Which Influences More Female Or Male

I know there’s lots of variables which all make a difference so the best answer is “it depends” but if you had to take sides…
Say you have only regular (non-feminized) seeds of a strain called “Heirloom7” and you wanted to breed it with a very different strain called “Heirloom21” also regular seeds…
And say you had your fingers crossed and we’re hoping for the offspring seeds to be a tiny bit more like the Heirloom21…which would you use for the female? The Heirloom7 or the Heirloom21?
Just based on your anecdotal research/experience.

It's a genetic crapshoot. The parent with more dominant genes would be the largest percentage of seeds with the mix of genes being smaller percentage and the least percent of seeds would be the mix of recessive genes.
So if the mom has dominant genes, then you will see more mother leaning plants. And vice versa. But with enough seeds, you will see the recessive mix and the elusive double recessive plants.
Hedge your bets and make both crosses. Your intuition could be wrong and the other cross could be magic. Good luck and happy hunting.

You will not know until you grow. Some recessives play a key role in certain phenotypic expressions and will never be stabilized via back crossing to any real success, so pay attention to the behaviours and develop a mental map of what each parental plant passes on. It takes years to do this but if you really want to breed with any success and control which traits are passed on, you gotta sow. It's dependent on the variety, purple haze/Old timers haze is extremely dominant in hybrids for example, doesn't matter if you use male or female.

Some traits like pink/magenta flowers are recessive and may never show themselves in an f1 of (H7 x H21) and this could be Like pink stigmata in panama red offspring or other traits.

For example in 2015 I bred "Cali O" with a "malawi" male, the Cali o smelled like orange and leather/cologne so I wanted to breed it with something that could up the potency and used malawi, the Cali O absolutely neutered whatever potency the malawi passed on and left with a bland hybrid effect instead of sedative calm indica. Some mixes are flops. Fems are easier for this reason because you can determine the traits through S1's, no time wasted on testing males, you've probably already smoked the females to determine its worth breeding with.

Dan Shoemaker said:

I know there’s lots of variables which all make a difference so the best answer is “it depends” but if you had to take sides…
Say you have only regular (non-feminized) seeds of a strain called “Heirloom7” and you wanted to breed it with a very different strain called “Heirloom21” also regular seeds…
And say you had your fingers crossed and we’re hoping for the offspring seeds to be a tiny bit more like the Heirloom21…which would you use for the female? The Heirloom7 or the Heirloom21?
Just based on your anecdotal research/experience.

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still dipping my toes in breeding knowledge but if i wanted the offspring to be most like Heirloom21 i would try to find the most blaise or neutral Heirloom7 male i could. Lots of stuff im seeing is people saying you want neutral males when breeding to preserve the female traits you want more. Idk i want loud plants so i don't do that, but if i was in a "failure is not an option" type situation, i'd hunt the shit out of my males, and look for males that would pass on as little as possible that would taint the female.

Agree with mud^^^^^^. Need male that doesnt pass genes on.

The ability to pick good males is a key trait of all the great breeders. There are tons of commercial breeders that can't pick a good male or stabilize a strain for the life of them, they're just pollen chucking "elite" clones that other people grew. There are way too many breeders who perpetuate hermie traits and low yields in exchange for extremely frosty miniature buds that look good in instagram close-ups. Anyone interested in breeding should study a college level genetics textbook, it will really open your eyes to some of the BS floating around and help you achieve your goals.

In cannabis technically the male passes on slightly more than the female imo your male imparts structure and potency more so than the mum unless the mums super dom of course

I don't know how true this is, and I asked many breeders this in the past and never got a response, but back in the original overgrow cannabis world days, I remember reading that males that take the longest to show their sex pass on most of the traits from the female. I believe it was Sagarmatha who said that but that was a long time ago and my memory might be wrong on who said it.

I don't care about pedigree. I only care how good the smoke is. Me and the individual plant hanging out. I would always pick the best male and female to breed.

MickeyBlanco said:

I don't know how true this is, and I asked many breeders this in the past and never got a response, but back in the original overgrow cannabis world days, I remember reading that males that take the longest to show their sex pass on most of the traits from the female. I believe it was Sagarmatha who said that but that was a long time ago and my memory might be wrong on who said it.

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I dont think that's a thing we could rely on, but it would lend to the male selection process. I dont have a mentor and have been crash coursing this stuff.
If i had to do this I'd have say 20 males...I'd use those lab test to get as close as possible to heirloom21 stats, then cull those not good fit...next is phenos, any far off from heirloom21 get nixed...for sake of argument i have 11 males left. Then it would be timing of them in flowering. Early ones would be super scary to me and would stomp my feet saying dont use it. The very late sexing ones would only add length to offspring flowering time from what ive seen so that wouldnt scare me but i wouldnt choose it cuz i think it would impart more of the heirloom21 trait. If i did it right, i wouldve found as much 'heirllom 21' possible before i even got to flowering time of the males

If you have Heirloom 7 and Heirloom 21, and you want the end product to more resemble 7. . ...

