Danny Danko's take on fem seeds, excerpted

[sgt. schultz]

Paraphrased from Dear Danny column HT's April 2010 issue. Main point of question from "Jim":

"How can you tell which seeds are male and which seeds ar female? For breeders to be able to guarantee female seeds, they must have some way of telling."

Danny's reply, summarized:

It's not possible to tell the sex of a regular seed." 50 percent males and 50 percent females.

Feminized seeds are the product of selfed pollination. The results are 50% female and 50% hermie and the breeders have become quite adept at selecting for the all female beans (paraphrased). Yada, yada, yada, your best bet is to purchase feminized seeds from a well established seed company.

I thought all beans from selfed fems were either fem or hermie and not 50-50. If there is a 50-50 fem to herm ratio, is there really a big enough difference in the appearance of the beans that it's a no brainer which is which, or are they so similar that bean counters are mostly guessing? If they are 50%fem and 50%herm and it's possible to be "adept" at knowing the difference, can any fellow farmers, or maybe most importantly, fem breeders wanting to assuage skeptics (quite a few fem detracting threads in forums claiming many herms) that can show a side by side pic of a fem and a hermie bean or is the 50-50 claim totally bogus?

 

[MASSES 420KING]

i believe that if you use cst it alters the female to produce male flowers full of female pollen for 100%females

 

[NeonBlackFlag]

Theres no way to tell the sex of a plant by looking at the seeds, period. I am pretty sure that nobody is sorting these seeds for herm/fem ratios.

 

[Danny Danko]

Thanks for the love MichaelFranti! Luckily, the real Michael Franti is cooler. Hope all your grows stay mite and fungus free...

 

[slightlystoned]

ouch lol

 

[CAPO]

Every strain is different. It's not the picking of seeds that helps resolve the hermaphrodite issue; it's the picking of strains that do better than others.

Danny Danko's opinion on fems being 50/50 fem to herms, is a logical conclusion, but cannot be applied to every strain.
I wish to read the whole article, so I guess I will pay my 8 or 10 dollars(or whatever it is these days) and read it myself. I really don't understand the partial, summarized, and paraphrased readings from you schultzie. I would prefer quotes to be verbatim and whole.

The wording of your quote from Danny saying "the breeders have become quite adept at selecting for all female beans"....notice the word "for", it could very well be misconstrued that breeders are selecting beans. The truth is that breeder's are selecting strains, not beans.

 

[bodhi seeds]

april fools....

 

[edux10]

lol, is that the real danny danko? lol, just dissed him to his face (or screen in this case, hahaha)

we all know that there is no 50/50 on the selfed seeds. what it is is that the selfed seeds have a much higher rate of being hermie because they were not made using male pollen. but if it were 50 50 then it would be pointless to grow fem seeds. its more like one strain may be more likely to shoot out a bunch of hermies than another, but i have had great luck with bag seed. most bag seed is just selfed. selfing happens when the plant bacomes stressed, maybe if you let it go a few days longer than it is happy with or your conditions are not perfect this will happen. Like all the chem and desiel is selfed. it all came out of the same bagseed and there was no male pollen used. some plants could have a lot of problems when they are selfed tho, like having both male and female flowers from the very start of flowering. then you whole room is just bunk seeds that dont work and even if the seeds become germable they will have the traits of intersexing. it would be impossible to pick out any problem beans out of the lot.

 

[sgt. schultz]

Every strain is different. It's not the picking of seeds that helps resolve the hermaphrodite issue; it's the picking of strains that do better than others.

Danny Danko's opinion on fems being 50/50 fem to herms, is a logical conclusion, but cannot be applied to every strain.
I wish to read the whole article, so I guess I will pay my 8 or 10 dollars(or whatever it is these days) and read it myself. I really don't understand the partial, summarized, and paraphrased readings from you schultzie. I would prefer quotes to be verbatim and whole.

The wording of your quote from Danny saying "the breeders have become quite adept at selecting for all female beans"....notice the word "for", it could very well be misconstrued that breeders are selecting beans. The truth is that breeder's are selecting strains, not beans.

After reading this response I re-read Danny's reply to question. Here is the meat of it verbatim:

"Bud breeders, however, have been creating feminized seeds for the past decade or so. These seeds are the product of female plants that have been stressed into creating "male" flowers for self-pollination. The results of this type of union are 50% female and 50% hermaphroditic plants, and the breeders have become quite adepth at selecting for the all-female beans."

