New Grower A little fun with pollen

[DarKnight]

Are you thinking the pollen wasn't viable? I had that problem when trying to use week old, dried pollen and nothing took. Hope you get some babies out of it.

I have purchased pollen from multiple places. I know full well that pollen can be stored dried and frozen for many years. I also know that the best way to ship pollen is to ship it frozen. I.e. on dry ice or at the very least with cold packs and insulated boxes. But, you could also get away with shipping pollen overnight and still have decent enough fertility provided it was harvested fresh. When you look at places that ship pollen and the prices they typically charge, you want that pollen to arrive at least partially viable. If I only get 12 seeds per application I would say it has very low viability, but perhaps it is worth it if it gives you access to an f1 with the desired genetics that you can then work up. It is the f2 that gets tricky after all and that is where you want to see a huge production of seeds. The f1 is okay to have a lower number of seeds provided the f1 has traits you are after that are locked in a homozygous state.

Still, when you look at pollen viability when it is not frozen. You realize that pollen that is shipped must be absolutely fresh when frozen. When pollen is shipped it should be shipped and delivered overnight. Pollen that takes over 9 days to arrive will likely have less than 10% viability if it is not shipped frozen and that is if it is perfectly fresh and frozen that way prior to shipment. 10% viability if you actually get seeds from it might actually be okay. The first batch of pollen I had delivered actually arrived fairly quickly. The next batch of pollen as you can see that I will be testing is taking much longer to arrive.

 

[DarKnight]

Still holding out hope. This pollen has been utilized twice on the same places and marked appropriately both times. Fast service on this pollen compared to my other source... lightning fast. I have zero males of my own so all seeds will be from shipped pollen or not at all.

 

[DarKnight]

Any reason why you choose to use male photoperiod pollen as opposed to reversing an already feminised female plant to then produce feminised offspring ?

Rather than edit, I decided to expound on your question here. I may have missed the mark a bit with my previous answer to your question. Feminized pollen could have been utilized from a photoperiod female and I would certainly not have been against that if I found some with the desired phenotypes. This would have produced nice feminized offspring. When dealing with exceptional clones, there might be much to be gained. You can visually see the phenotypes of both females you are working with and you may even know through testing what THC levels etc. are present in both cloned females used in the cross. I would most certainly utilize an auto that had been feminized as well if it carried the traits I was after as well. The fact of the matter is, it is not easy finding people willing to ship pollen for me. The quality of the pollen once shipped may deteriorate depending on how long the pollen stayed in shipment as well as how it was shipped. Pollen shipped on dry ice in an insulated container overnight would be a heck of a lot better, one would think, than pollen that took 2 weeks to get delivered and was sent without any cooling packs whatsoever. If I trusted 100% that the pollen that arrived would be even 30% viable I would have ordered more pollen to be certain.

 

[DarKnight]

 

[DarKnight]

 

[DarKnight]

 

[DarKnight]

 

[DarKnight]

17 day old Pollen utilized: Freak Show, Subterfuge #1, etc.

 

[DarKnight]

 

[DarKnight]

Harvested plants. On a positive note, I have sinsemilla as there is not a single seed in sight. The lesson I learned here, shipped pollen is not so good and my money could have been spent much better. Live and learn folks. If I ever do this again, I'm going to demand that shipping is overnight. Failure to ship overnight in my mind after this lesson is just pissing your money away. If anyone else has any positive experiences with shipped Cannabis pollen I'd love to hear about them of course.