Breeding

[MaxPowerGrows]

Hey guys, long-time grower here, most of my life has been hydro growing but in the beginning I grew in soil for the first five years, lately I've become more and more interested in breeding and while I probably know about the same as most growers with a slight interest in breeding, I really want to teach myself the complete ins and outs of breeding, both photo, and auto, lots of info on the internet doesn't seem real legit and I've read everything any seed bank has posted on their websites and blogs about breeding but it's just scratch the surface information and I need the whole shabang. As detailed as it needs to be fit myself to learn the complete process of breeding and more importantly understand it. Does anyone have any ideas of Weber to find the right information or book or whatever. Thanx guys.

 

[fryge]

I had a course on plant breeding from which I can mention some names of methods you could google.

first you would need to know some basics though.
if you don't already know it, start with mendel. it's basic stuff you keep reading everywhere, but that's for a reason, it keeps coming back. then you can look into slightly more complex cases of mendellian inheritance, like co-dominance etc.

next thing, the difference between autogamous crops and allogamous crops. which are just other names for selfers(autogamous) or outbreeders(allogamous). doesn't mean all outbreeders can't self at all or the other way around, it's just what is most common and it influences what kind of breeding methods you can use.

weed is allogamous, so you would need to look at methods used on allogamous crops, maize would be a nice example to look at. however, using sts or cs you can also self cannabis, so you could apply some methods for autogamous crops too(either way, breeding programs for both autogamous and allogamous usually include both selfing and outbreed-steps, it just depends on the crop which steps are harder to achieve, and how you can achieve them. sts seems like a great thing for weedbreeding to me, since it makes selfing possible, and it's pretty simple. fir example no complex stuff with male infertility genes with matching mitochondrial genes which are used to achieve the outbreeding steps for some selfing crops).

one thing to note though, most traits will probably not inherit qualitative(=determined by one gene). a lot of traits that are interesting to breed for, like yield, plantheight, etc are quantitive traits. to breed well for quantitative traits you would need to use statistics, so you would need a large amount of plants to get significant statistics out of them.
not to discourage breeding(I'm hobbybreeding myself too), but it's probably impossible to achieve the best results for those quantitive traits simply because not many people have the oppurtunity to grow 100's of plants per generation.
but you don't need to achieve the holy grail to have fun breeding.

this site I found earlier and while I haven't read the whole site, it seems like good information and it covers all the selection methods I also got in my course(although it seems to not go really deep into it, but at least you'll get to know the right words to google for more information)(one thing I don't really see mentioned though is mutation breeding, but I don't think that's really usefull for cannabis anyway, plenty of genetic variation present in the primary genepool)
http://www.agriinfo.in/default.aspx?page=topiclist&superid=3&catid=60

also, quickly looking trough it, I don't see anything about marker asisted selection.
if you just want to know stuff that can help your own breeding, I would skip MAS, since you'd need a labratorium to do anything with it(and ability to grow a large enough amount of plants to grow a decent mapping population).
however if you just want to know more even if you can't use it yourself, I think MAS is interesting to learn more about.
and it gives a nice viw into the future what weed breeding could become when legalisation happens.
for example, look at this graph about maizeyields over time:

don't know if you've ever heard about the green revolution(I hear about it constantly in lectures, but don't know how well known the term is generally), but here you can clearly see the green revolution, and you can see the beginning of the possible 2nd green revolution(with biotech/gmo/genetic analysing/MAS/high troughput genomics and phenomics).
but with weed being illegal and underground all that time, I'm expecting weedbreeding will make even more extreme leaps as that as soon as it gets legalized.

btw, the 'double cross' and 'single cross' mentioned in this graph refer to f1 hybrid cultivars I think. maize is an outbreeder, like cannabis, so it suffers from inbreeding depression if you self too much. this is why at first f1 hybrids didn't work, since the inbred lines needed to create it weren't fertile enough to make affordable seed, so instead they first crossed 2 inbred lines to create a more fertile plant to serve as mother, then crossed a third inbred line to it as father for the seeds that were sold(=double cross). after a while companies had developed inbred lines that were fertile enough to skip that extra step, so true f1 hybrids could be made.
I expect something similar is possible with weed. right now it seems everyone is scared of inbreeding, I read a lot about people refusing to use selfing because of the inbreeding depression for example. but if you could work trough the inbreeding depression, select for plants that are not too badly affected by it, it would be a good step towards F1 hybrids I think.

