subcool
Well-Known Member
Its all spelled out here
https://www.rollitup.org/subcools-old-school-organics/104237-breeding-101-subs-method.html
https://www.rollitup.org/subcools-old-school-organics/104237-breeding-101-subs-method.html
Excellent thread, thank you. I'm growing Pick & Mix singles and have a few TGA males in the mix.More Tricks
Back to the male we have used for the breeding party. I will bend his branches over and cover them with a V spaded hanging trap I make from wax paper. This is the process I will get Jill to shoot here in about 3 weeks and add to the thread. One thing to watch out for is the male flowers they contain water and must be removed from pollen. I find the hanging traps I make can be shaken and the flowers being heavy fall to the corners and can be removed from the pile.
This next trick comes to us from Pistils and it worked great I am going to add in to the process. Collecting pollen is a bit like milking a gnat, when you manually roll a pod and it falls it may be a million grains but its is barley visible to the eye it also tends to stick to the wax paper but the solution is to mix in some dry flour. I used a ratio of about 5 to 1 and ended up with a yellow looking mix that resembled cake batter. I allowed the flour to dry well and microwaving wouldnt be bad idea to remove any moisture that might remain in the flour.
The male Cannabis plant is amazing in its own right and in the game of creating hybrids a male known for his attributes can be worth a lot more than the most elite female cutting.
High times is famous for its amazing pictures of Cannabis Flowers of mostly the female species. Cannabis is a dioecious plant, which means that the male and female flowers develop on separate plants, although monoecious examples with both sexes on one plant are found. Sibling crosses draw genetic traits from both the mother and father plant, the male plays just as important a role as the female does but its rare to see male cannabis plants in full bloom and pollen collection and use is almost a mythical craft. I will do my best in this article to shed some light on the ways pollen is collected and dispersed.
Before we talk about collecting pollen lets talk about staggering. This is a trick I learned by trial and error that allows us to get the maximum number of seeds per plant. This doesnt apply to those just working with a branch or two.
When pollinating a mother plant for seed I will start her into 12/12 a full 7 days before I move the male into budding room. Keeping in mind that each strain is going to be a bit different on time frame but this 7 day rule has worked very well for us. Once the male is flowering well the females will be entering a window around day 21-24. Most Hybrids I work with are done in less than 9 weeks so 3 weeks in is good place to start. You can pollinate up to day 30 but you stand a good chance of the seeds never getting mature so I find each strain perfect window. Apollo-13 is closer to 21 days and Jacks Cleaner is better at say 26 or so.
I want to hear the answer to this too. I have a bunch of pollen I pulled from some plants, and I have it in pill bottles for now, so it could breath a little. Not sure how to stire it for long periods of time. I know it'll keep in a pill bottle for quite awhile, if it stays dry, but not forever .so according to this thread, after you wipe a bud with pollen, it's pretty much instantly pollinated and you can wash off the excess pollen at this point?
also, if you have pollen dried and stored in the freezer without a silica gel pack, how long in your experience has such pollen stayed good? thanks.
All this information is spelled out in detail in Marijuana Botany by Robert Clark
If you guys really have questions about how the science of the plant works its a must read. I have read it through 1/2 dozen times now.
Biology of Pollination
Pollination is the event of pollen landing on a stigmatic surface such as the pistil, and fertilization is the union of the staminate chromosomes from the pollen with the pistillate chromosomes from the ovule.
Pollination begins with dehiscence (release of pollen) from staminate flowers. Millions of pollen grains float through the air on light breezes, and many land on the stigmatic surfaces of nearby pistillate plants. If the pistil is ripe, the pollen grain will germinate and send out a long pollen tube much as a seed pushes out a root. The tube contains a haploid (in) generative nucleus and grows downward toward the ovule at the base of the pistils. When the pollen tube reaches the ovule, the staminate haploid nucleus fuses with the pistillate haploid nucleus and the diploid condition is restored. Germination of the pollen grain occurs 15 to 20 minutes after contact with the stigmatic surface (pistil); fertilization may take up to two days in cooler temperatures. Soon after fertilization, the pistils wither away as the ovule and surrounding calyx begin to swell. If the plant is properly watered, seed will form and sexual reproduction is complete. It is crucial that no part of the cycle be interrupted or viable seed will not form. If the pollen is subjected to extremes of temperature, humidity, or moisture, it will fail to germinate, the pollen tube will die prior to fertilization, or the embryo will be unable to develop into a mature seed. Techniques for successful pollination have been designed with all these criteria in mind.
We have not been successful at storing pollen in multiple attemps.
We believe tiny particles of green plant matter stay behind adding moisture and ruining the pollen.
Sub
Its onlineoh and BTW, I'll pick up the book and give it a read...thanks
cool cool thanks again man .....