Considering Capo's "for" and "selecting for strains" thoughts, I see where I could have misinterpreted what Danny was trying to communicate. It seems to me now that he is saying if 10 plants, regardless of strain, are selfed, half would be hermie and that even if they were the same strain the breeders would be able to identify which is which. He could very well be referring to strains and limited to the confines of a Q&A wasn't able to expand upon that thought as much as if he was writing a 2 or 3 page article.
Anyway, apologies for misconstruing your article Danny (feel free to extrapolate here). I do like to read your stuff.
Capo, thanks for keeping me straight and hope I posted this in time to save your 8 bucks.

 

[Malachi]

It all depends on how stable the strain is, if there are any hermie tendancies in the genetics, and of course stress in the grow environment. Franti you are to funny my friend, I would totally have to agree with you though. High Times has been around so long though people don't know any better.

 

[sgt. schultz]

It all depends on how stable the strain is, if there are any hermie tendancies in the genetics, and of course stress in the grow environment. Franti you are to funny my friend, I would totally have to agree with you though. High Times has been around so long though people don't know any better.

HT's may be a joke to some good growers but I bet a lot of them here at least partly got their 1st notion of growing their own from a copy of it and that a lot of the growing acceptance of ganja in our society was spurred on by their activism.

 

[Malachi]

HT's may be a joke to some good growers but I bet a lot of them here at least partly got their 1st notion of growing their own from a copy of it and that a lot of the growing acceptance of ganja in our society was spurred on by their activism.

Totally agree, and I am one of those growers. I remember sneaking off to the back of the bus in high school and sneaking peeks at the Northern Lights centerfold shots they had. I truly believe that was love at first sight.

I just think with all the good growers out there and the wealth of knowledge in the cannabis community as a whole, that much of the nonsense would get discredited before hitting the press.

 

[CAPO]

After reading this response I re-read Danny's reply to question. Here is the meat of it verbatim:

"Bud breeders, however, have been creating feminized seeds for the past decade or so. These seeds are the product of female plants that have been stressed into creating "male" flowers for self-pollination. The results of this type of union are 50% female and 50% hermaphroditic plants, and the breeders have become quite adepth at selecting for the all-female beans."

Considering Capo's "for" and "selecting for strains" thoughts, I see where I could have misinterpreted what Danny was trying to communicate. It seems to me now that he is saying if 10 plants, regardless of strain, are selfed, half would be hermie and that even if they were the same strain the breeders would be able to identify which is which. He could very well be referring to strains and limited to the confines of a Q&A wasn't able to expand upon that thought as much as if he was writing a 2 or 3 page article.
Anyway, apologies for misconstruing your article Danny (feel free to extrapolate here). I do like to read your stuff.
Capo, thanks for keeping me straight and hope I posted this in time to save your 8 bucks.

Thanks man! I see what he is saying a little better.

On HighTimes....I would have to agree they have done a lot for the community. We used to get each one religiously in the mid 80's. We would thumb through them so many times, that they would start to fall apart. I still have some older issues of HT and still reference them sometimes.
If you think about it, HT is really a landmark of sorts. First let me relay that even though I rarely buy an issue these days, I still hold them in high regard. Mostly because they are THE pioneers when it comes to parading cultivation in public view. The DEA was established in 1973 and HighTimes founded in 1974 a year later in NewYork City. Overall...they have helped to keep the mood positive toward MJ, even through the Reagan years.
Thanks for all those years HT.....and thank you for being NORML.


:damnhippie:

 

[mal]

HT

nowadays the magazine is all about money, if you give them enough they'll say anything is good. ever try those water beads the little plastic things that swell with water so you don't have to water so much. if you use them your weed will taste like plastic. they recommended,i used i lost. the memories are good the magazine isn't IMO. Michael i gotta agree with you.



mal

 

[CAPO]

Whassuup mal?..........
Ya HT isn't what it used to be...lot's of product placement and those fake buds..wtf are those anyway. I like to peruse it on occasion to get a feel for what interests the masses.

The Farm is definitely where the elite hang and where you can get great advice. This is where I hang. I would go to a HT function, but if HT bought The Farm.....I would for sure...without a doubt.....not hang.

But I digress.....maybe they will get there shit together with there new medical version.
I doubt it though, cause their biggest problem lies in letting advertisement sponsors influence their articles.

 

[nucleotide]

"Bud breeders, however, have been creating feminized seeds for the past decade or so. These seeds are the product of female plants that have been stressed into creating "male" flowers for self-pollination. The results of this type of union are 50% female and 50% hermaphroditic plants, and the breeders have become quite adepth at selecting for the all-female beans."

