The Cannabis Breeder's Bible (2 page)

This is not the final word on the subject either: this book has been designed to grow! We will be adding new chapters, new pictures, new methods and new theories. That is why
The Cannabis Breeder’s Bible
has become the marijuana breeder’s handbook of choice.

We hope that you stick with us and we hope that this book will help you to get where you want to go. Happy growing and most of all, remember to… HAVE FUN!

PREFACE

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN UNDER ADVERSE CONDITIONS. In most countries it is illegal to own cannabis seeds, or to grow or use cannabis. Maybe this will change for you one day if enough people make the effort to have their voices heard. Until that day comes, it is recommended that you verify what your country’s legal stance is with regards to cannabis breeding. This book was not created with the intent to encourage anyone to break the law.

The Cannabis Breeders Bible
is about cannabis breeding and how it is done. Even though the contents of this book may show you how to acquire seeds, grow them and breed them, ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions. We would like to see you breed bigger, better cannabis plants; however, we don’t want to see you break the law.

I would also like to say that many countries have permitted medical users to grow their own personal supplies of cannabis. If this is true of your country then this book will be of massive benefit to you and your health.

A NOTE TO THE READER

Since the release of
The Cannabis Grow Bible
I have received many questions from readers around the globe. I am able to answer most questions by referring to specific pages in the book readers may have missed the first time around or by answering their questions on our website forums at
www.cannabisbook.com
(thank you everyone for participating by the way and as you know I try to get around to answering every letter). However, I have been totally bombarded with questions related to chapter 15 of that book—How to Breed Marijuana.

The remainder of this book is a companion to chapter 15 of
The Cannabis Grow Bible
. For the benefit of those readers who do not have
The Cannabis Grow Bible
, I have reprinted this classic chapter here as chapter 2, Basic Breeding. This chapter will cover more advanced breeding questions, but it will also provide a glimpse of the breeding market in action and how it works.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

As a breeder, try to avoid using the word
marijuana
too often. There are many marijuana prohibition campaigners who have dedicated whole volumes to listing marijuana slang words so that parents know what the different terms for marijuana are—but what they fail to realize is that the word
marijuana
itself is slang.
Marijuana
is derived from “mari’hwana” which is an American Spanish slang term for cannabis.

The word
marijuana
certainly doesn’t sound like the Queen’s English, does it? This is exactly why the term was used so widely by cannabis prohibition campaigners from the early 1900s right up until today. Prohibition campaigners quickly devoted themselves to the word
marijuana
wherever they meant to say cannabis in order to affect the American psyche at a basic level. Marijuana sounds new, foreign and strange; the word
cannabis
sounds old, local and scientific.

Early prohibition efforts were always closely knit with racism: marijuana was portrayed as a South American problem that came to America. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the early 1900s American growers had already established many lines of landrace cannabis that were used in the commercial sector. In fact, by the 1930s some cannabis cultivators did not even realize that marijuana prohibition campaigns were directly aimed at their crop!

These wild cannabis plants that have been domesticated by man, but somewhat returned to the wild, tend to be less than uniform in growth when compared to completely domesticated cannabis plants, but are more uniform in growth than wild cannabis populations that have not undergone much interference from mankind.

During the early years of merchant trading systems, landrace strains were mostly used as the basis for domesticating new strains of cannabis. This trend has continued through to this day. Nearly every single domestic cannabis strain has been derived from a landrace strain or, more importantly, a
recombination
of the different landrace strains’ genetic material, all of which has more recently been done via breeding selection and not through
genetic modification
.

Most of these landrace strains can still be found in the same places that Occidental man discovered them a hundred years ago or more. To say that Occidental man ‘discovered’ these strains is a bit like saying that Christopher Columbus discovered America, even though there were Native Americans present when he arrived. We already know that primordial man, through to Bronze Age man and modern man have propagated a lot of landrace cannabis but we do have early wild landrace pockets which still survive to this day.

Europe has not pursued the same kind of radical marijuana prohibition laws as America has. Much of this has to do with Europeans retaining the name cannabis, rather than switching to the term
marijuana.
Thus it would be in the best interests of the growing and breeding community to avoid using the slang term
marijuana
as far as possible—unless you are a Latin American, who should then reintroduce the word as it sounds in your own language! Reintroducing proper language may well help cannabis to once again be seen in the proper light it deserves.

In the 1970s many cannabis growers believed that their only hope in bringing cannabis back from the brink of uncertainty was to establish home breeding projects using landrace strains that had been illegally imported from around the world. The US government had already blindly destroyed its own landrace reserves in a foolish attempt at marijuana extinction. Australia and Europe and many other countries followed suit to some degree. The problem with destroying landrace cannabis is that all that’s being damaged is the actual breeding behind specific cannabis strains that were created for various growing environments, and not the cannabis species itself. Imagine for a moment that you develop a new type of apple tree that grows apples that are tasty, nourishing and grow perfectly in your climate. Maybe you have also created a tree that is resistant to pests and can withstand certain common diseases that are found in your area. One day the government comes along and says that apples are bad for people and all apple trees must be destroyed. Does this mean that apple trees will no longer exist? It certainly does not. It just means that your special breed of apple tree is removed. In the early 1930s the US government was hesitant to entirely destroy cannabis, out of fear that it might be needed someday for some technical use. That fear proved correct. The dawn of WW II flung the US agricultural community into panic when it was discovered that fiber reserves were too low to meet demands and external resources were cut off because of the war. Cannabis cultivation was reintroduced to help with the war effort and it met many fiber demands. However, since WW II taxpayers have increasingly found themselves funding the ‘war on drugs,’ and the US landrace cannabis strains that once saved America have now been lost due to neglect from federal reserve laboratories, which have failed to maintain these strains.