 

[islandgrower]

There is a book by Robert c Clarke. Called marijuana botany goes in depth in breeding. You should be able to find a pdf online of it. If not message me I will see if I can send it to you.

Sent from my SM-J710F using Tapatalk

 

[islandgrower]

http://www.calgarycmmc.com/
Check on this site has a list of available pdf . With the book I mentioned as well. Good luck

Sent from my SM-J710F using Tapatalk

 

[JanSteen]

I had a course on plant breeding from which I can mention some names of methods you could google.

first you would need to know some basics though.
if you don't already know it, start with mendel. it's basic stuff you keep reading everywhere, but that's for a reason, it keeps coming back. then you can look into slightly more complex cases of mendellian inheritance, like co-dominance etc.

next thing, the difference between autogamous crops and allogamous crops. which are just other names for selfers(autogamous) or outbreeders(allogamous). doesn't mean all outbreeders can't self at all or the other way around, it's just what is most common and it influences what kind of breeding methods you can use.

weed is allogamous, so you would need to look at methods used on allogamous crops, maize would be a nice example to look at. however, using sts or cs you can also self cannabis, so you could apply some methods for autogamous crops too(either way, breeding programs for both autogamous and allogamous usually include both selfing and outbreed-steps, it just depends on the crop which steps are harder to achieve, and how you can achieve them. sts seems like a great thing for weedbreeding to me, since it makes selfing possible, and it's pretty simple. fir example no complex stuff with male infertility genes with matching mitochondrial genes which are used to achieve the outbreeding steps for some selfing crops).

one thing to note though, most traits will probably not inherit qualitative(=determined by one gene). a lot of traits that are interesting to breed for, like yield, plantheight, etc are quantitive traits. to breed well for quantitative traits you would need to use statistics, so you would need a large amount of plants to get significant statistics out of them.
not to discourage breeding(I'm hobbybreeding myself too), but it's probably impossible to achieve the best results for those quantitive traits simply because not many people have the oppurtunity to grow 100's of plants per generation.
but you don't need to achieve the holy grail to have fun breeding.

this site I found earlier and while I haven't read the whole site, it seems like good information and it covers all the selection methods I also got in my course(although it seems to not go really deep into it, but at least you'll get to know the right words to google for more information)(one thing I don't really see mentioned though is mutation breeding, but I don't think that's really usefull for cannabis anyway, plenty of genetic variation present in the primary genepool)
http://www.agriinfo.in/default.aspx?page=topiclist&superid=3&catid=60

also, quickly looking trough it, I don't see anything about marker asisted selection.
if you just want to know stuff that can help your own breeding, I would skip MAS, since you'd need a labratorium to do anything with it(and ability to grow a large enough amount of plants to grow a decent mapping population).
however if you just want to know more even if you can't use it yourself, I think MAS is interesting to learn more about.
and it gives a nice viw into the future what weed breeding could become when legalisation happens.
for example, look at this graph about maizeyields over time:

don't know if you've ever heard about the green revolution(I hear about it constantly in lectures, but don't know how well known the term is generally), but here you can clearly see the green revolution, and you can see the beginning of the possible 2nd green revolution(with biotech/gmo/genetic analysing/MAS/high troughput genomics and phenomics).
but with weed being illegal and underground all that time, I'm expecting weedbreeding will make even more extreme leaps as that as soon as it gets legalized.

