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Azra'eil
Guest
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Breeding techniques
- Thread starter Nevil
- Start date
Nevil
Breeder
Most of the work I did was with batches of 40-50 seeds at a time.
The variety I grew the most of was NL5xHzC. No.1 came out in the first batch of about 20 females. Over the years I've grown many 1000s. In most respects, it was still the best. No.122, the one Shanti dubbed the Mango, came after years of searching, a tireless quest on my part. Aspiring growers often came to me and I regularly made them start with 5Hz seed. There are a few cuts around from those exploits, but they weren't as good as 1 and 122. But almost. As I said before, there's not a sea of difference between the best out of 50 and the best out of 1000. But there is a difference for the most discerning.
N.
The variety I grew the most of was NL5xHzC. No.1 came out in the first batch of about 20 females. Over the years I've grown many 1000s. In most respects, it was still the best. No.122, the one Shanti dubbed the Mango, came after years of searching, a tireless quest on my part. Aspiring growers often came to me and I regularly made them start with 5Hz seed. There are a few cuts around from those exploits, but they weren't as good as 1 and 122. But almost. As I said before, there's not a sea of difference between the best out of 50 and the best out of 1000. But there is a difference for the most discerning.
N.
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Azra'eil
Guest
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joshuahazen
New member
First of all, I don't have a Hard on for Tom Hill; Sorry, he's not my type.
Secondly, thanks for the advice I will look into it.
When discussing his best stock, Tom Hill's Haze, Tom Hill himself says:
"It does not breed true for its intoxicating properties, however the best examples (approx 5%) are electrifyingly cerebral."
5%? come on now, he's been breeding this strain for what 15 years? I think he can do a little better than that.
But judging from Tom's breeding advice, in the thread that Az' rael, posted, I am not surprised that only 5% of his best stuff is stony.
I am not trying to say to that Tom Hill is damaging the genepool of marijuana or anything stupid like that, on the contrary he is a haze breeder, more power to him.
So he is a "Proven Breeder". So what?
All of my strains are very potent, and of any of them, 99% of a given sample would be guaranteed to knock you on your ass, and this is not owing to any great encyclopedic knowledge of breeding on my part, but has more to do with the strains I have chosen to work with, my taste, the unique set of circumstances by which I came across those strains, and my intuitive ability to choose winners.
Just because I didn't understand Nevil's terminology of 1:1 mating does not mean that I am not familiar with the concept, in fact, in my breeding program, it is the backbone, and you will see this if you read my thread on the Bonsai Sultan Method.
I don't think it is necessarily bad to breed for leaf shape.
Culling 75% of your stock based on leafshape isn't really bad. But I wouldn't call it good either. Tom Hill himself admitted that leaf shape is arbitrary to potency and quality of smoke.
Selecting for arbitrary traits leads to mediocrity in my opinion.
If I were Tom I would find one of those really electrifying varieties of Haze he is talking about, take several large bong hits, and then really meditate and reflect on what I was trying to accomplish with the said coupling, then using every ounce of knowledge and experience I had regarding those strains, I would channel my intuition and go out into that glorious field, and select the 600 plants that were the best. That would be a good start, in finding something truly spectacular.
In my post I was disputing Tom Hill's assertion that somehow because of the complexity of marijuana genetically, 1:1 paired matings are going to have a deleterious effect on the marijuana genepool, and asserting that in fact they are one of the most important tools a breeder has for finding and selecting something that is truly superior according to type. So I think my "Dig" as you call it, does have merit.
H
Hazy Lady
Guest
I give in Spoofer
Quote,
Ok, you did it, if your intention was to say something so dumb, something so mind numbingly ridiculous that I stop posting, congrats! you did it brother.
I used to scratch my head at your "stony" Haze descriptions, but to 'blame' Tom Hill for the percentage rates of Haze, aw! what's the fucking point, carry on Einstein.
Quote,
Ok, you did it, if your intention was to say something so dumb, something so mind numbingly ridiculous that I stop posting, congrats! you did it brother.
I used to scratch my head at your "stony" Haze descriptions, but to 'blame' Tom Hill for the percentage rates of Haze, aw! what's the fucking point, carry on Einstein.
joshuahazen
New member
LOL
Thank you Hazy Lady, I believe I will:
Stony, is a generic term for potency. Stony, strong, gets you stoned, high, lit, baked, torqued, tweeked, wasted, "electrifyingly cerebral" etc... (Pure Genius).
