Please forgive my wack ass microscope
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Cannabis genetics is a travesty to be sure
How so?
Compare to any other major crop, and the variation and stability we have in cannabis strains is quite fucking amazing.
Compare to say strains of banana or some cerial. Monocrops, no variation, sickly, etc.
I started getting into cannabis around 2007 or so and back then there were no autoflowering strains. Lowryder was just coming out. Now 15+ years later pretty much most strains have an autoflowering version and making one is not too challenging. The autoflowering gene has been so well isolated that it's trivial for a proper seedbank to cultivate whatever af strains they think of.
Although there's so much competition nowadays that people are guarding their genetics far more than before. Regular seeds used to be available for all strains. Now it's feminised available for all strains and regular only for older and cheaper strains. Can't make genetically stable seeds if you have to try to propagate from an already feminised seed.
So yeah I don't know how it's "a travesty" honestly.
Try to find a landrace. Or something with lineage you can actually trace. Everything (exaggeration, you can still find landraces and some classic strains but they are few and far between) now is hybridized to shit, there's ruderalis in everything (not even on purpose, but there is), and there are a LOT of shitty "breeders" chucking pollen to make a quick buck.
Try to find someone who's honest about their genetics (again, obviously some people are but most people aren't).
And honestly I'm on board with your last point. I don't even think we disagree with each other, it's definitely not as bad as bananas, we're just looking at it from different perspectives.
How are you defining stability? If you get more than one pheno in a pack, it's unstable IMO. And there are VERY few breeders that you only get one pheno in a pack.
Genotype stability.
"Everything's been hybridised to shit and everything has ruderalis in it"
Well you're clearly exaggerating. But yes, pretty much all strains are hybrids. And why wouldn't they be? Getting growth properties from indica is almost a must since who the hell has the space to grow an actual sativa, like a three meter tall tree with airy specks for buds.
This is what "bud" looked like in the 70's, and that probably explains why it used to more commonly known as "weed" than "bud".
So yeah, the variety and quality of the strains we have is nothing short of amazing.
I literally said I was exaggerating so yes I'm glad you picked up on that. I still don't know what you mean by stability, you're not explaining that very effectively. And plenty of guys have room for a 12 foot plant that isn't even that big.
It's ridiculous to argue that "there's ruderalis in everything" when seedbanks still have genomes that have been going on since before autoflowers were even a thing.
"Plenty of guys have room for a 12 foot plant"
Why are you using bodyparts to measure things? And no, most people don't have room for plants which exceed room height, make little to no bud and a ton of waste.
Did you skip over the image I linked? That's cannabis 50 years ago. I myself am familiar with what's happened over the last 20 years.
Excluding the tendency of seed banks to stop selling regular seeds so as to protect their genomes, I honestly don't know what about is in any way "a travesty."
I'm not going to argue with you anymore because I'm not having fun or learning anything.
I'm sure you learned why the favoured word for cannabis shifted from "weed" to "bud".
Because due to cannabis growing culture, actual buds started appearing on the plants. I much prefer the "ruined hybrids (all of which have ruderalis in them)" which grow actual colas than trying to fit a badly growing sativa inside when it requires like double the heigh of a normal room, and still won't make actual colas.
The fact that you have access to cannabis rn is very likely because of the amazing cannabis industry we have.
Are there shit seed banks? Sure.
Is it all of them? Fuck no. Not even a majority, or even a significant minority.
Dude, go have a bowl and chill out, weed stopped being used because the war on drugs lost. They used “weed” and “hippies” to label an entire subset of people and vilify them.
The plants always been called cannabis, marijuana and weed is fucking politics.
Laws don't dictate the use of language, people do.
It just so happens that when you don't have buds, it's hard to find instances in which to use "bud", and because even when I started, you needed to make sure it's actually bud, not just some trim, grass, weed.
Marijuana is the loaded term. Cannabis is a scientific one.
Calling cannabis stable is kinda hilarious to be honest. I don’t think there’s another plant out there that Herms as easily as cannabis. Even landraces can herm, and those are the most stable breeds you can get.
The variety is also detrimental as well, it’s why it’s such a finicky plant.
Monocrops have their own issues, like a single disease being able to wipe out the species.
I'm calling the genetics stable, be they what they are.
Compared to other plants, does cannabis herm easily? Well I've not grown anything else as much, so hard to say, but my plants very rarely herm. Meny plants are completely self-pollinating, so there's not really an issue to why it would be inherently bad.
Herming is more common nowadays when all seeds are feminised, meaning they were produced by a female plant which was pollinated by another female plant that was made to herm.
Despite being made in that manner, most of my femmed seeds never produce any pollen sacs.
"Finicky plant"?
Have you ever grown anything else? Compared to a whole bunch of houseplants or even commercial crops, cannabis is remarkably resilient to all sorts, temperature and humidity fluctuations, fluctuations in the availability of nutrients, etc.
Except for exposing it to those conditions are the exact things that make it unstable and herm…. Just because it can survive to repopulate doesn’t mean it’s the desired characteristics of what the consumer wants. In fact, if that could be bred out , people would fucking live and prefer that.
But hey, insult and attack me instead of having a conversation, fucking lol.
I grow photoperiods but live very far north. Light leaks should by your logic herm cannabis for me, because it's "so unstable".
But they don't. Not even when I'm nowadays a rather lazy grower and they're definitely stressed, and often.
Hell, rn I've a revegged plant in flower, it survived accidentally (forgot one bud on it), it's roots we're entirely rotted, etc etc, and it still hasn't hermed.
Not to mention it's from a feminised seed. If you have problems with cannabis herming, then it's most likely that you just have shitty seeds. Order some regular seeds and sex them yourself and they definitely won't be nearly as "unstable" as feminised seeds. (In quotes because a majority of them aren't.)
I've grown for ~15-17 years.
You’re confusing stability with resilience, the plant is resilient not stable. Monocrops are stable, that’s why they can be wiped out by a single disease, there is no resilience to adapt and continue breeding and stay alive.
A stable plant wouldn’t start revegging because it got some more sunlight, that’s the inherent characteristic of cannabis because of its resilience.