btw, the 'double cross' and 'single cross' mentioned in this graph refer to f1 hybrid cultivars I think. maize is an outbreeder, like cannabis, so it suffers from inbreeding depression if you self too much. this is why at first f1 hybrids didn't work, since the inbred lines needed to create it weren't fertile enough to make affordable seed, so instead they first crossed 2 inbred lines to create a more fertile plant to serve as mother, then crossed a third inbred line to it as father for the seeds that were sold(=double cross). after a while companies had developed inbred lines that were fertile enough to skip that extra step, so true f1 hybrids could be made.
I expect something similar is possible with weed. right now it seems everyone is scared of inbreeding, I read a lot about people refusing to use selfing because of the inbreeding depression for example. but if you could work trough the inbreeding depression, select for plants that are not too badly affected by it, it would be a good step towards F1 hybrids I think.

I think the double cross/single cross could have something to do with ploidy. In other words; the breeders used to use diploid parents, but after 1965 they converted to the use of doubled haploid parents. Although doubled haploid production can be included in 'biotech', the first mentions of it come from german literature in 1905.
With DH plants, breeders were able to select plants that were homozygous for recessive traits (single parent clones selfing), thus being able to pass recessive genes on to future generations.

As far as I know, inbreeding depressions take place in weed only after a generation or 4. That's why I like setting up lines and keeping them seperate until depression happens, and cross the separated lines to make a F1 with some more vigour. It tends to work like a charm, with only a few exceptions (when lines are inbred for too long with the exact same traits for instance).

 

[fryge]

I'll check the source of the picture, but in this case I'm petty sure it's about using a third line to revitalize the motherline of the f1.
not that it couldn't be doubled haploids, but the reason I'm pretty sure is that I was shown a very similar graph in a lecture with that story specifically about maize about outcrossing the motherline once to make it fertile enough to produce enough seed to make it affordable. and I looked up a graph online that looked like what I saw in class to fit that story.
but yeah, good for mentioning doubled haploids too. it's a shame labratory-equipment is so expensive, or I would be trying to make doubled haploids of weed in my room.

I liked that maize story so much because it shows inbreeding depression can be overcome eventually(somewhat), and the same could apply to weed.
so far I haven't encountered inbreeding depression in weed yet, I'm just starting my project(grew F2's of 2 crosses this year, and the results showed me I can't begin stabilizing yet, especially one cross is still too late). but eventuallly I'd like to take some lines to at least s6, if possible s8. so I will probably encounter negative inbreeding effects. but I really want to try out if f1 hybrids could work for weed, and not some random f1, but an f1 between 2 specifically created mostly homozygous lines. I won't bother with calculating combining ability yet since I can't grow the numbers to do any statistics on, but it could still be a nice proof of concept to work further on if I can ever grow larger numbers.

edit: looking at the source of the image didn't help much, but a search on the term 'double cross' yielded better results:
http://passel.unl.edu/pages/informa...rmationmodule=1099683867&topicorder=5&maxto=6

 

[MaxPowerGrows]

I'll check the source of the picture, but in this case I'm petty sure it's about using a third line to revitalize the motherline of the f1.
not that it couldn't be doubled haploids, but the reason I'm pretty sure is that I was shown a very similar graph in a lecture with that story specifically about maize about outcrossing the motherline once to make it fertile enough to produce enough seed to make it affordable. and I looked up a graph online that looked like what I saw in class to fit that story.
but yeah, good for mentioning doubled haploids too. it's a shame labratory-equipment is so expensive, or I would be trying to make doubled haploids of weed in my room.

