Small population photo-to-auto breeding?

[parsing_trees]

Hobbes is going to rename the Feminization section to "Breeding & Seed Feminization" ... So when he's done I can move your thread over there if you like?

Excellent, please do.

Should the name include seed making, pollen chucking, etc. and not just breeding?

 

[blue]

Excellent, please do.

Should the name include seed making, pollen chucking, etc. and not just breeding?

No worries, give me a shout when it's done and i'll do the magic with the buttons! ^_^

I think breeding encompasses those terms. I'm sure we'll get our fair share of pollen chuckers and seed makers under that umbrella!

 

[ThaPollinator!]

No worries, give me a shout when it's done and i'll do the magic with the buttons! ^_^

I think breeding encompasses those terms. I'm sure we'll get our fair share of pollen chuckers and seed makers under that umbrella!

Haha. Now I'm inspired and want to change my original handle. I want go with something a bit more current. I'm seriously considering Charles Nethaniel Pollen!

 

[parsing_trees]

Haha. Now I'm inspired and want to change my original handle. I want go with something a bit more current. I'm seriously considering Charles Nethaniel Pollen!

"Charles Nethaniel Pollen of the 420th Airborne Division." I'm more the Bob Ross type I guess -- I use a brush to make my happy little trees, sometimes there are happy little accidents.

I've also seen more than one person use "Paul N. Chucker".

 

[ThaPollinator!]

"Charles Nethaniel Pollen of the 420th Airborne Division." I'm more the Bob Ross type I guess -- I use a brush to make my happy little trees, sometimes there are happy little accidents.

I've also seen more than one person use "Paul N. Chucker".

Lol. Yeah. Never said I was completely original.

 

[LabRat]

When you have the pollen you want to use and some girls waiting to take it that are maybe 30% autos you just pollinate a branch or more using a garbage bag to isolate the spots you want to dust on all the girls. By 4 - 6 weeks you should know which are autos anyway and can just dust the early bloomers for auto only seeds. If done with pollen from a reversed girl you'll have all fem seeds to boot.

Edit: If your pollen is from a good auto fem that was reversed you get all auto fem seeds.

I'm spraying a branch with STS on a hi-CBD girl right now trying to get her to turn. Started on day 3 of 12/12 so might be too late to turn her.

 

[blue]

Excellent, please do.

Should the name include seed making, pollen chucking, etc. and not just breeding?

It's done - we're here in the new section called : Autoflowering Breeding and Feminization

 

[Fitzy]

First off, is there a better subforum for questions like this? I get the impression from old threads that there used to be an auto breeding subforum, but now there's only one specifically about seed feminization. I'm not a new grower, but this seems like the place for general questions. Please let me know if I should move it elsewhere.

Has anybody here successfully worked a photoperiod strain into autoflowering form while sticking to a relatively small plant count (12 or so), or is that likely to be a waste of time? I've seen some breeders mentioned that they had about 50-75 breeding candidates in the population (particularly for the F2 generation), which isn't an option in my circumstances.

I've done a couple seed runs, using pollen from either male autos or females reversed with STS, but haven't attempted any kind of line breeding yet -- just making one-off crosses with strains I like. I've read about the usual steps in photo / auto crossing to lock down the recessive autoflowering trait, Punnett squares, etc., and I'm wondering if something like the following approach would be feasible:

1. Grow several photoperiods, pollinate one or two of the female ones I like most with pollen from a male auto. These seeds will be the F1 cross, (Aa) for autoflowering, so I'd expect them to all be photoperiods with hidden recessive autoflowering.

The photoperiod would probably be Bodhi's Sunshine Daydream, with Night Owl's Blue Microverse or Mandalorian's ALF#5 as an auto trait donor, given their common lineage with SSDD's Bubbashine parent.

2. Grow out a dozen or so of the F1 (photoperiods). After ruling out herms and anything else problematic, pollinate all the females with the most vigorous male or two. Keep track of seeds came from which branch / which M+F pair. If there's a clear standout, focus on that. The seeds from these will be the F2, with about 25% AA, 50% Aa, 25% aa.

3. Since only a quarter or so of the F2 will be autoflowering, which really cuts down the number of breeding candidates, do this round in a couple passes. First, start 12, and after about 4-5 weeks cull everything except autoflowering males. Collect and store their pollen, then cull them too. Start more to go back up to 12. Repeat, possibly repeat again? And then once there are at least 2-3 solid autoflowering females, pollinate them with the pollen collected so far, again keeping track of which seeds came from which M+F pair, in case there's a clear standout later. These seeds will be the F3, which in theory should be almost entirely autoflowering.

4. Grow out the F3s, try to find ones I like, possibly do multiple batches of F3s to find standouts and then make seeds with those.

5. Depending on the results so far, maybe backcross to the photoperiod and go through similar stages again?

I'd expect all this to take a while, but once I have seeds from each stage I could put it on hold until I feel like doing the next step.

So far ive gone to f2 photo to auto and honestly I think it can be done I've brought some of my auto to auto crosses to f4 with great results using no more than 10plants @ a time, also pollenate all females as I've actually got 4 seperate grapefruit autos for example 1 is an extraction canidate 1 of the others sea of green the other 2 get normal size with the sativa leaning 1 being the largest. With that said I wouldn't have these all if I didn't use multiple females, the other key is to use a min of 2 different males bc if u get a double recessive hermie trait u still have a chance the other male didnt, also u can find autos in f1 I documented this in 1 of my threads which I actually used in a breeding project which came out amazing silvertoof pineapple pie

 

[parsing_trees]

When you have the pollen you want to use and some girls waiting to take it that are maybe 30% autos you just pollinate a branch or more using a garbage bag to isolate the spots you want to dust on all the girls. [...]

That's not really what I'm asking, though. I feel pretty clear on the process at the Punnett square level, and I've made auto seeds with both male autos and reversed (STS) females before. My question is about breeding, and particularly the population size -- whether going through that process with such a small population (around a dozen) is a waste of time, because I won't be able to do much selection compared to people who have dozens, hundreds, even thousands of plants to pick breeding candidates from. I'm pretty sure I could go through the steps and end up with something autoflowering, but if I'm going to spend all the time to turn a photoperiod strain I love into an auto, I'd also want the result to be a good representation of that strain.

So: Is it a waste of time to attempt a photo-to-auto breeding project if I stick to a max plant count around a dozen? Have any of you tried, and if so, how did it turn out? Is doing some of the generations multiple times to draw from a larger pool going to make a difference, or is 2*12, 3*12 still way too small?

 

[parsing_trees]

So far ive gone to f2 photo to auto and honestly I think it can be done I've brought some of my auto to auto crosses to f4 with great results using no more than 10plants @ a time, also pollenate all females as I've actually got 4 seperate grapefruit autos for example 1 is an extraction canidate 1 of the others sea of green the other 2 get normal size with the sativa leaning 1 being the largest. With that said I wouldn't have these all if I didn't use multiple females, the other key is to use a min of 2 different males bc if u get a double recessive hermie trait u still have a chance the other male didnt, also u can find autos in f1 I documented this in 1 of my threads which I actually used in a breeding project which came out amazing silvertoof pineapple pie

Thanks. I figured I should try to use at least two males per generation for that reason, and keep track of which seeds came from which.

Do you know what the mechanism is where there are a few autos in the F1? It doesn't really fit the single gene recessive trait model, which seems to fit the overwhelmingly common case, but I've heard several auto breeders say the F1 can sometimes have a few autos. Somebody said they don't use them, they are probably too strongly leaning towards the auto parent in the cross and not bringing in enough of the photo parent's traits, but I don't know how strongly those would be linked.