What research do you base this statistic on? I'm always curious to hear people's thoughts on feminized seeds. My take is that there are quite a few myths perpetuated based on very little actual research.

 

[NeonBlackFlag]

Yeah, I'm actually currently subscribed to HT, have been for about 2 years, but next month is my last issue and I am not going to renew. The magazine gets real old real fast. Its the same exact stories month after month after month, and even my wife has commented on how many AD's their are in the mag. Its more advertisements than articles! And all the fake weed ads.... Don't get me started. That shit looks like it could kill you! haha

What really put a "bad taste" (pun intended) in my mouth about HT was when I went to the HT Cannabis Cup 09 last year. It was horrible! Amsterdam was a cool place, but the cup in specific was a joke! ALL the weed was BUNK that you bought in the shops! I don't know what the "celebrity judges" were smoking, but it must not have been the same bullshit that they gave all the other judges that spent $400 on a fucking judges pass for nothing! By the 4th day of being there I was pretty much fed up with smoking all the weed and hash that the dam had to offer. My throat was fucking killing me, because it was very obvious that just about 0% of the weed had been flushed, and all the hash was soooo impure. Then to make matters worse, my wife & I go the PowerZone (a 15-20 minutes bus ride from centraal) on the last day at 7pm to vote, and when we get there they tell us that voting is over with!! That we had no chance of voting. I'd like to know for starters how the fuck were we supposed to know about this considering that every other day it was open until 8pm, and NOWHERE was it posted about it closing early that day. Next, why the fuck would the bus bring us out all this way when there wasn't even ANYTHING going on there?! So we had to wait like 10-15 more minutes for ANOTHER bus to come back to bring us back to centraal... Then when the jerk off at the HT voting area asked which strain I would of voted for, I told him "420 Kush" (which was about the only weed that we bought there that got us even a little fucked up) he chuckled and said "wow, really? 420 kush, huh?" and looked very shocked. Probably because I didn't say their OverLord Arjan and his shit tasting/non potent entry of Super Lemon Haze, that actually won. I smoked quite a few bongs rips of that Super Lemon Haze there, it was fucking shit and HT's knows it. But surprise, surprise, as my wife & I saw coming when we went to the awards ceremony, guess who wins first and second place? Well, Greenhouse Super Lemon Haze won first! And when they announced it you could hear a lot of people BOOING and saying that it was bullshit! haha. Then in second place was, surprise surprise, BARNEY'S for their Vanilla Kush which was just as shitty! Vanilla Kush was the first sample that we tried after getting off the plane because with the judges pass we got a free sample. The shit tasted like NOTHING but burning lungs (from a bong AND volcano vape) and didn't even get me high, and this is from not smoking for about 1 1/2 days! The whole HT CC experiance was a fucking joke and one that I don't want to go through again. It was hard to believe that in the supposed "great cannibas cup in the world" that I didn't have to pay all that fucking money and waste all that time in amsterdam, and just could have stayed in cali.

It's clear that HT is just a HUGE capitalist money making machine with no intregity towards what they do, the Scammabis Cup included. And its pretty obvious now that they are completely bought out by Greenhouse & Barney's seeds. Theres no other way that they could have won that cup.

 

[Illmind]

Ya don't goto a-dam during cup if you want to smoke good. All you get there is greenhouses full of commercial unflushed. You gotta go during down season. All the fireball ain't sold out already and the hash is top quality. HT gotta make money man, selling mags don't do it. If you ever read any other magazine you'd see they have just as many ads. And HT has good info unfortunately I have noticed they get lazy and snatch up articles from the internet and post em in there mag. I'm like WTF I just posted on that thread and it's an 3 page article. DDanko is a good dude, don't blame him for HTs ways you think he is EC? He just writes for em. And he does what he can if he gets a jackass question guess what kind of answer you're gonna get. And I believe he meant parental selection for femmed seeds has gotten better beause back in the day 50/50 herm sounds about right. Now that people take 2 non herms and csilver em for pollen the ration is a lot better. So be easy. Sheeesh.

 

[heavydutykevork]

All I know is I been reading HT since early 90's they got me where I'm at today. MUCH RESPECT TO HT AND ALL THAT WORK THERE! Peace HDK.

 

[nucleotide]

Haha, true that HDK! I easily forget how much HT helped back in the day. Back before the interwebs.