Recent medical discoveries have shown that cannabis is indeed a beneficial herb and, more importantly, that human beings have cannabinoid receptors for processing cannabis chemicals naturally. Since most US landrace strains have been destroyed, the people of the United States are now facing a loss on the medical side of cannabis development. Canada, Alaska, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland are all making headway in this field of study. Without doubt, to this author’s mind, medical cannabis will be widely available to everybody else before the American population takes control of the herb from the federal law enforcers—who are merely playing a game to ensure their share of the tax budget.

Recent failures by federal authorities to preserve landrace strains have set the new cannabis breeding standards for today. The individuals of the new cannabis breeding movement have taken it upon themselves to breed, produce seeds, traffic seeds and share genetics. The results over the past ten years of breeding have been revolutionary. Nowhere in the world can any government-sponsored agriculture body, pharmaceutical firm or plant genetics lab lay claim to such new discoveries, varieties or selections as the domestic cannabis breeding community. They have shown their strength in numbers, production values and efficiency. It is because of their efforts that cannabis remains one of the most sought after plant species in the world today.

The Cannabis Grow Bible
went to some lengths to show readers how they can effectively produce and breed cannabis. The following presentation will provide further information to potential breeders as to how they can effectively participate in this process, with all the practical applications and cultivation principles that are necessary to produce high-end cannabis plants. For the professional biologist it will serve to reinforce propagation standards and set about standardizing procedures for the cannabis breeder to adhere to. We are now entering a stage in which genetic manipulation is becoming ever more readily available. We hope to guide the breeder and researcher through the many pitfalls and misconceptions about genetic manipulation that can lead to future problems with the cannabis population. Let this book provide you with standards to adhere to, ones we promise will be both virtuous and profitable.

1

OVERVIEW OF THE CANNABIS STRAIN MARKET

TO SEED OR CLONE?

There are two basics type of plant reproduction:
sexual reproduction
and
asexual reproduction
. Making seeds is known as sexual reproduction. Cloning is known as asexual reproduction.

First we need to say a few things about the cannabis strain market. Growers who want to produce large quantities of bud choose clones and not seeds as their source of propagation. This is because clones carry the same sex as the parent plant that the cutting was taken from (
CGB
, pp 165-71). Clones flower more quickly too. This means that a grower can keep clones in his grow room and constantly repeat a harvest of the same female plant(s) over and over again.

Because a clone will carry the same genetic material as the parent plant the clone was taken from, the grower does not have to worry about variations in the plants, as they would with seeds from a hybrid strain. In a population of cannabis plants, propagated from seed, a grower will find a good female that appears to have performed better than all the others. The grower will usually keep this plant by cloning it and growing it out into a population of clones that all retain the exact same desired characteristics as that special plant they started with, as long as similar growing conditions are maintained or improved upon. New hybrids and strains do not always faithfully repeat themselves in the offspring through seeds (sexual reproduction) or cannot faithfully repeat themselves in the offspring because the genetic recombination of the parent plants will only result in hidden traits emerging and previously revealed traits disappearing. New hybrids contain variations and sometimes these variations can affect traits that the grower wants to keep. In order to create a hybrid that is uniform, so that its seeds produce very uniform populations, the breeder must learn breeding techniques. Eventually a breeder will be able to stabilize the strain so that all of its offspring are very uniform in growth and the grower does not need to take cuttings or clones because the strain will be consistent in seed form. Why bother creating uniform strains from seed? Why not deal in clones?

SHIPPING CLONES

Shipping a cutting internationally is simply not viable. Forget the legal ramifications of shipping for a moment and think about the state of the clone after it has been shipped from Amsterdam to Alaska. Even if it was shipped first class and packaged with care you still have serious questions to contend with. Anything can happen from point
A
to point
B
and if the clone does not survive transport, then what happens? Does the buyer get his/her money back? How does he prove that the clone did not make it? Who is to blame? Is this really a viable business plan? Will the consumer want to buy clones if he lives far away from the business that sells the clones?

In reality no one sells clones unless the clone is only going to be sent over a short distance or can be handed over to the buyer in person. The risks involved in shipping clones for money simply does not make good business sense. The only time clones are shipped over long distances is if the parties involved are not too concerned with loss or damage to that clone.

Clandestine clones are sent to people in the post all the time. The clone is usually inserted into a small plastic tube no thicker than a pen (A test tube will do just fine). Inside the tube is a tiny amount of water to keep the clone alive. A small piece of wet rockwool is inserted into the plastic tube, blocking the water. A cutting is taken and inserted into the rockwool, with an air-pocket at the top. A thin thread is used to tie the clone’s leaves at the top if needed. The tube is then corked or sealed. The tube is then wrapped in a ziplock baggy and a standard A4 bubble envelope is used to send it through the post. This is how cuttings have been transported by growers around the world. You can experiment with this method using non-proscribed plant cuttings. The success rate though is very poor.