B
bobman
- 86
- 6
Are any breeders or seedbanks working with genetic manipulation? Not breeding but actually working with the plants genetics. Imagine the possibilities.
There's many forms of genetic manipulation out there... for example, growers have been using colchicine for years on numerous plants to induce polyploidy (multiple sets of chromosomes). This is a form of GM. Watermelons (in order to produce seedless), bread wheat, and a slew of other plants are modified in this fashion by growers for numerous applications. Lots of flowers too for maximizing the yields.
However, I've seen other threads about polyploidy and cannabis and the results are far from stellar. The resulting plants after being treated with colchicine are sterile, but there is a possibility of breeding a fertile polyploidy cannabis plant. Take a normal diploid (2 sets) and pollinate a triploid (3 sets), grow out the seeds, find the mutants and hit those with more colchicine, and further breed with those plants (and the original pollen donor diploid) and you may end up with something gold. Seems doubtful though. This is the same process they use to make triticale (hexaploid, 6 sets) from wheat (tetraploid, 4 sets) & rye (diploid, 2 sets).
I'm fairly sure when it comes to cannabis that the plants "suffering" from polyploidy are much weaker than the normal ones, in terms of potency. Why would you want genetically modified cannabis anyways? Colchicine is neat to play around with, but I personally don't see the point in modifying the beloved plant...
there is a kit that eliminates the need to take cuttings and mother plants all you need is a piece of leaf and make a test tube true clone in every sense of the word