Oldow... Just to be clear, I never said I don't see the value in back-crossing when it comes to the cannabis seed industry. I see and understand its values. My stance is based on preservation and proper generational breeding. Back-crossing causes issues that are not ideal when it comes to preserving genetics and maintaining healthy vigor, resistances, and healthy seed populations.
I was recently informed that I have been misinformed when it comes to some of the terms used to identify certain methods of breeding. Cubing, a process of inbreeding that I once thought to be an example of proper generational breeding, I was sadly informed that this process is based on back-crossing, not generational selections like I once thought. For that reason, I threw out all the seeds I had that were created by a cubing process.
You ask why I think it only requires two individuals to maintain a healthy seed population. I don't mean to imply that it only takes two, I mean to imply that two parents, male and female should always be the MINIMUM. By only using one male and one female there is bottlenecking happening. What is bottlenecking? Simple, you are minimizing the possible expressions by selecting specific traits from only two parents. My concern with this practice is that you will lose the present genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is crucial when preserving a specific genetic line. There are so many valuable traits that people don't see when choosing to inbreed a line. There may be valuable traits visible but by inbreeding you are narrowing the choices down to those you choose to remain present in the genetic expressions. This is a valuable observation in many ways, don't get me wrong. By preserving valuable genetic diversity through open pollination of several expressive individuals, you are preserving any and all combinations present within a specific seed line. In the end you are left with much more to work with, you retain resistances, diverse compound production(THC, CBD, CBN, amino acids, etc), adaptability to various conditions(plants have brains and remember conditions, they have the capability to adapt to certain conditions over time and generations), the list goes on, it only matters if those things are important to you personally. Everybody has different goals, I myself have many goals and having plenty of genetic diversity to work with which allows me to achieve certain goals that others will be limited to due only to inbreeding, back-crossing, feminizing, etc...
I agree that just because there was back-crossing or feminizing practice performed in a specific seed line that the seed line is unusable. All(most) of the expressions can be skewed through generational breeding to display a healthy population and display of diversity. My point of argument is I will always choose seed lines that have not undergone those less than ideal processes. Starting with something healthy to begin with puts you ahead of the game if your goal is overall health and diversity.
Inbred lines that have gone through many generations of inbreeding by the minimum one female and one male can be revived in terms of diversity and resistance. Like you said, open pollination's are the key to unlocking diversity. When you go from one male and two females, to two males and two females you just increased the diversity big time. More expressions will be unlocked through larger populations of male/female combinations. The genetics are still there, the expressions have only been skewed due heavy selections over time and generations.
Inbreeding does not kill vigor. Inbreeding the proper way, through generational selections will retain growing vigor to a point. The only problem(n my eyes) with it is you will eventually get to a point where their vigor has been sacrificed due to only allowing certain traits to be expressed in a particular environment. There are several ways to look at it. You could be inbreeding in various environments, maybe one year you grow all indoors, next you grow all outdoors, next year high mountain, next year lowland valley, doing this is beneficial because you are choosing traits from a given gene pool to perform to your standards in several environments and scenarios. Even though you are only working with that specific narrowed gene pool, you are still making diverse selections through various expressions. This puts your genetics at an advantage as apposed to a inbred seed line that has been inbred in one specific location.
Another example of that would be if you open pollinated a seed line in various conditions and locations. You are unlocking and preserving many possible resistances and adaptations but at the same time you are reducing your effectiveness as a valuable seed line(in terms of production and/or sensimillia harvest). We as people grow for purpose, which is why we inbreed, feminize, back-cross, etc. Ive observed the positive aspects as well as the negative which has led me to take a stance against feminizing and back-crossing. Heavy generational inbreeding has its value no doubt, however it must be exercised properly to retain its value as a healthy and productive seed line. That is my only point here, a crucial one at that.
When crossing a feminized plant with a a non feminized plant the seed will be 75% female seeds. I have done this several times with the f1 seed producing very few male prodigy. The female was dominant in the f1 growth patterns, may have been all males if the male was the dominant one.
^^This may be your experience but this in not definitive fact when trying to generalize the outcome of feminizing seeds. There are several artificial and natural processes that can be used to produce a feminized seed. Each of these processes result in a different outcome. The numbers will never add up exactly when comparing each process individually.
Noone seems to be doing real ibl and hybrid seed, or stable open pollinations.
^^Nobody is doing it because the majority of people are seeking quick results. Many don't have the space to facilitate real open pollination's, aside from that, growing cannabis is illegal in most places which is why people keep choosing to feminize and back-cross their valuable plants. One other good reason why people don't do it the right way is because the majority of people are not demanding inbred, diverse pure bred, or properly preserved seed lines. People are demanding consistent seed lines that produce traits favorable for sensimilia seed production. Most people don't want the males, hence feminized seeds. If someone finds out about the hot new clone only on the market, people go out of their way to produce seeds that represent the desired traits as fast as possible. There are those who demand stable male and female seeds lines, which is where back-crossing comes in handy. Someone can produce a seed line that shows inbred traits specific to the clone only being focused on in a matter of two or three generations as apposed to selective generational breeding carried out over many more generations. Doing it the right way through generational selections takes longer and requires greater seed populations to find the desired traits.
That is why I am of the opinion that feminizing and back-crossing are lazy methods that do the present gene pools no good what so ever.
So yeah, we went oftopic, but take the basic question of this thread: is there anything wrong about using feminized seeds in breeding programmes? Tell me, will we ever have anything like a consensus?
^^Feminizing is a process used to isolate a specific trait displayed and produce mostly female plants. People do this for the home grower who does not want to go through the steps of selecting females and removing males. My question to you is why would you purposefully use a feminized plant to produce a stable seed line containing both male and females?
Also to a lesser degree I do agree that feminizing has its values. If I had a female plant that I liked a lot and wanted to preserve it but didn't have a male to pollinate her with, I would feminize her. I personally would only see this as valuable if the specific plant had origins that I thought to be special and/or extinct. If someone passed me a female clone of something like African Black Magic, you bet your ass I would be feminizing that plant for my own uses, I would choose feminization over back-crossing for a number of reasons. I wouldn't share the seeds, I would keep them as a fail safe if I were to lose the original clone, only as a last resort would I use the feminized seeds to reproduce a seed line. I would also use generational breeding to work that specific clone and it traits to express healthy male and female ratios while preserving its valuable and/or personal favorite traits. First I would choose the most similar seed line I could to start with, something with African origins, pure genetic diversity as well as stability. If I had a choice of the line I prefer to carry out male/female breeding of the African clone, I would choose something semi-inbred. Due to a lesser display of diversity among a specific inbred line, it would be easier to identify the expressions more closely related to the target results(African Black Magic) during the generational selections.
As far as why it is wrong... if you use a plant that was produced using any feminizing method, you are imparting those intersexual traits into the new seed line. You don't want those individuals in your seed population. Why? Because the point of breeding with male and female through proper generational methods is to preserve the genetic material as a valuable production seed line. Feminized seeds are produced through hermaphrodite mechanisms, by breeding with a feminized plant you are increasing the hermaphrodite expressions in that line. If you are looking for hermaphrodites in your seed line, then fine, do as you please, that's the best way to go about it. I don't see its value what so ever though.
