Fast Flowering? Gimick or Viable Option?

[NorseGrower]

Hey all,

I am curious of others opinion on the subject of "Fast Flowering" strains. My understanding is that fast flowering strains are those that are first generation crosses of a photo and auto. In order to lock in the auto trait you must go another generation or two selectively breeding the auto flowering trait. So in essence, they are a bi-product of a photo to auto conversion. This was driven home by a now disgraced breeder I would rather not name now. They had one company where they sold "Fast Flowering" genetics and then they had a completely separate auto flower company. I can only imagine that most breeders likely consider the first couple generations a loss before this new marketing technique is used. From my understand there are merits to the genetics for those looking for photo period plants that will finish up earlier in the season for weather prohibitive regions. So are these fast flowering plants a viable option for the average indoor grower?

I am just dipping my toes into photos with my first go still in solo cups but all these new genetics that are opened up to me is exciting. I have been wanting to try Peanut Butter Breath pretty bad but Thug Pug PBB is regs when you can get them, something I am not ready for and in addition they are hard to find and super expensive. I was on NASC and saw that Humboldt Seed Organization has a Peanut Butter Fast (Peanut Butter Breath x Uncirculated Elite OG Auto). My understanding is that F1 crosses often lean towards one parent or the other. So to me that means there is a good chance I will not get what I am after. Does that make sense and check out?

An auto example I can think of is Twisted Tree Twisted Puppy, their take on Chemdog. They crossed Chemdog with Lemon OG and went to F3 and mine still had too much Lemon OG and not enough Chemdog for me. If I get these Peanut Butter Breath fast, what are the chances I am going to get a good representation of PBB? Will having it flower faster come at more cost than just a absentee parent as far as introducing ruderalis?

Thanks in advance!

 

[JP1]

I never mess with fast flowering. To me, they're a cash grab for unfinished work and are for outdoor growing only. You might get a pbb in the pack, but you'll basically have to hunt it out. Not worth the effort for a small indoor grower. Give it a bit. All the hype strains make it to autos eventually, it just takes some time for the breeders to work it out. I'm also looking forward to a pbb in auto format

 

[NorseGrower]

Thanks I agree and glad I'm not alone. The fact that they have a fast version says they have an auto in the works at least. I'll have to pass.

I grew a Peanut butter cookies auto from Tastebudz. Don't know what breeding auto they used to cross her over but mine was lemony and didn't have the nutty earthiness l.aas hoping for however it was still very good and got QP dried off 1 gallon of soil.

 

[TrichomeAssassin]

A lot of that is centered around the quality of the breeder. Also what does one consider fast in the autoflower realm? I've had a few strains that finished in 6 weeks. That was some years back. 10-11 weeks is my most consistent time-frame?

 

[parsing_trees]

I haven't personally tried growing any "fast" strains, but the research paper linked in this post mentioned that they did see a noticeable timing difference for photoperiod plants that were heterozygous at the autoflowering locus, so it probably isn't entirely marketing.

 

[JaxsoNL5]

I haven't personally tried growing any "fast" strains, but the research paper linked in this post mentioned that they did see a noticeable timing difference for photoperiod plants that were heterozygous at the autoflowering locus, so it probably isn't entirely marketing.

That’s to @NorseGrower point they’re likely an unfinished by-product of photo-to-auto conversions. Simple Punnet where “PP” is the homozygous dom photoperiod, and “aa” is the homozygous recessive gives 100% “Pa” in the F1 generation (ain’t that simple but works for our purpose). Serious selection would have to go in to then backcross and stabilize the fast-flowering trait in combination with all the other desired traits from the parents, which is unlikely what is being done by many breeders IMO.

 

[parsing_trees]

Serious selection would have to go in to then backcross and stabilize the fast-flowering trait

That doesn't make sense, because the "fast-flowering trait" comes from being heterozygotic (Pa) at the autoflowering locus -- it's not an independent trait that could be stabilized. Working a "fast" seed line further would just cause it to segregate into photoperiod and autoflowering offspring. That's what the Punnett square means. The way to have a stable "fast" seed line would be to keep making the same F1 cross with two stable parents, one photoperiod and one autoflowering, which is what the breeders selling "fast" seed lines are probably already doing.

 

[JaxsoNL5]

That doesn't make sense, because the "fast-flowering trait" comes from being heterozygotic (Pa) at the autoflowering locus -- it's not an independent trait that could be stabilized. Working a "fast" seed line further would just cause it to segregate into photoperiod and autoflowering offspring. That's what the Punnett square means. The way to have a stable "fast" seed line would be to keep making the same F1 cross with two stable parents, one photoperiod and one autoflowering, which is what the breeders selling "fast" seed lines are probably already doing.

