Sativied said:

Messing around in photoshop with some tri whorled males, trying to compare leaf frost...
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The red one looks to be more frosty.

Og Gong said:

The red one looks to be more frosty.

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Yeah it does, goes up further and more scattered on the larger leaves. What skews the comparisson a bit is the slight difference in age/size/progress but with multiple tri tops per plant I should be able to compare tops with the latest 3 sets of leaves being of similar size.

Haven't sexed them all but usually by the time I determine the male sex I already remove a few based on vigor and structure, which is really hard this time. Even got a non-whorling male that looks too good to cull. Doesn't really matter, will probably just use the penta x a tri. Only 13 plants to verify if chxch, will pop a lot more soon.

As I mentioned a few pages back I'm going to switch to feminizing for a while. Besides just for the experience itself (not creating fem seed but breeding with females only) I want to do more runs with females only, do some proper grows again instead of messing around with plants in different stages and having to 'break' my canopy by removing males..., about half of these:





5 males, center top is the non-whorled.

Bottom right is mostly tri whorled and will probably be the one. Unless the one with the pentawhorled branch is male. Looks like that one may be a female.



So I likely do have CHF2 and I have fresh P-F2. Will probably backcross the P to the CH. "backcross" sort of because P is already based on chunk x CH. That could very well result in more similar to what I hoped P would be in the F1 (more hazy and faster but still relatively short and the pine from chunk). For that hopefully improved version which I'll still call P, I'm going to use two females.

Remember the Amnesia White runts? It appears to be genetic.

This is one of the (CHxCH)xAW:

Not as bad, only one out of 5 test seedlings, and on dwc now (germinate in rockwool on top of some perlite) which should make it veg out of it a little faster but it has a very similar unhealthy look.

This one looks interesting though:

Just running these for testing purposes (sillica in dwc), but will probably put two or three in hempy bottles and flower a female or two. I'm curious how the CH affected the maturation and flower time.

Some ICE x CH, some done, some almost. I trimmed most once it was obvious it was ICExCH, to make space for the field above. Most of it is as expected pretty bad, some a great yielders in terms of cola size and flower time but the bigger they get, the more like the ICE. Some have a nice bud structure, but then they still clearly lack smell.

Switched nutes to whatever I still had (mostly canna flores, vega) to save the atami AB for the new plants, last ones on soil. For someone who doesn't do additives I sure got a lot of bottles...





Done, growing nanners though:

The curly pheno as usual by now needs longer.




Large side bud of decent structure and smell.




Grass:

Saved the best for last... actually still have a few of the ICExCH in flower but remember the tall sativa? This one: https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/threads/breeding-for-whorls.63887/page-36#post-1573446

It looks, smells and grows like it's CHxCH. It basically the only one matching the label... It seemed fluffy a few weeks in flower and tied it to the wall, after bending it to stay in the path of the light. This helped only temporarily so the main bud has been against the wall and above the light... yet it still produced the best smoke by far. Overwhelming sweet haze.


Every bud turned out nice, all except the three branches I cut for clones. Unfortunately, it produce a two nanners... I think from being partly out of the light, had males herm on the parts outside the light too, but unfortunately I can use it for seeds.

The new batch...

turns out I got 7 or 8 females out of 13 and enough bud sites to fill my space. Which was not the plan. They are still in small pots and surely rootbound. Need to get some new soil again...

Not really a seed run, but I'm starting to lean towards using a regular phyllotaxy male. He's always happy and just stands out in a good way. I got a female just like him.

Male:




One of the females:




CHxAW seedlings:

Sativied said:

My new 60-site bubbler for $6 (includes the rockwool :) ) Water level will be far below the rockwool so they don't suck full with water.

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Just located the container I used then and got the same mini cubes from a grow shop.

I dropped 100 seeds in water to soak them overnight and will put the most eager in the cubes tomorrow. Will throw the rest in some perlite probably.

Not sure how many, if any, I will veg and flower. It's for the polycot hunt and may ditch them all and try another 60 if I don't find any. Which I'm counting on actually, I already popped hundreds of the crosses with these and they all come out as dicot, but it'll be fun nonetheless.

