Breeding for whorls

[Sativied]

Found it... from an article from Mel Frank:

As the top left two images show, it's resin, aka trichs. Now the question remains how relevant the amount is. more trichs sure sounds good, but it could be, and probably are, entirely different genes responsible for the trichs on females calyxes. Still, the difference between 10 and 20 seems significant enough to at least continue tracking/monitoring it.

So trichs it is indeed, whether it's to protect against water, light, insects or all remains speculation but I'm glad I know now.

Could be interesting to test nutes and environmental influences perhaps.

 

[geologic]

Good ol' Mel Frank;
an' good ol' you--
for hunting it down...

 

[Sativied]

Anther resin :)

"Hopefully when writers and growers use botanical terms such as calyx, bract..."

On that note from Mel from the article above...

Those naked pistils... here's a better pic from someone else:

I referred to those earlier as sepal-less, but that should be bract-less. The source I quoted about the females having 1 sepal is wrong, it's a bract. Females according to Mel do have a calyx (sepals) but it's not the bract, it's nearly transparent (see complete article at bottom).

Number 6 is what you see in the photo above (and what plants in my best whorling cross expressed too although not that bad). As if the bract didn't grow in size and the pistil's part that contains the ovary gets pushed out. The bract on cannabis is said to be accrescent, which means growing larger during flowering. It seems some of the ICE/CH x CH is lacking that feature or at least in a later stage.

For completeness sake:

 

[Og Gong]

This sour strawberry has #6 from above. My gut tells me over pollination on this bud may have caused this. The seeds did look good when harvested.

 

[Sativied]

The ones in your pic are actually seeds, immature seeds, which indeed can happen from excessive but also late pollination (same effect, excessive pollination results in more pollen surviving to pollinate later). The difference is that they stigmas are white when they are naked pistils (6) and in your case the pistil actually got pollinated (see dead stigmas of the one at the bottom in your pic) and created a seed.

 

[Og Gong]

Very interesting thanks for correcting me. Yes immature seeds. It was pollinated on day 25 of bloom the pic was maybe 2 weeks later. Kinda look similar to 6 but my eyes are still in training lol now that I look at the above pic now I see what you are saying and wow it must be a special needs plant lol missing some chromosomes or something or maybe just hereditary.

 

[unwine99]

What's up bud! Pleasant surprise.......so this is where I have to get new Sativied content now-a-days.:)

 

[Sativied]

What's up bud! Pleasant surprise.......so this is where I have to get new Sativied content now-a-days.:)

Hey man, likewise, great to see a reply from you here. This is the more detailed serious version of my journal, or journey, in a let's say more reliable environment.

 

[unwine99]

Hey man, likewise, great to see a reply from you here. This is the more detailed serious version of my journal, or journey, in a let's say more reliable environment.

Gotcha. Well, I look forward to tagging along. I always enjoy your info and observations.

 

[epitome]

Loving the info.

 

[MrBelvedere]

Good ol' Mel Frank;
an' good ol' you--
for hunting it down...

Well said. I cringe everytime I hear somebody badmouth Mel Frank or Ed Rosenthal. Their original book Marijuana Growers’ Indoor/Outdoor Guide (and its revisions) is the ultimate accurate bible on growing still to this day. Must have read that book a hundred times end to end. Never saw that article in HT, great find! Learned more in this post than a lot of others :)

I have never understood if breeders with big budgets and access to GC would test a bunch of the "anthers" on the same male plant for cannabinoids and terpenes to judge male potency... Rather than usual method of rubbing, smelling, and looking for trichs.

 

[FlyinJStable]

Hey @Sativied Looks like u have stepped up your Research and your detailed experience . . .
.Dude Your Going to have a PHD in Breed selection and type Crossing Dankology.
I always dig your thread and now with more Details and technical knowledge being shared makes it that much better thanks Bro
I am 50, So I feel your never too old to Learn something new.into the advanced section of your Passion let the Long Nite Evolve.. Cant wait to see what ya show us Next Bro.