Wouldn't you use a 7 male, pollinate a 21 female, grow out some of those seeds, pick a worthy female among them & hit her with the 7 pollen again?

I've read that you can pollinate one plants individual buds with various males pollen, wouldn't that increase the chances of getting what you desire?

Star Dog said:

I've read that you can pollinate one plants individual buds with various males pollen, wouldn't that increase the chances of getting what you desire?

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I bet it would increase the chance of the pollens getting mixed & your end result being a total diceroll.

I think "grafting" is the technique I've seen people do, multiples on one plant.

PopAndSonGrows said:

If you have Heirloom 7 and Heirloom 21, and you want the end product to more resemble 7. . ...

Wouldn't you use a 7 male, pollinate a 21 female, grow out some of those seeds, pick a worthy female among them & hit her with the 7 pollen again?

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We can also say the reverse works just as well. Hit an heir21 male with fem 7 and you'll end up at the same result...idk enough to say either way which is best..sounds legit by mathematics and logic...but life doesnt really follow that logic stuff does it lol

conor c said:

In cannabis technically the male passes on slightly more than the female imo your male imparts structure and potency more so than the mum unless the mums super dom of course

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I dont believe that to be true. Females produce alot more THC than males. Plus, if you reverse a female and pollinated a different female would the offspring lack potency since all the offspring would be missing the male X-chromosome?

Plants are the same as animals. Dominants and recessive genes. Homogeneous genes. How worked a line is. Inbred, out crossed and back crossed. F1, F2, S1 etc.

Cool story:

A study in dog breeding where they took a full blood wolf and bred it with a full poodle. Because both genetics were worked lines, they produced very similar offspring. Called f1 hybrids. The dogs were a prefect mix of both the wolf and poodle.

They then took 2 of the offspring and bred them together. F2 hybrids. These offspring went both ways, some looked more like the wolf, and some looked more like the poodle.

They then took two dogs that resembled the wolf and bred them together F3. Most all came out wolf like. and the same with breeding the poodle like offspring.

The f2 showed the biggest expression, hence why f2's are better to choose breeding stock. Or using to back cross.

The f3's were more worked so they will pass on more dominant genes.

You can then take the f3 and back cross it to the original parent. After several generations you can almost breed the mix right out. Though a rare expression will sometimes show up. Or continue working the line for stability. F4, F5, F6. Then out cross to add specific expressions.

Same principal goes with plants.

A worked line will always be dominant. Breeding hybrids to hybrids isn't really breeding for specific characteristics. . More like chucking. Which can produce a variety of expressions that are all over the place but will more than likely not be dominant and pass on to future breeding's. You may get lucky, but probably not if your trying to reproduce the good qualities of a specific parent.

PopAndSonGrows said:

If you have Heirloom 7 and Heirloom 21, and you want the end product to more resemble 7. . ...

Wouldn't you use a 7 male, pollinate a 21 female, grow out some of those seeds, pick a worthy female among them & hit her with the 7 pollen again?

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Yes, or to get more stability, breed 7 and 21 together. Breed the offspring together to make f2. Choose a plant that best resembles 7, and breed that back to the 7. Thats f2 bx which in theory should produce the most #7 like offspring.

waterproof808 said:

I dont believe that to be true. Females produce alot more THC than males. Plus, if you reverse a female and pollinated a different female would the offspring lack potency since all the offspring would be missing the male X-chromosome?

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Your misunderstanding obviously males vs females females win thc wise but im talking on a genetic level about contribution not in actual thc level there and then


Also take a look tbh this is the important bit

. Hemp is a diploid species (2n = 20). Estimated haploid genome sizes are 818 Mb for female plants and 843 Mb for males. See the male bits slightly more

conor c said:

Your misunderstanding obviously males vs females females win thc wise but im talking on a genetic level about contribution not in actual thc level there and then


Also take a look tbh this is the important bit

. Hemp is a diploid species (2n = 20). Estimated haploid genome sizes are 818 Mb for female plants and 843 Mb for males. See the male bits slightly more

Unauthorized Access

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7546024/

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Comparatively, the total cannabis genome haploid size is 818 Mb for female species and 843 Mb for males. The size difference is accounted for by the larger Y chromosome in male plants.

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Females do not inherit the Y chromosome, they get one X from the father and one X from the mother.