Discussion: Is Old School Cannabis Breeding Becoming Obsolete?

Amarok · Mar 2, 2022

I reconnected with an old friend recently and discovered he was now a very successful craft microgrower who is working with some of the big players behind the scenes. He was talking about some of the genetic testing they are doing and it is crazy. (This may be old news to some of you but I'm just learning of this.)

He said they are able to test for specific genetic markers as soon as a plant sprouts and keep or discard based on that. Weeks and months of growing out and watching plants can be reduced to days. Years of work can be eliminated.

Once they've found the genetics they seek, they grow out a huge batch of seeds(thousands) and sort through the resulting plants, culling down to a few hundred of the best ones. This is when my buddy would go in and make his selections to take home and work with. (this is based on a phone conversation, so if I am not perfect on the details, forgive me).

After hearing this, I am pretty much done with chucking for other than fun. What could I realistically accomplish on my tiny scale, when all I could do in a lifetime could be done in a few weeks or months by the scientists? They have goals and the ability to work toward those goals while I am chucking pollen and hoping.

I don't mean this to sound defeatist or like Debbie Downer, more like I have once again discovered and accepted the reality that I am a tiny little fish in a great big sea. It is neither good nor bad, it merely is.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 2, 2022

Yes Old School Cannabis Breeding has become obsolete it says it right in the name old school. Cannabis research over the last 20 years is now so far ahead of the old way of selecting plants, and with actual data to back it up. Will this be the end of small scale cannabis breeding? Never these large labs and seed producers will never sell to the open market, and if they do it will be in a way that will only benefit themselves. The growers will always need a source of heirloom genetics with freedom to use as they see fit.

Gweedo's Growroom · Mar 2, 2022

We still have a place man definitely, even chucking you could hit the jackpot, I mean I think of it like the lottery lol its fun to play, the anticipation is great, if you win ? fuck yea, if not I just smoke it and play again next time ?? would I make a career of it like that hell no, but just look at all the fantastic accidental,bagseed, unknown lineage, stuff that's come out over the years, ill always feel like that next bean could be the ONE ????✌✌??

Psychobilly · Mar 2, 2022

I understand that a huge company with those type of budgets can probably make it so easy and fast, but at the same time, to the ones who don't have that budget, or ability to do that, I'm reminded of Microsoft going to war on Linux, and software written in a basement was able to outperform trained software engineering and given away freely. So not losing hope?

Don't get me wrong.... whew! If I had access to a lab...... lol! Here's what the headline would look like; "250 new Cheese strains released today" lol.

Psychobilly · Mar 2, 2022

Gweedo's Growroom said:
We still have a place man definitely, even chucking you could hit the jackpot, I mean I think of it like the lottery lol its fun to play, the anticipation is great, if you win ? fuck yea, if not I just smoke it and play again next time ?? would I make a career of it like that hell no, but just look at all the fantastic accidental,bagseed, unknown lineage, stuff that's come out over the years, ill always feel like that next bean could be the ONE ????✌✌??

Yeah there was no lab for Chemdog after all.

Amarok · Mar 2, 2022

Amarok said:
I reconnected with an old friend recently

Psychobilly said:
"250 new Cheese strains released today" lol.

You came up in the conversation, as one of his most popular strains was Blue Cheese. I told him I knew a Cheese fanatic.
He said the popularity of that one took him by surprise. He stopped running it but had to bring it back by popular demand.

Not sure if I will get a chance to get my hands on any of the genetics he's holding, but it wouldn't surprise me.

If not, my vault still holds lots to sort through and experience.

Psychobilly · Mar 2, 2022

Oh bro Blue Cheese is special? I actually separated my seeds I've gotten so far this year between both seedlings from this passed season as they were so different! The mother and clones from her have been sour skunky Cheese, a little cat piss smell, and a sweetness that's just amazing to smell, and the other seedling, was a LOT more floral and gentle, and it just blew my mind with the complexities. I may have enough if the skunky mom seeds to send some! If you've not tried it before it's easy to grow, and produces massive buds, and all around I just love it!

Dino Party · Mar 2, 2022

oh man so my state went legal this year so I started growing and I had a plant hermie on me but it made pollen so i used that pollen to hit a fastbuds auto i had because I thought the names would be cool if I combined them so I hit it with the pollen and then I had seeds so I sold the seeds cause im a breeder now.

Psychobilly · Mar 2, 2022

I have breeder friends! That's what gay dudes say when they have straight friends so it's fun hahahaha

GthaEnigma · Mar 3, 2022

All the lab data in the world can not recreate the way a person experiences the effect from consuming cannabis. That part of the selection process is the most breeder driven. There will always be room for breeders/chuckers. The crossing decisions/selections are driven by personal experience and interaction with the plants. I still don't think data can replace that. While breeding can be science it is also art and there is always room for that.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 3, 2022

we fear change

Psychobilly · Mar 3, 2022

GthaEnigma said:
All the lab data in the world can not recreate the way a person experiences the effect from consuming cannabis. That part of the selection process is the most breeder driven. There will always be room for breeders/chuckers. The crossing decisions/selections are driven by personal experience and interaction with the plants. I still don't think data can replace that. While breeding can be science it is also art and there is always room for that.

