hubcap said:

this ones a tuff one farmer andytoker. for one reason. its really hard to find a potential father without first checking his offspring to see how they turned out. if you like the results of the F1 offspring, mommie and daddie are 'keepers'
there are some things that would hint to a potential good daddy, ie: the father producing visible trichomes in abundance. (you be surprised what some males can put out)... im sure some of the other farmers have photographic examples of such....but i digress.

i know in the past, we put all the males into a room. label them somehow and take cuts.
these male cuts are much easier to move around and utilize. also, it only takes one lil teenie grain of pollen to make one seed. there is quite an amount of pollen in say, the size of a us dime, so, large male plants, imo, arent necessary. if you wanna do some male testing, this would be the approach id recommend. its better than 'storing' pollen, and/or moving around full grown replicas, if you will.
keep the males small by taking cuts and CLEARLY label them and which plants his pollen touches. this is key. easy to lose track if many potentials are being tested.

(steps and precautions to doing this (controlled pollination) are posted. if u cant find them hit me back, and i, or the other farmers will go more in depth with that aspect)

all of that aside you'll find that there are a few strains out there that have their 'code' in many strains available today.
like the aforementioned skunk1s and afghanis of varying origin. skunk being the bulk giver and afghanis being the flowering time shorteners.

there are many good strains that make potentially great fathers. but, imo, you need to have some sort of goal in mind.

for example:
i wanna take my "X Sativa" and shorten the flower time a bit.....
then afghani would be a good choice.
the maple leaf indicas, in my limited exp with her, is shes got a bit of a pheno selection. so, depending on your goals, this might, or might not, be something youre looking for....dig?

lemme know if this is making sense so far...
i could talk for days.

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