The Cannabis Breeder's Bible (19 page)

Some types of mold and fungi can also go unnoticed on cuttings in the early stages of infestation. Some types of mold and fungi travel in spores and these spores can lie dormant for a while before the problem shows itself.

If you do come across any pests, fungi or mold then the quarantine cuttings should be treated according to pest type. The cuttings should be treated until there are no signs of any pests, mold or fungi for at least three weeks. Go an extra fourth week if you need the assurance that no pests have laid their eggs in the soil, stems or leaves. Some breeders have several quarantine boxes and keep cloning the affected plant over and over to reduce the amount of bugs or disease and this makes eradication a lot more successful. Check your cuttings daily to ensure that the problem has not returned.

Mold problems can quickly fail new growth.

Mold typically can be found near old cut zones where the plant has been pruned. These areas need your special attention.

11

BREEDING TALK

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF WHAT OTHER BREEDERS GET UP TO and the ways in which they think out breeding strategies let’s hear an experienced breeder’s advice. This breeder is a special friend of the author’s who has created some admirable plants. Not all breeders play big on the market. Some just like to participate in the domestic rather than the commercial scene.

There are many countries and states which allow clones to be sold for medical use. This breeder told me that in the very near future, breeders will be able to create medical strains for specific medical problems. I tend to listen carefully to his advice and I advise you to do the same.

Being a breeder can be rewarding and fun but you must have patience or else you will not get good results. When I think in my head of putting something new together I have to remember what my resources are and where I can get good parent plants to start the project from. Luckily for me I have a number of people around the world that are willing to send me some seeds of the finest strains I can get.

I sometimes think of these strains like coffee or tea, each one with its own flavor, taste and stimulation. If I like a type of tea or coffee then I will probably like most of the teas or coffees that come from that part of the world. I also make sure that whatever selections are sent to me are the finest of the selections, so the person who brings me the seeds is as important as the seeds themselves. I trust these people because I know that they have an eye for detail or a good sense of what a nice parent plant should be like.

I can give you my own judgment on what a nice cannabis plant should be like but people have different tastes. This is why some people like strains from one breeder and not from another. You will find breeders who produce a type of strain that fits in with what they have produced before. As a breeder, try to stay away from stereotyping your image.

Back to what I like: a nice cannabis plant, regardless of species, should have a nice thick stem and short internodes.

If the strain is very Sativa dominant then I would not mind the long internodes as long as these nodes develop bud areas. If the strain does not flower well at the majority of its nodes then I do not choose that plant. I also look for nice flat leaves on a plant because I do not regard curling leaves or floppy leaves as healthy leaves. I want to see pointy fingers and strong veins supporting those leaves. The healthier the plant looks the better it will be for the breeding project.

I also like to see vigorous growth with no stunting under good growing conditions. I like a plant that can develop strong branches and a good thick base where the soil meets the plant.

Next up I need to make sure that the plant flowers according to the photoperiod. I do not want to see any Ruderalis auto-flowering responses in the plant. The plant must not be hermaphrodite.

Even before the breeding project begins I am spending maybe two or three years growing the selected plant or having others do this for me. The more numbers that we grow the better it is for me to be able to pick out a strain that fits the bill.

When I am happy that I have found a good solid plant that meets my satisfaction it becomes the skeleton for the breeding project. I usually go for a good male over a female plant because I am not interested in the flowers or the high at this point. I just want to see a good solid plant that will become my first donor in a breeding operation.

If my project is going to be a hybrid project then I need to get hold of another strain that I thought performed well under my standards. All breeders have different standards when it comes to choosing a parent but I think any breeder with a good chunk of experience will have similar standards.

When I have found a suitable strain I go for bud looks and potency. I want to see tight bud clusters, resin and a frosty look first. I will settle for two out of the three but never one. Once I see this I start to work on that strain to get the best potent plant I can find in it. If the plant is not potent or loses potency in a couple of grows then I will not choose it for the breeding project.

If I find a bunch of plants that I think are good and meet bud and potency requirements I will clone them out and begin the first phase of the breeding project which is about flowering characteristics and potency.

