Breeding for whorls

[Sativied]

Just a quick pic update:

The fasciated plant is showing the fasciation clearly in the main/terminal flower now:

And a group shot:

P1A (the reveg at the bottom left) is turning out pretty good all things considering. Pretty much done rearranging budsites of all plants. P1A will need a few more strings to spread it out and then to my own surprise I will have the 4x4 space pretty much covered again.

The empty spot in the middle, a result of the P5 fasciated plant not being topped and cropped, contains a 1 liter bottle with another coco test. It's not as much testing coco but the bottle construction:
http://desertification.wordpress.co...r-container-gardening-in-the-drylands-willem/

I had to add some drainage holes in the inner part and some clay pebbles to prevent those from clogging. Just playing, not trying to re-invent a new grow technique.... but if it ever works out I will post some more shots of the bottles. The stretchy Late Night I posted earlier is in one of these, but it started out in DWC.

 

[geologic]

Just a quick pic update:
The fasciated plant is showing the fasciation clearly in the main/terminal flower now:

View attachment 412330
View attachment 412331

And a group shot:
View attachment 412332

P1A (the reveg at the bottom left) is turning out pretty good all things considering. Pretty much done rearranging budsites of all plants. P1A will need a few more strings to spread it out and then to my own surprise I will have the 4x4 space pretty much covered again.

The empty spot in the middle, a result of the P5 fasciated plant not being topped and cropped, contains a 1 liter bottle with another coco test. It's not as much testing coco but the bottle construction:
http://desertification.wordpress.co...r-container-gardening-in-the-drylands-willem/

I had to add some drainage holes in the inner part and some clay pebbles to prevent those from clogging. Just playing, not trying to re-invent a new grow technique.... but if it ever works out I will post some more shots of the bottles. The stretchy Late Night I posted earlier is in one of these, but it started out in DWC.

@caregiverken calls 'em--
mohawks...

Odd Stem Issue

 

[Sativied]

That describes it pretty well. Although... :pompus: A mohawk is the result of shaving the sides of a regular round-ish hairdo, while fasciation is more like multiple round hairdos in a row overlapping like siamese twins.

Would be a good name for a strain that has this bred in, Mohawk. It seems more desirable in the flower/bud than in the stem though.

I haven't even topped P5 the fasciated but it's only barely coming out above the rest (in front center) about the same level as the reveg left from it. It kept the lateral shoots in the dark, only a few stretch out to the canopy.

I got a mohawk from a previous run too, Skywalker Kush:

Thumb is a regular bud next to it:

 

[Sativied]

P#1 (A front left, B center back) was selected because it branched out so nicely during flowering (when sexing the clone-mother of these) but in a crowded spot it stretched more than desirable.

P6, the regular opposite, seems to have some whorling going on afterall, see in particular the main bud at the left near the black cables. Flowers look up to par so far.

IH#5 below (right in back of group shot), the strongest whorler, is clearly more indica dom than the IH#1 (left in back). IH#1 seems to be 1 or 2 days ahead.

IH#5 flower:

Currently running only 350 ppm. Quite a bit below the sweet spot cause I actually managed to lighten some tips on 390ppm (also below sweetspot). Not because high nute level by itself but in a combination of factors. Got some tropical weather going on, extremely humid (65-75% RH) causing reduced transpiration, high temps (up to 88), and didn't raise light during the weekend after the final grow spurt. Here's a budsite of IH#5 straight under the light:

 

[zeke]

Fascinating fasciation. I've only had it happen once with Thai brick seed. Cutting and progeny failed to exhibit the trait. This trait seems to be valued mostly by cactus and ornamental plant fanciers.

I too am interested in whorled phyllotaxy. I've always thought it would be good to breed the trait for increased flower sites. Never had much luck getting the trait inherited though.

 

[homebrew420]

How old are the plant that are still exhibiting this trait? Agreed with @zeke observations.

This caught my interest for a min but it "appeared" to be hormonally induces/epigenetic? Not determined be dna. Was only able to get one or 2 individuals to clone and keep that trait. Even branches growing from a whorled point tended to NOT show this trait.

Peace

Good luck too

 

[Sativied]

They variate from a month to several months. 2nd generation clone is still tri-whorled. It seems the trait is retained in clones as long as the cutting is taken before it is full mature (preflowers+alternating). However, the plants I'm flowering are clones of plants I sexed after taking cuttings and the side branches of those plants started whorling only after I took the top as a cutting. (see https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/breeding-for-whorls.63887/#post-1264130 for example).