Thank you Hazy Lady, I believe I will:
Stony, is a generic term for potency. Stony, strong, gets you stoned, high, lit, baked, torqued, tweeked, wasted, "electrifyingly cerebral" etc... (Pure Genius).
B
british_hempire
Guest
Neither Sam nor Tom explained fully why they never worked Haze further to select for just the killer ones. Sam said he tried to preserve as much of the diversity of Haze as possible, that makes sense, but like Nev said, why preserve anything sub-standard? The core of any breeder's mission must always be 'keep the best, kill the rest' otherwise he won't improve anything. Nature works the same way, for every successful species there are many more that were unsuccessful dead-ends in evolutionary terms and became extinct, Darwin called it Natural Selection.
Let's say there were Thai, Mexican, Colombian and Indian strains in the make-up of Haze as claimed. Sam said there were multiple Mexicans and Colombians in there, he mentioned Wacky Weed and a purple strain being two of the Colombians. What is the best phenos of Haze are all Thai phenos? Wouldn't it be a worthwhile breeding goal to stabilise/bottleneck the genes for those Thai phenos? I can see the point in keep the line as wide as possible, but if the Mexican, Indian and Colombian phenos are inferior, why keep em?
I often wondered why there are almost no examples of top commercial breeds using sativas other than Haze? Off the top of my head, apart from a few things SSSC used to sell in the 80s like Sonora Super Sativa (Mexican) and Durban-Thai Highflyer (African and Thai) I can only think of the Thai-Tanic (Thai x Skunk) that TFD sold and the Juicy Fruit (Thai x Indica) that Sensi Sold, then there is Power Plant which is derived from Durban Poison originally.
Sam introduced a South Indian Keralan, he crossed it to Skunk and Haze and sold those seeds through TFD.
Nev worked with a Durban and a Swazi and one or two other sativas in the early days, but once he started breeding with Haze, he stuck with Haze, I expect it's because the Haze was better than any other sativa line he'd found and had enough variation in it that he could pull out most of the sativa archetypes through careful selection in the hybrids.
I guess the real reason why Haze has been used so much and people haven't bothered much with other sativas for breeding is that those 5% or 10% or whatever of Haze that are killer are better than anything else people have found in the last 30 years. There will be two causes of that - by the 80s a lot of the original classics had gone, the Thai genepool was gone by the early 80s for instance. Secondly, the people in the seed industry in Holland were businessmen not cannabis preservationists, they would have needed to do a lot of work to find, grow and work new sativa lines, they didn't bother spending that money once they had their hands on Haze.
So here we are in 2010 and we are asking ourselves the same question I'm sure Nev asked himself 25 years ago when considering whether to pay Sam's high price for Haze - what is there out there that I can get my hands on that has the breeding potential of Haze? No doubt there were (and still are) superb sativas to be found in remote parts of the world, but it would mean a lot of travelling and exploring (often in dangerous locations) to even find potential sources of new sativa genes, that would cost a lot of time and money and might not prove fruitful. Looking at it that way, it was worth paying Sam's price.
Now in 2010, there are no more original Haze seeds left, so we are again thinking of where we can find something else as good. If there is anything that approaches the quality of those 5-10% best Hazes then it won't be easy to find, there are only a handful of places left worth looking - some of the remoter highlands of the Himalayan chain, Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal and China; then there is Africa, Central Africa is the great unknown in cannabis terms, there are sure to be some amazing sativas there from Malawi in the south to the Congo in the Centre, Ghana in the east and Ethiopia in the west, but it is not easy or safe to travel to much of that region. NE India, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, that part of Southern Asia is largely unexplored in cannabis terms, there may still be some great sativas there that are related to the lost SE Asian genepool. We know Thailand's genepool is gone, but I'm not sure what remains in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, those countries are only recently open to the west so they may still have a lot of their original genepool intact.
Sadly, the other 'hotspots' of great sativas are destroyed now, Thailand, Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, Hawaii, those have all suffered such oppression that the original genepools are destroyed, there may be the odd tattered fragment, but it's more likely to be found in someone's seed collection than in the country of origin these days.
So after 25 years we are still obsessed with Haze because we know it would be no small matter to breed an alternative. Nev didn't try to breed an alternative after he had first grown Haze and I doubt he thinks it would be any easier of more possible today in 2010 than he did in 1985.