@ 15 days in Flower with Nyvia II myself
have three tubes of Quality Pollen from great breeders plus one of my own, This will be my 1st real Pollen experiment. Thanks to you I have some Kick AZZ info to go by.
Peace FlyJ

 

[geologic]

Well said. I cringe everytime I hear somebody badmouth Mel Frank or Ed Rosenthal. Their original book Marijuana Growers’ Indoor/Outdoor Guide (and its revisions) is the ultimate accurate bible on growing still to this day.

It's the old "carved-in-stone" <or hemp paper> thing:
trying to include everything possible you write something,
ten or twenty years later new data supersedes that something;
an' the "knowledgeable " ones read it an' go, like--
"these guys don't know what they're talking about" Heh...

 

[Sativied]

I have never understood if breeders with big budgets and access to GC would test a bunch of the "anthers" on the same male plant for cannabinoids and terpenes to judge male potency... Rather than usual method of rubbing, smelling, and looking for trichs.

I would sure love to have access to that information. It does require a decent budget indeed, it's testing more than a few plants that would provide real value. The type of inbreeding depression (essentially breeding out genes without realizing it) I worry about most is the cannabinoid profile. Especially with clear distinctive smells rubbing and smelling males will do for terpenes, but for example sativa x indica hybrids imo should above all focus on getting the best combination of cannabinoids.

Second most important imo is terpene profile. Some variation in structure, size, yield, potency etc is acceptable as long as the bud all smells and tastes similar enough. I recently read some interesting stuff about alpha and beta "pinene" which I'm pretty sure is the main terpene in my P cross. As I mentioned a couple of times the smell/taste of my P cross is more pine than pineapple, "tropical wood" is something I mentioned as well.

"α-Pinene is a bicyclic monoterpene (Table 2), and the most widely encountered terpenoid in nature (Noma and Asakawa, 2010). It appears in conifers and innumerable plant EOs, with an insect-repellent role. It is anti-inflammatory via PGE-1 (Gil et al., 1989), and is a bronchodilator in humans at low exposure levels (Falk et al., 1990). Pinene is a major component of Sideritis spp. (Kose et al., 2010) and Salvia spp. EOs (Ozek et al., 2010), both with prominent activity against MRSA (vide infra). Beyond this, it seems to be a broad-spectrum antibiotic (Nissen et al., 2010). α-Pinene forms the biosynthetic base for CB2 ligands, such as HU-308 (Hanus et al., 1999). Perhaps most compelling, however, is its activity as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor aiding memory (Perry et al., 2000), with an observed IC50 of 0.44 mM (Miyazawa and Yamafuji, 2005). This feature could counteract short-term memory deficits induced by THC intoxication (vide infra)."

src: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2011.01238.x/full

Plants with high pinene contents are also knowns as "memory plants".

Anyway, sure would be nice to be able to cross the males(s) and female(s) with the highest pinene for example, and then measure the results again.

 

[Og Gong]

I would love to be a part of that test also. My Jack Herer X strawberry cough has high pinene for sure. Very functional happy up high with 1 hit anymore hits and it gets heavy lol. The inbreed depression is always on my mind also. Makes me want to grow out all the males I ever come across just in case I find that 1.

 

[Sativied]

@ 15 days in Flower with Nyvia II myself
have three tubes of Quality Pollen from great breeders plus one of my own, This will be my 1st real Pollen experiment.

Sounds good man, I look forward to seeing the results. Just pollinated most of my Late Night plants a couple of days ago. Still 2 to go but want the get some more full length pistils on those first.

Kept the male in the room a little too long but this round is most about getting seeds of the next gen anyway. I only pollinate some of the lower flowers but close up show some pollen made it to the top flowers too. Not really surprised, male was like 9 inches from this flower.