Of the 100 seeds I put 60 in the cubes after a day soaking, about 80 popped. The other 40 I put in a paper towel and two days later 35 had taproots. So 5 of the ten did not germinate. 1 miniseed, and perhaps the others would have popped with more care and time. I don't get the impression they are harder to germinate after 2 years in fridge.

One of the new batch turns out to be a male after all:


The pentawhorled started growing fasciated nodes... not happy with that. I potted them up to all-mix soil from a grow shop, they had a ridiculous low amount of nutrients so far (in light mix), and I want to try and get fully through transition without feeding.

With the 6-tops female being male after all I definitely don't have enough plants to fill the space properly. I still got 4x AWxCH in dwc, seedlings but starting to take off. Probably going to put those in hempy bottles.

I'm smoking some of the P-F1 bud from a plant I used to create the F2 seeds and it has a hint of haze, thinking of popping some seeds of those too.

Roughly half the seeds are up and spread their wings, all regular dicots. This isn't going to work for me. I will wait for @geologic's results. If he finds polycots in thousands I will be more inclined to continue popping seeds.

I found a really nice looking couple (male and female) in the current batch of chxch. Very open structure yet short nodes, slender leaflets. One of the P-F1 I used for new F2 seeds has a hint of haze, but not as much as the goal initially was. I'm going to pop those P-F2 seeds (chunk x ch), use the best seedlings from the chxch, and cross P with the CHxCH, which would make it roughly 75% CH and 25% Chunk.

Still got 1 ice x ch going in flower, the curly pheno. In chxch and the P and ICExCH crosses the curly (pistils, instead of a spiky pompom) pheno takes the longest to flower. They always result in a great bud structure, swelling up eventually, low leaf to calyx ratio. Very weird to have one with the ICE smell... as in barely any.

Sativied said:

Roughly half the seeds are up and spread their wings, all regular dicots. This isn't going to work for me. I will wait for @geologic's results. If he finds polycots in thousands I will be more inclined to continue popping seeds.

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Another month an' I'll start germinating--
my light hours are not adjustable...

I look forward to following your outdoor geoponics season again :)

Although I haven't found any polycots, I did find this one:


The trichs are easily detectable with the naked eye (under T8 anyway). Couple of others to stand out too. I'm going to pop some more shortly.

Was just browsing seedbanks and noticed Super Cannalope. In short they crossed G13 haze with Cannalope Haze to put the haze back into cannalope haze...

Going to make another attempt soon to get the amnesia cut, cross it with, and possibly backcross to, a strong whorler and then pheno hunt for a while. Even though it would be ideal if they start out as tricots, especially when topping or just wanting to veg it large, the main advantage does appear to be later in flowering and if mature and alternating. The tri whorled alternating, basically spiral, colas in the ICExCH clearly have more buds. It seems three buds at a tri node are individually smaller than the two on a regular similar yielding plant. But when the nodes alternate and sort of spreads out the three leaves+buds it results in the best filled in colas. Considering clones are usually mature and already alternating... It's basically what @MrBelvedere (still missing in action...) suggested, cross the whorling into something and find an elite sort of speak. Many of the popular amnesia grows here are very stretched and I think it could use the wp trait.

The CHxCH plants contain mostly whorlers, can't have exact % unless I run more than a few hundred but it's the regular phyllotaxy plants that are the exception, not the whorlers. I think it's doable to get all whorlers, but not all early or strong whorlers (not every branch), that would be like getting plants with all the same yield, cannabinoid level etc.

Ready for some pollen but something's wrong with my favorite male... one if its branches:

Every other branch is 100% male




The 'X' is strong in this one, not what I was looking for but begs for an experiment. If hermie it should produce female seeds only. Which I doubt it will. Still just the CHxCH confirmation test run, going to plant more for larger selection, so might as well use it.

Regular phyllotaxy:



Triwhorled, non-alternating:


Alternating tri whorled, much better:


No idea what's up with the purple petioles. I get it almost by default during colder months but temps are very acceptable for this time of year, and apart from the petioles they are some of the most healthy plants I had in soil.

Terminal of the fasciated plant, mohawk in the making:

Sativied said:

Every other branch is 100% male
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!!!...