Exactly the way programmers and hackers do the same jobs, but one of those has the idea of being a "Code Poet" and the other gets a paycheck from a billionaire, and yet when AT&T sued UC Berkeley over Unix, they didn't just lose; they were humiliated; AT&T had added freely given away code from BSD / UC Berkeley, and not given credit for it, and in return AT&T was forced to take out full page ads for BSD advertising it for them. I guess the point I'd most like to drive home is that engineering in a lab may have more expensive toys, but at the end of the day, a kid sitting in his parent's basement can come up with something better and still has equal chance at changing the field.

Windows 98 was written by trained software engineers, and just about everyone has heard of "the blue screen of death" but a college student in Helsinki wrote Linux, gave it away for free, and it's pretty damn difficult to get that to crash.

The Matrix was a very expensive movie, but they weren't using high end million dollar workstations to render the special effects for that movie; they used cheap PC hardware running FreeBSD on a cluster to do it. Never underestimate the passion of someone trying anyway.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 3, 2022

Cannabinoid and terpene content are now a thing, that is to say they have always been things just now with this science we can really look at those things and put them on a chart. No more just going by the dude telling you its the dopest dope he ever smoked. So if CBD really calms my anxiety I can chose a strain that has a high cbd content now by looking at a label. Before I had to go by how the breeder feels about his plants and maybe someone with my same issue picked to grow the same thing as me.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 3, 2022

Im not saying dont feel a connection to the plant or that one should breed in a different way but data has a way of confirming some of our beliefs in this plant it has its place in helping breeders make more informed decisions. I dont think science is trying to take the magic away from this plant but I think knowledge has a way of making man feel less like a god.

Psychobilly · Mar 3, 2022

SecretSquirrel said:
Cannabinoid and terpene content are now a thing, that is to say they have always been things just now with this science we can really look at those things and put them on a chart. No more just going by the dude telling you its the dopest dope he ever smoked. So if CBD really calms my anxiety I can chose a strain that has a high cbd content now by looking at a label. Before I had to go by how the breeder feels about his plants and maybe someone with my same issue picked to grow the same thing as me.

^ That right there has made my life a bit easier too. EVERY dude has "The dopest weed ever smoked" when he's setting his own price tag LOL, but being able to tell between a Caryophyllene dominant strain, and one with Myrcene as a dominant Terpene, is a lot easier, since it allows me to pin point what I need.

When I had Covid last year I made a "Rona Blend" and basically took each strain that I'd noticed seemed to clear out allergies for me, and blended up some of the Spiciest Weed I have, and added in some that allowed me to keep m cough productive and my nose "flowing" so that I didn't feel quite so bad or cough without it bringing anything up. I'm allergic to anti-inflammatory drugs of all sorts, and the only anti-inflammatory I've EVER not reacted badly with, is Cannabis. And by allergic reaction, I mean life threatening. I can't touch Aspirin, or Motrin, or any of those.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 3, 2022

That right there is what im talking about SCIENCE. With just that little bit of information you were able to make a more informed personal choice.

Psychobilly · Mar 3, 2022

SecretSquirrel said:
That right there is what im talking about SCIENCE. With just that little bit of information you were able to make a more informed personal choice.

Oh I agree the scientific aspect and having actual Terpene data is a wonderful and welcome addition. My "taking a shot" at that side was mostly because I don't feel like a massive lab is the be all end all of breeding. At the end of the day, do you want to eat an Heirloom Tomato, or have the pest resistant skin stuck in your starfish ? There's a balance I'd like to also see LOL

Amarok · Mar 3, 2022

I did like that the final step in the process I described in the OP was an actual grower going in and physically examining the candidates and choosing what he saw as the superior specimens. It's just that the equivalent of many grower years were eliminated getting to that point.

-----------------------------------
Another possible(and ethically dubious) point to examine is the effect of our individual body chemistry acting with the introduced cannabinoids. We know that the same exact cannabis from the same plant can affect different people in a different way. Is the next step to test our own DNA to best match person to cannabis? Once we get into genetics, things get so muddy. There are so many wonderful benefits but also so much potential for misuse.

Sometimes I wish the world could be a simpler place.

SecretSquirrel · Mar 3, 2022

The great thing about all of this is... We just keep growing and smoking we can ignore everything and just do our own thing lol

Amarok · Mar 3, 2022

SecretSquirrel said:
The great thing about all of this is... We just keep growing we can ignore everything and just do our own thing lol

Yup, but as I grow and evolve as a person, I constantly self-evaluate. I love learning new skills to add to the toolbox, but I have to choose which ones to make a part of my ongoing life and which ones will be put on the shelf for possible future use.

I spent a couple years doing some chucking but have backed off recently. The more I learn, the more I've realized that I simply do not have the space and numbers to do this on any meaningful scale, nor any desire to monetize.

I have a pile of IBLs and some landraces, so I will continue to do personal preservation runs. I will continue to grow and learn and enjoy.

I understand there will be differing opinions on the subject, and I respect and appreciate that, hence a discussion thread. I always like hearing other perspectives.

Discussion: Is Old School Cannabis Breeding Becoming Obsolete?

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