Breeding for whorls

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^IH#5, still alive. I just couldn't cull it. After the initial cleanup last weekend, I found one more banana on the IH#5. I haven't found/seen any pollen or bananas that dropped their load but since I touched all the buds to inspect them (painful cause it's in the back of the closet) it's hard to tell if those got pollinated or just damaged. P#1A and IH#1 which I didn't touch or leaned on to reach IH#5 are clean, so I'm going to keep it around for now. Only downside is that I have to continue inspecting her every day.

Following pic is IH#1. I haven't had such large buds yet at this stage (had 4 weeks 12/12). It's a shame it's not as frosty and vigorous as IH#5 but gives me some hope there's an IH seed that will pop one with the best of both.

Removed quite a few leaves from IH#5 to get a clear look on the buds. Still a couple of 'm that are unaffected, including the one I pollinated with the quadmale pollen. I will plant (veg) those regardless, just to see what tri x quad result in.

P#6:

I finally got H&G Aqua Flakes AB today. Used Hydro AB so far.

 

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IH#5 is no longer a candidate, IH#1 was a late whorler and looks too much like the ICE parent, but there's still P#1A (B clone didn't get the time to re-whorl). The trichs are less spread out on the leaves than P#6 (pic above), but it is starting to look better and better. Because its reveg episode I had to trim a lot, should make a nice skeleton at the end, but it worked out nicely.

P#1A (strong tri whorled, but revegged during transition).

P smells much stronger than IH, it tells me it's time to replace my carbon filter. I'm bad at describing smell.... perhaps.... "tropical wood".

Germinated 7 more P seeds, looking for more whorled male/female, possibly to pollinate P1#A Will probably have to do that a couple of times before finding enough whorled P plants for next round.

 

[FlyinJStable]

I noticed this on one plant I had and felt to myself YEA wish all of um had 3 leaf.....
see if I can find pic. IMO your set up is very clean and the scientific way your thread reads is very impressive.

Much Respect
FlyJ


The detail you go into would rival most labs.

 

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Thanks for the kind words FlyJ :happy:

Couple of shots of the new P I popped last weekend. First one is pretty much the angle I look at it in real life in my small veg box.

p23:

^Dark, frosty, not entirely regular opposite (although that happens more often at this stage) - getting my hopes up.

P24:

 

[FlyinJStable]

hell of a candy poper, I see it as a sneek preview of what to expect in flower LoL yea baby its a winner great line grains in the stems too. are your branching and mains hollow and hard fiber y when you went to stress them or ? how is the bounce back once you do your major ouch bends. same day or dose she take a day or two for recover. Regardless very bad ass girls.
Keep it green
FlyJ

 

[Thoth]

Cool project bro. Working with some dank plants too. Subbed.

 

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are your branching and mains hollow and hard fiber y when you went to stress them or ?

The mains are only a couple of inches tall except on the P#6 (which is not topped but bended main). The P has no hollow branches (unlike it's mom chunk), I will check the IH tonight when the light goes on.

how is the bounce back once you do your major ouch bends. same day or dose she take a day or two for recover.

Definitely same day / overnight, but, I've had that with over a dozen different strains and seems to be standard in my setup. Bonus from the fast vegging on hydro. I haven't done much "major ouch bends" on the IH that hermied though (most likely due to messing with light schedule and a light leak in its corner where the aqua pumps power line enters my closet). It's in the back where I can't reach it very well so hasn't really been bended/cropped like for example the P#1 and P#6 in front. After topping I bind down the remaining branches but not tightly. Only a couple of branches per plant I actually pinch and bend / crop.

I have jokingly referred to it as the twist-a-loop method. For example, from a previous grow:

Initially that string is very loose, then when the branch grows up it pull it tight, and then I create that loop to pull it down half an inch. Depending on how high that branch goes above the rest of the canopy, I twist that loop every other day or so. I normally do that on nearly half the bud sites / branches to get a nearly flat canopy. This time I'm not so concerned about max yield, just testing the crosses to see which one I'm going to work on first (that'll be P) so haven't taken it as far as usual.

 

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The CH females I've flowered were of two different phenos. First two pics are of the 8 week pheno:

Next on is of the 9week haze pheno:

Up till a few days ago I wasn't entirely sure which pheno the CH male I used was.

P#6, compare to first two pics above. It also looks very little like it's mom (chunk had large chunky calyxes)

The hundreds of CHxCH seeds I got from that same run are female CH haze pheno x male CH short flowering pheno. May have to search for a haze pheno in that one to cross into it later. The P ( Chunk x CH ) smells way better (richer and sweeter) than the CH short flowering pheno though. It's also, based on the leaves, slightly more sativa dom, which I hope will be noticeable in the effect. And since the chunk was tall and took longer to flower, it may turn out for the best. It also gives me more hopes that I'll be able to find good (short) Late Night plants.

Also, an observation just based on the P: large calyxes (on the chunk) create large seeds (Chunk xCH), but large seeds don't necessarily create large calyxes.