I liked that maize story so much because it shows inbreeding depression can be overcome eventually(somewhat), and the same could apply to weed.
so far I haven't encountered inbreeding depression in weed yet, I'm just starting my project(grew F2's of 2 crosses this year, and the results showed me I can't begin stabilizing yet, especially one cross is still too late). but eventuallly I'd like to take some lines to at least s6, if possible s8. so I will probably encounter negative inbreeding effects. but I really want to try out if f1 hybrids could work for weed, and not some random f1, but an f1 between 2 specifically created mostly homozygous lines. I won't bother with calculating combining ability yet since I can't grow the numbers to do any statistics on, but it could still be a nice proof of concept to work further on if I can ever grow larger numbers.

now I kind of undersatabnd the f1 f2 p1. P2 Labels. But if you don't mind will you explain the f1. P1. S1. And any others

 

[fryge]

ok, normally it's just a indication for a generation. f1 hybrid as I used it here previously is slightly different, so I'll come to that later.

the letter tells what it is.
P=parent. this is not used much, mostly you have to name whatever came before your f1 something. however, I've seen ace-seeds use it in their description of landraces, where they use it to indicate how many generations they reproduced it since it was gathered in the country of origin.

F=fillial, or brother/sister. common misconception with weed, f-generation says nothing about gender, it's about relatedness between the parents. so let's you you reverse a female F1, and pollinate a sister, it's stil F2, same as using a brother.

S=self. in case of weed this is only possible with hermi's or reversed females. if you take a cutting and reverse the cutting and pollinate the mother with it, it also counts as S1, since both parents are exactly the same plant genetically.

then if you take a S1 seed, self it again, it's S2, same as with F-generations.

BC=backcross. IMO used way too much/with the wrong goal with weed, but that's besides the point.
a backcross is where you take an ndividual from an F-generation, and cross it to one of the parents.

now with weed you'll usually just see one of those. but in descriptions of breeding methods you'll sometimes see combinations too.
for example BC6:F2: first backcrossed for 6 generations, then the backcross6 generation was brother/sister inbred.


now F1-hybrid cultivars are a specif term, for a certain kind of cultivar.

so with outbreeding crops, there's a kind of battle between goals.

we want a strong, vigorous plant, yielding well, good resistance against drought, pests etc.

we also want uniformity. especially in legal crops, you need uniformity to apply for cultivar-protection, but farmers also want what you promise them, and they want to be able to harvest mechanically, which is impossible if the plants vary a lot in height or harvest date.
so to be able to make promises to a farmer that are true, and harvest mechanically, we don't want different phenotypes.

the way to make all plants the same, is to make them homozygous. as you may know, you have 2 copies of each gene. homozygous=both of those copies are the same. so you always give the same gene to your kid, you're predictable in how you breed, and you wn't get that segregation with the Aa parents giving 25% aa and 25 AA etc.

but, homozygosity goes together with inbreeding depression. basically inbreeding depression is broken genes accumulating. usually, you don't notice you have those broken genes, since you still have 1 working copy. but if you're homozygous, both are broken.

so you're further from your goal to have a strong, vigorous plant.

the trick with F1 hybrid cultivars is to have the best of both.
first, you create 2 inbred lines. they'll be mostly homozygous, true-breeding and uniform, but also suffering inbreeding depression and lacking vigour.
you choose your lines such that you'll get maximum hybrid vigour(with heterotic pools, general+specific combining ability, etc, all fancy words that come down to trial and error. just make testcrosses and see how the progeny performs, except that you use statistics to analyse the results instead of just looking).
then you lock the traits you want into your lines. say I want my eventual f1 hybrid cannabis cultivar to have webbed leaves. webbed leaves is a recessive trait, so I'll have to fix it in both parent-lines, or it won't show in the cross between them.

now the trick comes. we cross our specifically designed inbred lines, and the result will be very heterozygous(=less inbreeding depression), but still uniform, since for every gene where the parents are different, the F1 willl be Aa, so they'll still all be the same. and they'll be extra vigorous due to hybrid vigour/heterosis.

however, it won't be truebreeding. the F2 will start to segregate again. but that's just an extra benefit fir the breeder, since it protects others from stealing the work. the breeder just needs to keep his parental lines going to keep producing the same uniform seed, and no one can sell the exact same cultivar without somehow acquiring both parental lines.