Hormonally induced might be the case but doesn't necessarily mean it's 'also' genetics. I.e. it may be the case the whorling is induced easier in these than others because of a genetically different auxin concentration or other (imo positive) hormonal imbalance. I do consider it a possibility there's something in my grow setup/method/environment that encourages it to express. I have however grown 9 strains in the same space, same way, that didn't express it, and most off the offspring of the quad male does.

I don't know how many, but it's clear the the ChunkxCH cross and the ICExCH cross inherited the trait from the quad-whorling male. "Trait" not necessarily being whorled but the easier/faster tendency to whorl. And not just a few either - possibly 100% (given enough time, I killed many plants before getting to the whorling point based on structure and roots, ie. during seedling stage) which would simply make it dominant (Hey got to have a little wishfull thinking ;))

I have read of others trying to breed the whorl trait in and I would not be surprised I will get the same (lack of) results down the line. I will be more surprised if tri-whorled x triwhorled results in tri-whorled than I was with quad x regular producing tri-whorled.

Besides possible multiple factors, the age and stage of the plant seems to have a large influence, and in particular when it establishes apical dominance seems to play a large role. The plants that started whorling did so when the plant establishes some apical dominance. The ICE has weak apical dominance (doesn't even need to be topped to get a fairly even canopy), and is (I think therefore) expressing the whorl more strongly. A sativa (strong apical dominance) would just whorl on the main stem. This is confirmed by the laterals expressing whorling after the whorling terminal shoot was topped.

 

[Sativied]

IH5 (the strong tri-whorled), 2nd gen clone (topped top of topped top)

Still whorling but I think she'll start alternating soon.

Definitely still my favorite, here's the 1nd gen clone in flower, buds developing very nicely:

And getting more frosty every day:

Dark is IH#5, lighter is P#1B. Vague larger flower top left is IH#1.

The above pic shows one of the main downsides of my system; it's meant to grow clones or at least plants from a single fairly stable strain. They all get the same nutrient level and ratio, which in reality differs per plant. This usually goes at the cost of one plant, i.e. one gets too much or too little. Since I already lightened the tips of the IH#5 I'm going to keep it at 340-350 for a while. That's the lowest I've ever had, that's what my clones and seedlings get on DWC too. Bigger plants use more nutes but also transpire more so already take up more nutes even it the nutrient level remains the same.

Next up is IH#1 (later whorler). Also a tad lighter the IH#5. Largest flowers, seems to be a day or two ahead of IH#5. Less frosty than IH#5.

Purple stems on main fans. ICE mom had it all over. I think it's mostly genetics, and a little stress from temp fluctuations.

I expect IH (ICE x CH) to flower faster, be finished faster, than the P (Chunk x CH). Chunk started small but turned out huge.

P#6 (the regular) really like the sativa-dom leaves on this one. Smaller flowers than the ICE but wouldn't surprise me if this one catches up.

P5 (fasciated) spawned a budsite out of the messy mohawk. Frosty lady too.

EDIT: forgot the groupshot:

L8N8, given up on this one for now because the stretch, but the top 1/5 looks pretty good so far. Still very sativa dom as its mom. Neglected since I noticed it stretched so much again but will keep her on, doesn't use much space.

Last but not least, I will be using some of the frozen quad-male pollen on a IH#5 bud soon (backcross). Pollen has been in freezer in small tubes for roughly 5 months. I hope it's still viable. Quad x regular produced a lot of tri-whorled, I would expect quad x tri to result in even more. Not to create a whole bunch of seeds, just to observe the inheritance of the trait, if any.

 

[homebrew420]

Dig the grow @Sativied very healthy and appear pest/disease free.
I would wage that you "quad" would be the one to use. Doubt you would get a "tri" from hybridizing to a reg. Shoot man worth a shot right?

Keep on keepin on

Peace

 

[Sativied]

Shoot man worth a shot right?

My thoughts exactly :) It sure makes me look at the plant in a whole different way, especially during vegging. And if it doesn't work out, so far the crosses seem to have plenty of desirable traits to continue working with.

I also think the quad is more likely to produce some whorled offspring when crossed with a tri. Especially since the tris are all offspring off quad x reg. Since I don't have that quad anymore and only a limited amount of pollen from it frozen, I do hope to find two tris that produce tris.

