Back Crossing

[Neph]

I understand that with breeding you need to keep back crossing to the P1's to stabilize the strain and provide less variances.

My question is, when you back cross with your P1, does you P1 have to be female?

Most of the time I see people talking about taking males from f1, f2 etc and back crossing to a mom plant.

If I don't have room to keep a mom, I was thinking I could just harvest a bunch of pollen from my P1 father and then pollinate future f1, f2 etc females. Would this not serve the same purpose, or am I missing something?

Anyone got any takes on this?

[Hillbilly]

It would work, but How would you know the male is what you want to breed for as you can't test it's smoke or THC levels LOL Also you would have a shelf life on the pollen and if it went bad you lose all your work. I think better way would be to make a bonsai out of the male and keep it in veg mode, then when you wanted to breed from it take a cut and grow it out. but you could do it with a mother too.. I'm keeping a male in a one gal pot, I cut it in half and trimmed the roots and put it back in the one gal pot. I think I will have to cut the roots once a month or so to keep it under control. Seen a video on Mr. Nice and he had a Mother that was 16 years old. I would think he had to trim the roots to keep it so long in the pot it was in, looked like about 5 gal. pot.

[Neph]

HillBilly, from what I hear you can keep pollen viable for a while under the right conditions.

The whole point is if you don't have room to keep one of the P1's. If I could keep a father going, surely I could keep the mother going instead.

The male pollen would be kept to stabilize the strain, I could tell where I was by the females I grew out from the back crosses. I'd imagine it would be the same as taking males and back crossing to the original P1 female, then growing out females to see where I am genetics wise.

[Hillbilly]

Something else you can do is breed f's together... Then you wouldn't have to worry about back crosses I know your doing 12/12 from the start so that's not going to give you much bud or if you breed them much seeds... the F2's will give a big variety but a little work it could be done.. Something else you might try is keep re-veging soon as you chop switch to 20/4 or even 24/0 veg for a few weeks then 12/12 again. as your going 12/12 they wouldn't be big when they go back to bud and if you do re-veg them you could keep them pretty small with some LST you could keep the size down and keep them going I would think..

[Neph]

This isn't a a question to do with my current grow or grow space at all. It's really just a question I had on my mind. I see everyone back crossing offspring males to the female p1 and I just wanted to know if you could change it and do the opposite.

[Hillbilly]

Yes you could!!! Genetics works both ways Male and female's give there offspring's genes.. If you could test a Male for THC and all that Males might even be a better way to go.. If you find an out standing breeder it's always worth trying to consecrate the genes, and Test Test and Test!! wouldn't want unwanted genes popping up as well..

[Grub]

Back-crossing to females gives you a better idea of what the female offspring will turn out like. Things like bud growth, density, stature and of course strength can only be compared to the mother. The father is chosen usually by his size and maybe the flower to leaf ratio.
There is no reason why you can't back-cross to the father, but you will get a better idea of what the offspring will turn out like if you back-cross to the Mother.

[Neph]

How Grub? If I'm picking males from the offspring to cross back to the mother?

I would think picking strong female offspring to back-cross with p1 pollen would be a better judge of what your females would turn out like, since you are growing out and looking for females.

I'm just thinking most growers want female flowers. So why when trying to make a new strain, do they grow out males and cross them back to the original p1 mother? One would dare say growing out females and picking the best ones, i.e. ones who show traits you're after, would be a faster way to stabilize the phenos you are trying to create in your new strain.

[Hillbilly]

How Grub? If I'm picking males from the offspring to cross back to the mother?

I would think picking strong female offspring to back-cross with p1 pollen would be a better judge of what your females would turn out like, since you are growing out and looking for females.

I'm just thinking most growers want female flowers. So why when trying to make a new strain, do they grow out males and cross them back to the original p1 mother? One would dare say growing out females and picking the best ones, i.e. ones who show traits you're after, would be a faster way to stabilize the phenos you are trying to create in your new strain.
Everything I post on this forum is a work of fiction and is for enter

The Problem is as Grub pointed out How do you know what the Male carries as Males tend to grow taller and from what I seen a bit more lanky, (not always ) you can't see his buds, THC % or how airy or hard the buds are..

would be a faster way to stabilize the phenos you are trying to create in your new strain.

Ether a Female or male, it wouldn't matter on Stabilizing a strain it matters on how good you are at picking the phenos you want and in the Cannabis world your wanting the female phenos that you can see, and test.. Lucky Breeding plants is a lot easier then animals.. One batch of seeds can give you hundreds if not thousands of seeds to test were like my pigeons 1 or 2 at a time..

[Neph]

Maybe I'm just not coming across clear.

Usually people keep the mother p1, and then back cross cuttings from the p1 mother with pollen from the f1, f2, f3 etc male offspring. This requires you to grow out males to harvest pollen from and the pollinate the original p1 mother clones.

If you kept the father, or his pollen. You would grow out female f#'s, you then could select the females you liked best, the ones showing traits you most wanted, and then back cross them to the p1. Since it's the females you are growing out for your back cross wouldn't this give you a better idea how the future female f#'s would grow?


I understand what you mean by not knowing exactly what traits the father could carry but surely you would see them in the future females you grow from seeds he's pollinated?