Except for the smallest one they are all around 3 feet tall now. A bit too much for the 400watt... this is just the tip of the iceberg:

The previous ones I've grown with little to no vegging, which despite the stretch kept them tight enough to fill in. Turns out that wasn't optional.

It's like hemp... Late Night is L8N8 x Cannalope Haze. L8N8 is one seed I got from a chocolate fondue plant, which I pollinated with Skywalker Kush pollen from a reversed (using tiresias mist) male. The pollen was pasty and numerous pollination attempts failed. I was surprised to find one seed crumbling up one of the last nuggets. It's very unlike the skywalker kush. The chocolate fondue had branches over 5 feet but produced extreme well.

If they were something like amnesia or another haze I'd be happy cause it would fill up but these will be done soon. It's like it's missing two weeks of flowering.

I'll be moving them to the sides soon... Haven't popped the Amnesia White yet, thinking of popping some chxch X chxch. I don't know if CH was an F1 hybrid, but the CH I got should be at least F3 then. It's whorler x whorler batch.

The reason I'm thinking of popping some potential whorlers again (despite the bud of the previous gen not turning out very tasty, as in poor terpene profile) is that I bought a small action hd cam I can use for timelapse videos. I want to try and capture the whorling including the growth and positioning of that leaf at the golden angle.

The fact Late Night has zero whorlers 'and' is so stretchy with little branching (strong apical dominance) confirms again my suspicion that the whorling is more prevalent in indicas, or at least hybrids with weak apical dominance. Like the ICE x CH quad produced mostly whorlers, the ICE branches out very fast with the branches growing as high as the terminal. Selecting for whorlers in the CHxCH also led towards selecting against stretchy sativa dom.

 

[Sativied]

Ok, these are the seeds from the fastest and purple yet blend female (CH) tri earlier this year. Taste did improve after drying, a hint of mint, but I will likely need to introduce new genes to make it produce something that tastes as good as it looked.

The male had some quad whorling going on in addition to being a fast tri, started whorling early, around 4th/5th node. So it's the first whorl x whorl batch. The parent generation already produced mostly whorlers but many started whorling way too late (7-11th node..) I'm going to pop only 6 for starters, not sure even if I'm going to flower them. It's for the time-lapse, so in my veg box. I picked 6 seeds with 3 king cheetah stripes on the back just for the heck of it.


Late Night flower 48 hours after pollination:

And the Late Night x P test cross:

Way too leafy like the other one, less intense smell than P too, but did 'fix' the lack of frost on P's sugar leaves.

 

[Sativied]

Just got back from Amsterdam again... Many growshops in my area closed and it was actually hard to get a HPS bulb, especially a good one. Turns out there's a grow shop just across the central station and is open till after midnight. Small but good enough for me. Got my hands on a Philips 600w green power, which is the one I've been using for years and prefer. I've been using the previous one for over 18 months so this should make a good difference again. Actually first time I grow in this 4x4 closet with a new bulb. Going to try and get a good run of that Amnesia White to fill the jars for 5-6 months.

Sunny day and rolled some P joints outside, P looks pretty damn good outside:

Wanted to pick up some hash at a shop called Styx, or Stix, don't remember... turns out name changed, it's now Boerejongens. Small take away shop, clean look.

Got some neville haze:

Smells like bird shit, little taste and smell, but noticeable good effect, high+relax.

And some "Amazing Haze"

Walks and talks like SSH... strong smell and taste, bit harsh smoke this bud though. Great bud structure imo, amnesia is often like that too, foxtail-ish yet compact.

The six CH seeds going into pots tonight.

 

[Sativied]

First time lapse video is up: https://vid.me/pyht (6 seedlings emerging from the soil).
Just a test, bumped the camera into the interference zone half way. Need to do to a couple of more test runs but I think I should be able to capture the development of the whorl good enough.

 

[geologic]

Totally excellent,
this is gonna be good--
can't wait to see 'em whorl...