What you said is pretty much the whole point and question @NorseGrower was making…are these fast-flowering options really worked or more so just extra money grabs from F1 photo-auto crosses? What’s the likelihood you could pull an F1 pheno resembling one of the parents?

And the autofloweing trait is independent as far as we know…the paper you cited has the gene locus mapped to Chromosome 1, and the fact we can lock in this combo of alleles from photo-to-auto crosses implies they are independent traits that can be stabilized in the heterozygous condition.

Yes, if you kept just directly mating then your F2 and beyond start segregating into photo and auto babies. But instead you could employ backcrossing to try and lock in certain traits and giving a complete progeny line that should be fast flowering. The way that crossed my mind would be take the F1 offspring of our mock cross (assume all Pa genotype for the flowering gene locus) and backcross to the photoperiod parent (the auto parent could be used too instead). This F1Bx1 gen (I think that’s what it would be labeled) would be 50/50 PP and Pa…in theory based on a simple Punnet square. Select the fast flowering (Pa) with the desired parental traits and backcross again. At one point in the backcrossing though you’d have to A) select the true photoperiods (PP) and hit them onto the auto parent so that you get a progeny that is all Pa genotypes for flowering but hopefully locked in traits from the recurrent backcross parent…or B) take the backcrossed progeny to autoflower (all “aa”) and backcross one last time to the photoperiod parent to get all “Pa” offspring…but after all that work would this be any better than the original photo-to-auto F1 generation?

 

[parsing_trees]

The result from the paper is that they consistently observed earlier flowering in the heterozygous individuals, shown in table 2. They weren't looking for "Fast" individuals but they stuck out like a sore thumb in their data anyway, so there's probably some kind of real effect there. In that case it's not independent from Autoflower1, it's a consequence of it being heterozygous. They (somewhat confusingly) also talk about a different trait called Early1 in the paper, but the "WT/Autoflower1" population in that chart refers to so-called "Fast" auto/photo hybrids.

Anecdotally, I've seen a couple people mention the "fast" effect being mostly noticeable growing outdoors (and the paper's authors are growing in a greenhouse with supplemental light), and theorizing that it causes the plant to initiate flowering at an earlier point as the day length gradually reduces. That could explain it having less of an obvious effect indoors, where lighting might switch directly from 18/6 (or whatever) to 12/12. That seems like it'd be a good follow-up experiment.

What you're suggesting in the part about backcrossing is more or less working the photo and auto segregants like independent lines, selecting for the same traits in both just in photo and auto form (possibly with backcrossing to lock down the other traits), and then crossing them together later to make a "Fast" heterozygotic but otherwise more worked cross, right? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, I'm trying to be clear, not pedantic.

 

[JaxsoNL5]

The result from the paper is that they consistently observed earlier flowering in the heterozygous individuals, shown in table 2. They weren't looking for "Fast" individuals but they stuck out like a sore thumb in their data anyway, so there's probably some kind of real effect there. In that case it's not independent from Autoflower1, it's a consequence of it being heterozygous. They (somewhat confusingly) also talk about a different trait called Early1 in the paper, but the "WT/Autoflower1" population in that chart refers to so-called "Fast" auto/photo hybrids.

The first half of that I haven’t been arguing against whatsoever, and I’d bet further studies will actually prove it true. And we wouldn’t really state it’s independent or a consequence of the Autoflower1 gene (I’m going call it Af1), but rather the heterozygous condition/state results in plants that tend to flower faster than wild-type (WT). This could be an example of “heterozygote advantage” where in nature these fast-flowering plants gain certain advantages over either heterozygous condition based on their environment. Early1 appears to be a different gene found in autoflowering plants, but is an analog to Af1. Either WT/Af1 or WT/Early1 plants would be heterozygous and likely fast-flowering.

What you're suggesting in the part about backcrossing is more or less working the photo and auto segregants like independent lines, selecting for the same traits in both just in photo and auto form (possibly with backcrossing to lock down the other traits), and then crossing them together later to make a "Fast" heterozygotic but otherwise more worked cross, right? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, I'm trying to be clear, not pedantic.

No, just taking a selected individual(s) from the F1 population that is heterozygous and working it to stabilize desired traits (potency, leaf type, resistance) in combination with fast-flowering times by utilizing the parents in a series of backcrosses and selection. My convoluted reply above was stating the different ways to the same end result depending on which parent was chosen for the recurrent backcrossing. And please don’t apologize, I enjoy the hell out of a good discussion and thank you for supplying the article…that’s how we better our knowledge and grow!