The side branches have WP as well.

What's interesting is that every pheno of these hazmats vary & have multiple differences. The only 2 that are (close to) identical are the big WP female and a male that is identical to her in every way, except for the fact that he doesn't have WP.
They're still in veg & i just cloned em for flowering. Don't know how the strain is overall at this point, but i have a feeling they'll be pretty exceptional. Unless they turn out to be complete shwag or a hermi nightmare, i plan to isolate these 2 and breed them in hopes of finding some WP offspring in the f2 population.

The first 2 pics are from the big female with full Phyllotaxy, the last image(thumbnail) is one of the phenos with partial WP.

(The weird 'spotting' on the leaves is just the flash reflecting off the dried foliar spots from earlier that day)