 

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I popped a couple of P seeds a few weeks ago, had two open sites in my small dwc box. They didn't whorl around the 4th/5th node and got a little tall for the seedling box so I topped them. Needed the space again so had to get rid of them, ended up putting one in a hempy bottle, and placing it in the flower closet on the 12/12 schedule. Bad quality hps pic, but here's one of the branches:

Only one branch is tri-whorled, probably won't do anything with this plant unless it becomes a frosty male (those pistil looking thingies are some stipules), but it does give me good hopes that I will be able to find more. So far most P seems whorled, just need to find one strong enough, yet not fasciated :)

 

[geologic]

Them genes are there--
just gotta fit 'em together...

 

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I just counted all the P seeds, nearly exactly 300 left. I picked out the 12 largest seeds to pop next.

Probably nothing new for those who tried to cross whorlers, but so far I established the whorl trait is not recessive (else it wouldn't have appeared in any of the F1) and not dominant (then it would have appeared in all the F1).

It could still be "incomplete/partial" dominant, which would explain the results of the offspring.

Imagine quad male was WW (whorled homozygous), then all the offspring (with the non-whorled females) is genotype Ww, all whorled phenotypes but each with a range of whorl dominance rather than Ww being the same phenotype as WW. For example if whorled was red and regular is white, I'm not getting Ww as red but a pink between red and white. Similar to crossing sativa and indica leaves.

If there's any truth in that theory, it should be feasible enough to test because as you say, the genes are there. If all the F1 is Ww, it theoretically wouldn't matter if the F1s I use actually whorl strong/early because the F2 offspring of Ww x Ww would lead to 25%WW, 50%Ww, and 25% ww, of which the WW should whorl strong/consistently making it doable to select those. If then I cross two of those F2 WW... it might be stable-ish (as good as it gets perhaps) in F3.

The seeds of P6xP seem to develop properly, probably about 15-20 seeds, enough to test the theory and at the very least exclude it.

It's however possible the quad male was Ww already, I did have another (tri-)whorled male in the first CH run, and that my F1 is 50% Ww and 50% ww. In that case there should be strong WW whorlers in F2 already but only if I cross whorled phenotypes. Looking forward to see F2 and F3 later this/next year. :hungry:

 

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During the initial seed round the Late Night (chocolate fondue x unknown/self/sk) was ready a week+ sooner than the others. I thought that was because I pollinated it pretty much entirely. Super stretchy and if it weren't for the exceptional sweet taste I would have thrown it away.

After crossing it with the quad male CH, it seems to have improved a lot. Still stretching, but the bud is actually starting to amount to something. It's in a 1liter bottle, it's 2 feet tall, the budded part is 1.5feet. I give it a glass of my reservoir's nutrient solution daily, it hasn't been provided with optimal nutes. Got a bottle of biogeen cal gel (N, Ca, Mg) which did stop the yellowing from progressing.

Obviously not done yet but for a sativa-dom it sure is fast. If I would create a ledge along the sides of my closet I could fit in 22-26 of these in addition to the usual canopy. Sacrificing most of the reflection but if yield was a major concern for me, that would definitely push it far over the 1gpw.

The P with the tri-whorled branch is a female. I don't have the space for it and have a better/stronger tri-whorled female P already so it'll have to go.


I wish I had the time and gear to do a decent timelapse video on the fasciated plant. At first I thought it was pollinated, but since the neighboring buds are nearly white, and the way it progresses, it doesn't seem to be the case. Normally the new calyxes are created on top of the old ones, and the pistils of the old ones die and turn brown. In this fasciated flower, the newer calyxes are growing next to the old ones. Using the mohawk analogy, it's sort of growing a mullet and the top of the head have the old calyxes. It's hard to get it a decent angle at the back, but the white part is larger than it seems.

Anyway, that is what seems to be going on. As you can see by the tips it cannot handle the (already low, 340ppm) nutrients very well either. Not sure how much longer I will keep the clone I got from it.

Here's a bud from P#1A that's just a couple of inches next to it:

Another P#1A bud, same as last pic in post #42 a week ago:

Looks like this bud is going to grow a big foxtail-ish side bud.^

 

[Thoth]

Mohawk bud LOL. Weird looking mofo bro. :)

 

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Following pic is IH#1. I haven't had such large buds yet at this stage (had 4 weeks 12/12).

That should have set off an alarm in my head... :shifty:

The horrible weather this time of year makes large dense indica buds not an option unless it's immune to bud rot. That's exactly why I prefer a large amount of small buds over a smaller amount of large colas and why I love a winter-grow...

It's rainy outside, has been for days, will for some more. Humidity is up to 80% inside the closet during the dark period, higher than I ever had (52-64 during light on but still...). It's a good thing my carbon filter needs to be replaced anyway... Although involuntary, bud rot testing has commenced. IH#1 failed. Wasn't the largest bud on it by far, and one buried below the top canopy, but I never had bud rot this early and that much in a single bud ( :yuck:). Inspected the rest and all looks good but I doubt it will stay that way (for IH#1 anyway). Aimed a clipfan at its buds as a last resort.