Sativied said:

No idea what's up with the purple petioles. I get it almost by default during colder months but temps are very acceptable for this time of year, and apart from the petioles they are some of the most healthy plants I had in soil.

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I can't recall ever not having purple petioles and even during winter months I don't have temperatures below 68. I'd like to know what causes it on an otherwise healthy plant though. I notice it all the time in indoor grows and less often it seems on plants grown outdoors. I've also noticed quite a few little cfl grows that have had plants with perfectly green petioles -- maybe light intensity or spectrum could have something to do with it? There's also a strong possibility that what I've noticed doesn't mean anything -- noticed is the key word here. lol

On a slightly different note, I have 'noticed' something interesting with purple streaking on stalks. I veg under t8, flower under hps and I always end up getting some purple stripes before I flip. They've always gone away during (or outgrow them anyway) the first few weeks of flower. I always attributed it to upping the EC to the roots (foliar feeding during veg never worked) when I start under the more intense light; here recently however, I've been screwing around with water only 'organic' soil (about done with it too :puke2:) and during my last run I planted clones straight into 7 gallons without re-potting the entire cycle. Well, as usual, I had purple stalks that developed during veg but also as usual, they left during the first few weeks of flower without the addition of fertilizer or up-potting into fresh soil.

I'm not suggesting it's only the lights that cause striping in my case -- maybe the plants become too big for t8 intensity and it slows or retards the uptake of a certain nutrient or something -- it could be a combination of many things -- I dunno -- point being, it flies in the face of those who carpet bomb plant problem sections with ambiguous generalities such as 'just spray with magnesium sulfate or up P or increase micro-nutrients for purple streaking.' The same thing is said for purple petioles -- 'you must be using distilled water' etc. etc. or 'up this and this' etc. etc.

Actual science in this game is long overdue.


Anyway, disjointed prattle over. :cool:

unwine99 said:

it could be a combination of many things

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Yeah and not likely everytime the same combination

unwine99 said:

There's also a strong possibility that what I've noticed doesn't mean anything -- noticed is the key word here. lol

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That's the problem indeed, I perceived a lot of things that seemed to be related but drawing conclusions based on that would be mostly just 'ad hoc ergo propter hoc'.

If I would post them in the dutch forums I'd hear a choir sing "they are stressed". Which by itself isn't necessarily incorrect but obviously not specific enough.

I do think it's (at least partly or indirectly) nutrient related, perhaps not even uptake alone but processing it, stress can be translated to reduced metabolism. Looking back at some of my NFT grows it really stands out how green the petioles stayed. At both high and low ppm runs.

I know from experience cold can be a major factor, for example getting it only or more with the plant next to my intake, the coldest corner of the closet. Blowing hard with fans at them, especially at night, seems to have a similar significant obvious effect. In those cases it usually is speckled and on the top side of the petiole.

That amnesia white clone in the H&G container, hempy, had purple petioles as clone. I get that more often with clones but they normally grow out of it. This one stayed purple even on new leaves, while it was ridiculous healthy otherwise, like a house plant.

Considering I get it with organic premixed soil, hempy (some but not all), soil with mineral nutes and I use complete nutrient I don't think using monos/additives is the solution. Maybe to treat a symptom but won't solve the cause.

I'm currently leaning towards a deficiency caused by overfeeding. One of the plants I got in flower now has been a pita since flowering, still green in normal light, but under hps I can see it's lighter than the rest and it appear to get worse. It also has the most purple stems. It was in the center under the light appareantly having a harder time.

I noticed such plants green up very easily, in about 3 days, when I put them behind a window in my living room in sun light but low intesity, basically giving it a break to recover from the "stress".

Frankly I think it would take either luck or an enormous effort to really figure it out, while I can avoid it by avoiding soil. I've done hempy plants with less than 500ppm, flushing everyday with tap water before giving it water+nutes, so I have a hard time believing I should use higher nutes. A ph problem could explain it, low ph from overfeeding, while it already lowers during flowering, reducing npk, ca mg and S uptake. Which is possibly why some of the common treatments can work.

I'm happy with the perlite soil mix ratio I used (about 20% perlite) allows me to water thoroughly daily without them being too wet at night, but, that makes the drain less informative (very similar to what I throw in).