 

[Cardinal]

http://www.calgarycmmc.com/
Check on this site has a list of available pdf . With the book I mentioned as well. Good luck

Sent from my SM-J710F using Tapatalk

Nice find, I forgot about all about these pdfs

 

[MaxPowerGrows]

ok, normally it's just a indication for a generation. f1 hybrid as I used it here previously is slightly different, so I'll come to that later.

the letter tells what it is.
P=parent. this is not used much, mostly you have to name whatever came before your f1 something. however, I've seen ace-seeds use it in their description of landraces, where they use it to indicate how many generations they reproduced it since it was gathered in the country of origin.

F=fillial, or brother/sister. common misconception with weed, f-generation says nothing about gender, it's about relatedness between the parents. so let's you you reverse a female F1, and pollinate a sister, it's stil F2, same as using a brother.

S=self. in case of weed this is only possible with hermi's or reversed females. if you take a cutting and reverse the cutting and pollinate the mother with it, it also counts as S1, since both parents are exactly the same plant genetically.

then if you take a S1 seed, self it again, it's S2, same as with F-generations.

BC=backcross. IMO used way too much/with the wrong goal with weed, but that's besides the point.
a backcross is where you take an ndividual from an F-generation, and cross it to one of the parents.

now with weed you'll usually just see one of those. but in descriptions of breeding methods you'll sometimes see combinations too.
for example BC6:F2: first backcrossed for 6 generations, then the backcross6 generation was brother/sister inbred.


now F1-hybrid cultivars are a specif term, for a certain kind of cultivar.

so with outbreeding crops, there's a kind of battle between goals.

we want a strong, vigorous plant, yielding well, good resistance against drought, pests etc.

we also want uniformity. especially in legal crops, you need uniformity to apply for cultivar-protection, but farmers also want what you promise them, and they want to be able to harvest mechanically, which is impossible if the plants vary a lot in height or harvest date.
so to be able to make promises to a farmer that are true, and harvest mechanically, we don't want different phenotypes.

the way to make all plants the same, is to make them homozygous. as you may know, you have 2 copies of each gene. homozygous=both of those copies are the same. so you always give the same gene to your kid, you're predictable in how you breed, and you wn't get that segregation with the Aa parents giving 25% aa and 25 AA etc.

but, homozygosity goes together with inbreeding depression. basically inbreeding depression is broken genes accumulating. usually, you don't notice you have those broken genes, since you still have 1 working copy. but if you're homozygous, both are broken.

so you're further from your goal to have a strong, vigorous plant.

the trick with F1 hybrid cultivars is to have the best of both.
first, you create 2 inbred lines. they'll be mostly homozygous, true-breeding and uniform, but also suffering inbreeding depression and lacking vigour.
you choose your lines such that you'll get maximum hybrid vigour(with heterotic pools, general+specific combining ability, etc, all fancy words that come down to trial and error. just make testcrosses and see how the progeny performs, except that you use statistics to analyse the results instead of just looking).
then you lock the traits you want into your lines. say I want my eventual f1 hybrid cannabis cultivar to have webbed leaves. webbed leaves is a recessive trait, so I'll have to fix it in both parent-lines, or it won't show in the cross between them.

now the trick comes. we cross our specifically designed inbred lines, and the result will be very heterozygous(=less inbreeding depression), but still uniform, since for every gene where the parents are different, the F1 willl be Aa, so they'll still all be the same. and they'll be extra vigorous due to hybrid vigour/heterosis.

however, it won't be truebreeding. the F2 will start to segregate again. but that's just an extra benefit fir the breeder, since it protects others from stealing the work. the breeder just needs to keep his parental lines going to keep producing the same uniform seed, and no one can sell the exact same cultivar without somehow acquiring both parental lines.

GREAT INFO!!!!!!! thanks!