I take on five traits at a time for each of the above two strains. With the skeleton parent I watch the leaf shape, internodes, stem thickness, branch length and color. With the flowering female I watch bud color, taste, smell, flowering times and resin production. By doing test crosses I can determine the genotype of all these traits. I have not created a hybrid plant yet—I just want to determine the genotype of each of the phenotypes that I desire in my work. The next step is to breed each of these strains out separately to try and control the frequencies of each trait. I do this by backcrossing the strain with a mother that contained the phenotypes that I wanted. After a couple of backcrosses I will soon find that my offspring will contain a majority of the traits that I am looking for.

All this is done before I even make the first hybrid cross.

Once the 90% majority has been reached, I then perform my first hybrid cross. This is called the F1 generation of the plant that I am developing.

The F1 generation will have a mass of variations in the pack. But the variations will be limited to the traits that I choose and their recessive counterparts. The key here is to make multiple F1 offspring so that I have a better selection to work from. I then carefully observe the selection and try to find the hybrid that I am looking for. This hybrid will be the template for the new strain that I want to finish up with. If I do not find my desired plant in the offspring I will make an F2 generation of offspring by crossing a large selection of the F1 offspring. It is possible that she will be in F2. She should be in the F1 or F2 offspring but never more than that.

When I have found her I examine her traits very carefully to see that she contains everything that I am looking for. The traits should be a combination of both parents. They are: thick stem, nice flat leaves, short fingers, pointy leaves, strong veins, bud color, resin, frost, smell and taste.

Smell and taste are actually the last things I look for unless I am developing a strain that requires these elements. A Berry-type strain would almost certainly require me to work on taste and Skunky strains would have to smell Skunky to some extent to be categorized as a Skunk.

I have found the mother plant that contains all the traits that I am looking for. I will clone her out and see how she will perform in a Sea of Green setup. I like to be able to get people’s opinions on taste and potency at this point in time so a good harvest is important. If the feedback I get is good then the real project begins. If not, then I will cancel everything.

You see, this is what breeding is all about. I do not want to spend lots of time developing an IBL that nobody will like. That would be a waste. I will gladly spend something between ten and fifteen years to IBL my strain if it is good. As you can guess I have at least five or six breeding projects under my belt at any one time so that at least one works out well with the public.

The IBL creation is no easy task. It requires me to true breed as many traits as I can find. Those traits can either be homozygous dominant or homozygous recessive. The idea is to knock out as many heterozygous traits as I can find. The more selections I make the better my chances of removing a heterozygous trait.

When I work on a breeding project I also must consider environmental influences on the phenotype. A population of plants might show some variations, but these variations may be environmental. It is very important for me to grow in a breeding room that has an even light, space, air and CO
₂
distribution. The soil needs to be the same, the containers the same size and the nutrients of all the same dosage. A variation in bud color or stem color can be the result of a lack of a nutrients. Purple stems, leaves and bud can be caused by very cold conditions or a lack of K in the medium. This can be mistaken quickly for a recessive trait if you find only a few of these plants in your breeding room. Mistakes can be made this way so having a bit of growing experience under your belt helps.

I would also never recommend putting an IBL on the market unless you do not mind losing your hard work to money-hungry ‘breeders’ who will exploit your work and call it their own. An IBL will only produce IBL seeds with no variations so maybe you should only release F1 seed produce of your IBL.

As you can see, breeders have a style of breeding which is unique to themselves but uses more than one of our breeding techniques to achieve true breeding traits.

We have now explained a number of things in detail; let’s quickly recap the major points before we move on. This is important because what we have covered so far is mostly basic genetics. Later on we will cover a more advanced area of genetics that concerns the cannabis plant and how to breed it.

So far we have a good awareness of why seeds are the goal of every breeder. We understand a bit about how the market works and we know that finding a logical reason for breeding a trait will result in a much better commercial plant.

You understand basic genetics and are competent enough to remember how not to make mistakes that most other breeders will make.

You can process compatibility data to plan your breeding project more efficiently. You understand enough of the cannabis cell structure to grasp mitosis, which is important in understanding how chromosomes are made.

We have explored mutations and what causes them so that you are aware of the issues involved. We have explained how this is done. Tissue culture is the new method of cloning that you will probably adopt because of its success with large numbers.

Storage issues should be clearer now, and you have also heard directly from breeders about how they conduct their breeding projects.