I'm thinking of trying out rockwool slabs, recently noticed a nice example in the dutch forums with the roughly 3 feet slabs cut in half. The slabs are widely used here in pro greenhouses but also large mj growers. The slabs are covered with plastic, partly cut open to place a rockwool cube (with rooted clone or seedling) on top of it.

It appears it doesn't matter anymore that I switched the labels on the ICExCH and the CHxCH. The latter does fall apart in a more indica dom and a more sativa dom, which are not that different from the ICExCH plants. Not going to plant these again till I created or found something to cross the whorl trait into. Some of them look really nice, but there's no point in stabilizing the whorled phyllotaxy trait any further in these two crosses.



So, time to order new seeds... and start a new project. I do still have the new P-F2 from two females to go through but I look forward to finding something new so that's on hold too. Will probably start a new thread in about a month or so.

Sativied said:

So, time to order new seeds... and start a new project. I do still have the new P-F2 from two females to go through but I look forward to finding something new so that's on hold too. Will probably start a new thread in about a month or so.

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Exciting...can't wait! Whatcha leaning toward seed wise?

I want to try to create a red (leaves, but especially calyxes, and trichs), cold and bud rot resistant haze hybrid with a taste that as a matter of speaking justifies/explains the color of the dried bud (which would be dark reddish black).

I hope to find at least the red genes in the pakistan chitral kush from ace seeds. Should contribute to shorter flowering time and cold and budrot resisance as well. Maybe taste too but I plan to breed out the kush as much as possible. I have a few alternatives I'm considering as back up for both the red color and the 'red' taste but want to try the pck first.

Not sure on the haze donor yet, will likely try multiple. A good Amnesia cut would save me some time selecting a haze but the potential sources I had in mind recently just aren't reliable. Might as well be cuts from any of the many similar varieties or from fem seed from any of the amnesia sellers. Currently leaning towards a haze dom silver haze, ssh/amnesia (seed), or maybe jack herrer. Ideally something I can backcross the desired traits into, but considering running some O haze on the side too.

I changed my mind and going to continue using this thread for the new project too. Eventually it's still part of the breeding for whorls project.

Got some seeds in the mail earlier this week and starting to get excited about growing something else for a change. Getting some more tomorrow. Still got plants in flower but also veg... May just have to discard those. Not sure yet when I'll have pics but got lots t ramble :)

I was recently looking at some close ups of red bud with red trichomes and 'wine balls' came to mind. Completely forgot about wine balls. It's a classic dutch candy everyone old enough to smoke mj knows: http://www.realdutchfood.com/en/napoleon-fruity-raspberry Seems they changed the name years ago, I'm hereby claiming it for my project, project Wine Balls.

I've long had doubts about breeding for color. Always considered color a trait for growers and not so much for consumers. I breed for the breeding but it's no fun for me if it's not at least hypothetically useful for others too. Don't know about the US but in NL purple/red bud is not very popular. Harder to sell to and by coffeeshops. I guess consumers just aren't used to it, the purple or red tends to get dark when dried. Or reminds them like me of the cheap purple power outdoor grown in the early days. I want to try and overcome that issue by producing bud that is not just reddish-purple/black, but also tastes distinctly 'red'. Whether that will be woody grapes (wine), or a berry will depend on what I find (and personally like of course).

The red is really mostly because I find it interesting and it's fun to work with easily observable traits, and it happens to combine nicely with something I've been planning to do for some time, breed for bud rot resistance.

A (by now) common place to source red and purple is Pakistan Chitral Kush, which is supposedly cold and bud rot resistance. Not a big fan of smoking kush all day, more a haze smoker, so I will be crossing it with several haze varieties and probably O Haze itself too. It also helps the hypothetical goal because haze hybrids are (here in NL) often more attractive to grow commercially.

So in short, the goal is a red (leaves, calyxes, and trichs) haze hybrid with high bud rot and cold resistance. The end goal is to have something of my own to cross the whorled phyllotaxy trait into. I have two lines in which most plants are whorlers, but the bud itself isn't special enough.