Darker yellow is rice, brown is rolling paper. It looks good, also on the brush. Painted IH#5, a little bit on the Late Night and the fasciated plant for fun.

I got some pollen from a P (chunk x CH) as well from when I sexed the selection of plants for the current ones in flower. Been in fridge for a month or two, but will try to pollinate P#6 with it (reg phyllo x reg phyllo).

This is the P5 fasciated, not even 3 weeks 12/12 yet.

P6

 

[geologic]

Since I don't have that quad anymore and only a limited amount of pollen from it frozen, I do hope to find two tris that produce tris.

--or quads...

 

[Sativied]

Finding another quad would sure be something, especially a female. But still with the goal to create tri-whorled offspring. I haven't observed the quad behavior as well (it had both tri and quad shoots) but it seems 2 sets of 3 create a better layout of the leaves than 2 sets of 4. With a quad the 4 of one set overlap the 4 at the previous node, while with a tri the 3 leaves don't overlap the previous but fall exactly in between the previous 3. Tri vs quad is more like having 6 vs 4 leaves uncovered.

 

[Sativied]

I have a couple of new IH plants I popped less than 2 weeks ago. This is IH#31, third set of leaves:

On the photos and with the naked eye one of the, if not 'the' frostiest seedling I had so far.

And, I got some hope it will spiral into a tri-whorled (and then a male hopefully). This is how they all started the whorling, one leaf starts at a different angle. Although further, at a golden angle as show in some earlier pics, they all spiraled before they whorled, including the quad male.

 

[geologic]

I have a couple of new IH plants I popped less than 2 weeks ago. This is IH#31, third set of leaves:
View attachment 415049

On the photos and with the naked eye one of the, if not 'the' frostiest seedling I had so far.

And, I got some hope it will spiral into a tri-whorled (and then a male hopefully). This is how they all started the whorling, one leaf starts at a different angle. Although further, at a golden angle as show in some earlier pics, they all spiraled before they whorled, including the quad male.
View attachment 415052

Beautiful...

Finding another quad would sure be something, especially a female. But still with the goal to create tri-whorled offspring. I haven't observed the quad behavior as well (it had both tri and quad shoots) but it seems 2 sets of 3 create a better layout of the leaves than 2 sets of 4. With a quad the 4 of one set overlap the 4 at the previous node, while with a tri the 3 leaves don't overlap the previous but fall exactly in between the previous 3. Tri vs quad is more like having 6 vs 4 leaves uncovered.

Howbout a "Penta"Whorl--
I had one of them ~40 years ago...

 

[Sativied]

Thanks, and nice drawings.

I wish I had the space to grow a large one of the fasciated. I got a clone, not sure how long I'll keep it around. There's a pattern in the chaos, notice the spiral phyllotaxy of the fans on the top half:

Shaped up nicely compared to how she started out. Fortunately slender sativa leaflets.

 

[Sativied]

Used some of the frozen pollen from the quad male on the tri-whorled offspring IH#5 and so far it looks good:

 

[Sativied]

I had some Tiresias Mist left from last year, used it on a branch of IH#5 starting a few days before 12/12. Couple of days after the switch the leaves got gray, dry, and died. Thought it perhaps went bad, but in hindsight I probably sprayed a bit too fanatic (had little results first time). So I figured I would reverse a clone next round and cut off the nearly dead branch and moved on.

Today, more than three weeks later, while checking the sprayers of the tube in the back I noticed two shoots had spawned from the remaining part of the branch that I cut off. Both having a single male ball each, since I stopped spraying when the branch died it decided to express as female again. Unfortunately, I cut off the branches before I noticed the balls... They're in a glass now, still in flower closet but low and covered mostly by the main canopy. Can see the tips of the 5 bananas, might be able to retrieve some pollen soon for S1 whorl test after all.

This current round in the flower closet was mostly meant to see if any of the 3 crosses are good enough to continue working with. Didn't expect to find a good female in the first round already. So far IH#5 is a winner in every aspect, and especially when it comes to the whorling.

Here's another 2nd gen clone from IH#5, a branch I broke off shortly after topping. As you can see in the following pics, she reverts back to whorling - spreading her wings again:

The small clone in the cactus pot that rooted so fast (previous page), is a lateral of a lateral and is also whorling again.

Group shot, colors bleached from flash, but IH#5 'is' darker than the rest. Its roots grown all the way back into the rez. Haven't had that with clones yet in my system.

Had a few gnats take off from the coco bottles. Caught a few with a sticky card, removed most coco bottles and sealed the remaining ones. No gnats on the additional sticky cards I added after that.