I'm not too worried about the P1 and P6 (nor the IH#5 since I defoliated it much more to be able to inspect it for nanners so it gets more airflow) but I'm a little worried about P#5 the fasciated, since its mutation makes it so superdense and it's not topped or cropped, i.e. has a large (flat) cola. Well, not "worried" because it looks like the small side buds on P5 are doing much better than the mohawk bud and if it does rot in there at least I'll know if P is susceptible.

P#1, the triwhorled, is doing quite well. It's going from the C99 looking compact pheno I posted above to the foxtaily haze pheno. I'm really really curious how it will taste. It's also seemingly a better yielder than P#6 (the non or very late whorler). Pics tonight.

 

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Group shot including to coco test bottle Late Night stretch test plant:

(mohawk in middle front, with the orange hair, the fasciate part is on the back side)

IH#5 (haven't found new nanners yet and doesn't look like it will need much longer so I think I got away with it)

P#1B, with de-nannered IH#5 bud in bottom right:

P#1A (triwhorled)

Officially foxtailing, but the structure is what I associate with the good stuff. Getting chunky too. Really looking forward to tasting it. It's sort of sweet piney on top of the tropical dank/wood. Another bud, same plant.

IH#1, nice bud structure, classic, compact/dense/full. Sugar leaves not as frosty as the rest but that was clear earlier on already. Calyxes look fine though.

P#6 seeded (with a P male, just a few to test seedling frostiness level and one of the whorled inheritance theories in post #51).

P#6 main bud. "Ok", not great by any means. Not a big yielder. Yield not my nr 1 concern, but it's not a strong whorler either.

Keeping the clone of P#6 around until after curing and smoking the product regardless.

Last but not least, the Late Night in the coco bottle:

It's the same as this one I posted a while back:

 

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One of my vegboxes with new P (none whorled yet...)

^^filled till close under net cup. 300-350ppm (including 200ppm tap) Little bit of Cannazym.

Germinated in rockwool, on a bed of clay pebbles:

1 layer of clay pebbles in the net cup:

I normally use Grodan, not this cheap white label stuff:

^tip discolored from pebbles.

So I basically sink the tap root in between the pebbles through a bottom hole in the net cup. Haven't broken a single one yet during the process (out of many dozens).

Filled with pebbles (not too many on the sides of the cube). Unfortunately grow shops here haven't discovered neoprene inserts yet...

2 days later:

I've let them stretch a little more than usual by keeping them more than the usual 1 inch from my 3x18watt T8tubes (else I got too little space to check the sprayers in the tubes later on).

IH#5, P#1, and P#4 (no longer alive) started getting that golden angle I pointed out earlier in this thread around the time some of the above are. These are all regular so far. Got more in the box next to it, and popping more soon.

 

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Whorled thoughts:

As I mentioned in a previous post phyllotaxy is influenced heavily by auxin concentrations.

Male plants contain more auxins than female plants, which could explain why some claim it occurs more in males. Doesn't mean whorled are more masculine but males are more likely to tip that auxin concentration leaving enough for a third leaf.

I was just reading a piece from a local university. Without auxins, the cells in a plant would divide according to the Leo Errera rule and all plants would look like a bare stem. Auxins allow those cells to break the rule to create the organized structure we call plant.

Auxins also regulate apical dominance. It's when apical dominance is established that the strong whorlers started to whorl. It's when apical dominance was sort of re-established after topping that some of the later whorles started to whorl.

Auxin concentrations, locations, are influence heavily by light. Some of the later whorles started whorling once under HPS, others when in actual day light.

There's a pattern. Some might not start whorling until under high intensity light. Instead of topping, I will LST the main stem of some and see what that does to the side shoots.

I also need to get a bottle of Auxin and do some testing.

 

[geologic]

Male plants contain more auxins than female plants, which could explain why some claim it occurs more in males. Doesn't mean whorled are more masculine but males are more likely to tip that auxin concentration leaving enough for a third leaf.

Yes indeed--
that would explain why lotsa folks report higher male-to-female ratios in whorled plants...

 

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but I'm a little worried about P#5 the fasciated, since its mutation makes it so superdense and it's not topped or cropped...

Scalped mohawk:

So killed the P5 clone as well. Very fascinating this fasciation but in hindsight, I think topping it is the way to go. Doesn't look like I lost more than a gram... it's nearly all leaves in there.

This was between the fasciated bud and the normal bud that spawned from the fasciated main bud. More leaves.... it's like slaw...

Checked the dates yesterday and it's been exactly 7 weeks since I switched to 12/12


P#6: This one out of the running because it's going to be a lower yield, is not strong whorled. Very compact and hard buds. As you can probably see it won't reach the 9 weeks.

And the clear winner this round, P#1. I really like the bud structure (getting closer to the haze pheno in this post: https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/breeding-for-whorls.63887/page-3#post-1279052 ) but it's also a strong tri, and despite its little reveg episode and massive pruning it's definitely going to be the best yielder. Will also need the longest but the yield difference makes that worth it easily.

 

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Below a small pretaster of the IH5 (the strong tri-whorled hermied and de-nannered ICExCH). This one's a couple of days old already, IH#5 is nearly done. Looks to be an actual 8-week pheno, but not a great yielder.

It tastes sweet yet lemon-ish, not comparable to either parent.