Going to get some new hempy containers soon and then plant the PCK (ace seeds) and probably a few others. Till then, and during this long term project "I'm gonna have to science the shit out if this". Won't have any pics to show for a while, I expect this to be a long term project and hopefully gather useful info and resources on "red" (which automatically includes blue and purple).

Some of the things I want to find answers to is whether red is just aesthetic or is useful too, what makes it red (anthocyanin in low ph plantcells), what, if anything, besides cold causes it to turn red (leaves and trichs possibly seperately) and what terpenes cause 'red' flavors. More specifically I want to experience breeding for these effects.

More in next post...

Not a very scientific source but an article at sensi seeds with good references has some interesting info for starters:
http://sensiseeds.com/en/blog/what-makes-cannabis-purple/

It makes sense the purple and red plants become warmer under light than green, intuitively anyway an interesting theory that could mean it contributes to cold but also indirectly bud rot resistance.

More interesting is this part:
"Certain strains of cannabis contain anthocyanins but are unaltered in appearance unless subjected to prolonged periods of cold temperatures. The mechanism behind this phenomenon is not fully understood, but there is a clear link between cold and enhanced anthocyanin production, as blood oranges also require a cold period to fully acquire their red colouration. It is believed that a complex set of genetic circumstances lead to this occurrence: a gene known as Ruby, which is common to all citrus varieties but is not expressed in most, is expressed in blood orange due to the presence of a special section of DNA known as a retrotransposon, which is a mobile genetic element capable of being transcribed as part of several essential genes."

My stoner-science-sense can't help seeing the link between that underlined part and Pakistan Chitral Kush. 'Citral' was popular for a while years ago (nirvana seeds) which is supposedly pakistan chitral kush or a cross of, and the parent of lemon skunk, which crossed with SSH makes SLH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin the pigments that cause the blue, purple, or red color. The color depends on the pH level, which as you can see on that wiki page actually makes it suitable for ph measurements. In cannabis, but also in red ornamental plants and all sorts of berries. That is the pH level in the plants, which is not the ph in the rootzone/medium but genetically determined, with environmental influences of course.

So, the target pheno needs to have high Anthocyanin production and a relatively low ph level inside the plant.

As mentioned on the wiki page:
"Many science textbooks incompletely state that autumn coloration (including red) is the result of breakdown of green chlorophyll, which unmasks the already-present orange, yellow, and red pigments (carotenoids, xanthophylls, and anthocyanins, respectively). While this is indeed the case for the carotenoids and xanthophylls (orange and yellow pigments), anthocyanins are not synthesized until the plant has begun breaking down the chlorophyll."

I'm not convinced that is always the case. Ornamental plant breeders breed for it too, without causing a chlorophyll breakdown.

One of the plants I got in flower now is above the intake and slighlty colder, caused leaves to become purple early, apparantly helped ancenstors survive by warming up. If through research and testing it shows to be negative to have high anthocyanins in leaves, I will try to go for green leaves with red bud.

Light appearantly has a huge influence as well. As many know, the purple and red leaves, buds, pistils, and trichs are more common outdoors:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082886/
So full daylight spectrum has a much larger effect than red light. I may use my mh bulb to supplement (which is exactly what the phillips hpi-t is meant for) or get some leds to experiment.

Another one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876338
"Anthocyanin accumulation is regulated negatively by ethylene signaling and positively by sugar and light signaling. However, the antagonistic interactions underlying these signalings remain to be elucidated fully."

Ethylene, the female flower hormone of which possibly a low amount is responsible for hermies. Possibly, in some intersex susceptible varieties, breeding against high Anthocyanin, could mean breeding for high ethylene and breeding out intersex.

"A growing body of evidence suggests that anthocyanins and anthocyanidins may possess analgesic properties in addition to neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory activities. These functionalities suggest a role for the cannabinoid receptor (CB) in mediating biological effects. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20041802

Probably going to stick with regular (for the PCK anyway) for a while since the color is observable in males too but not going to avoid crossing females when it suits me better later on. I have a lot of theory about hermies and selfing and feminizing but only one way to figure out. If feminizing leads to hermies I think it's an indirect result of the inbreeding depression inherent to selfing a single plant rather than a poulation.

Going to grow them in perlite for max control while still having plant mobility.