IH#1 (Left back) is seemingly producing the largest buds. However, they consist like the ICE parent mostly of pistils. The calyxes are small. Also less frosty than IH#5, less green, less smell, and later whorling. I won't be keeping the clones of IH#1 around much longer. It was a supposed to serve as a regular opposite to compare to the whorled anyway and not as a potential keeper.

IH#5 is more chunky, frosty, smells really good and I have no doubt it will yield plenty:

I expect the flowering time of all the F1s to be in the same range as their parents, 8 weeks (CH) and 9 weeks (ICE) and 9+ weeks (chunk). Flipped the switch when they were mature and had pre-flowers all over. Had 3 and a half week 12/12 so will need at least 5 more. They're not done until they're done of course. :)

I'm quite happy with how the P#1A (front left, reveg) turned out. P#6 (front right) has beautiful sativa-dom leaves yet looks like it will create some decent size buds. The main bud looks whorled as well (last pic in post #30 above). It has a dark/intense piney smell.

Since I have limited space available and the more clones I keep the less space I have for a new selection pool, I'll probably end up throwing away all clones except those of IH#5 and one of the fasciated P. Assuming the IH#5 tastes as good as it smells (else all bets are off) I'm going to do a run with only IH plants next, looking for that whorled male and possibly even better female.

 

[geologic]

The small clone in the cactus pot that rooted so fast (previous page), is a lateral of a lateral and is also whorling again.

I have a tri-whorl male,
he kept the whorled form on the secondary lateal stem(s);
and the tertiary lateral stem(s)--
which is now the mainstem...

 

[Sativied]

Say goodbye to IH#5 :dead:

I noticed some brown pistils on P#6 and at first thought I was perhaps too careless with the pollenation but after close inspection... nearly all buds of IH#5 have a 1 or 2 nanners.

Probably more my fault than the plant's, disturbed too often during light off period figured in worst case it would weed out the bad ones... didn't expect it to be IH#5. Perhaps the Tiresias mist on the branch... anyway it has got to go... it hermies too easily.

I actually won't be able to cull it entirely, as that would cause the roots to die and mess up the rest. And since the nanners are all in the top 1/3 inch of the buds, I'm going to cut those off first and keep an eye on the rest for a while before possibly removing all buds. I'm going to make an effort to keep at least a few buds in it till the end so I can taste it and see if the IH cross is still the one to work with first. Else I'm going to fall back on my original plan, work on P (chunk x CH) first. P1 is also tri-whorled and P is frostier than IH.

Rest still looks good but the nr1 candidate just dropped off the list.

The only really bad thing about it is that I used the quad pollen on it, and the second tube I had frozen didn't look good.

Time to roll an extra fat one :grumpy:

 

[Sativied]

Although only a couple with 2 nanners and the rest all 1, nearly all the main buds had them. None of the nanners had powdery pollen in it, still very small. The pollinated pistils on P#6 might just be from the quad pollen I dropped on IH#5 (not unlikely since they are next to the pollinated bud).

IH#1 and P1#A and the huge pistil mohawk on P#5 are still bright and just 1-2 feet away so not too worried about those.

The roots of the IH#5 grown back all the way back into the rez, possibly nute shocking it every time I add something. That alone could have done it. Anyway, let's just say it didn't pass the herma test. Better now than later.

My current favorite, P#6 - the regular opposite (at least during veg, it does look like some budsites whorled).

IH#1 looks a lot like her mom, the ICE, which isn't a good thing. Not much frost on the leaves, huge pistils but small calyxes. A little pale and purple petioles - just like mom.

vs IH#5:

Ah well, this round was just to test the crosses so served its purpose. Threw away a bunch of clones from the IH and some new ones I popped to look for male so I got some space again. Back to P (chunk x CH) and Late Night (L8N8 x CH). Haven't found a male whorled P yet but P#1 and P#4 (rip) were both strong whorled and out of only 6 plants I kept alive long enough to express whorling so

Being that P#1A revegged and has way more budsites than I'd normally have, and P#1B got cramped between the two IH, they aren't particularly suitable to determine whether I should keep P#1. It's however less frosty than P#6, and less sativa-dom, so looks like no whorled keepers this round.

Next round I'm going to start with 49 P, remove male half (except 2 best looking males for F2), stress the rest, pollinate the ones that don't hermie (with the males and possibly some whorled females with each other).