Let's say there were Thai, Mexican, Colombian and Indian strains in the make-up of Haze as claimed. Sam said there were multiple Mexicans and Colombians in there, he mentioned Wacky Weed and a purple strain being two of the Colombians. What is the best phenos of Haze are all Thai phenos? Wouldn't it be a worthwhile breeding goal to stabilise/bottleneck the genes for those Thai phenos? I can see the point in keep the line as wide as possible, but if the Mexican, Indian and Colombian phenos are inferior, why keep em?
I often wondered why there are almost no examples of top commercial breeds using sativas other than Haze? Off the top of my head, apart from a few things SSSC used to sell in the 80s like Sonora Super Sativa (Mexican) and Durban-Thai Highflyer (African and Thai) I can only think of the Thai-Tanic (Thai x Skunk) that TFD sold and the Juicy Fruit (Thai x Indica) that Sensi Sold, then there is Power Plant which is derived from Durban Poison originally.
Sam introduced a South Indian Keralan, he crossed it to Skunk and Haze and sold those seeds through TFD.
Nev worked with a Durban and a Swazi and one or two other sativas in the early days, but once he started breeding with Haze, he stuck with Haze, I expect it's because the Haze was better than any other sativa line he'd found and had enough variation in it that he could pull out most of the sativa archetypes through careful selection in the hybrids.
I guess the real reason why Haze has been used so much and people haven't bothered much with other sativas for breeding is that those 5% or 10% or whatever of Haze that are killer are better than anything else people have found in the last 30 years. There will be two causes of that - by the 80s a lot of the original classics had gone, the Thai genepool was gone by the early 80s for instance. Secondly, the people in the seed industry in Holland were businessmen not cannabis preservationists, they would have needed to do a lot of work to find, grow and work new sativa lines, they didn't bother spending that money once they had their hands on Haze.
So here we are in 2010 and we are asking ourselves the same question I'm sure Nev asked himself 25 years ago when considering whether to pay Sam's high price for Haze - what is there out there that I can get my hands on that has the breeding potential of Haze? No doubt there were (and still are) superb sativas to be found in remote parts of the world, but it would mean a lot of travelling and exploring (often in dangerous locations) to even find potential sources of new sativa genes, that would cost a lot of time and money and might not prove fruitful. Looking at it that way, it was worth paying Sam's price.
Now in 2010, there are no more original Haze seeds left, so we are again thinking of where we can find something else as good. If there is anything that approaches the quality of those 5-10% best Hazes then it won't be easy to find, there are only a handful of places left worth looking - some of the remoter highlands of the Himalayan chain, Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal and China; then there is Africa, Central Africa is the great unknown in cannabis terms, there are sure to be some amazing sativas there from Malawi in the south to the Congo in the Centre, Ghana in the east and Ethiopia in the west, but it is not easy or safe to travel to much of that region. NE India, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, that part of Southern Asia is largely unexplored in cannabis terms, there may still be some great sativas there that are related to the lost SE Asian genepool. We know Thailand's genepool is gone, but I'm not sure what remains in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, those countries are only recently open to the west so they may still have a lot of their original genepool intact.
Sadly, the other 'hotspots' of great sativas are destroyed now, Thailand, Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, Hawaii, those have all suffered such oppression that the original genepools are destroyed, there may be the odd tattered fragment, but it's more likely to be found in someone's seed collection than in the country of origin these days.
So after 25 years we are still obsessed with Haze because we know it would be no small matter to breed an alternative. Nev didn't try to breed an alternative after he had first grown Haze and I doubt he thinks it would be any easier of more possible today in 2010 than he did in 1985.
B
british_hempire
Guest
BTW, stony has nothing to do with the effects of any sativa. To be stoned is to feel the sedative, relaxing and heavy effects of an indica, a true pure sativa effect cntains none of that and is all about the 'up' and 'high' aspects.
So to me, 'stony' would never be used to refer to any sativa effect.
So to me, 'stony' would never be used to refer to any sativa effect.
joshuahazen
New member
Really?? I have always referred to good weed as stony regardless of type of high. Semantics I guess.
I'll keep that in mind.
Thanks.
PS How would you refer to a really good sativa? If its not "stony" then what would you call it?
I'll keep that in mind.
Thanks.
PS How would you refer to a really good sativa? If its not "stony" then what would you call it?
B
british_hempire
Guest
Sativas are way more complex than indicas so there isn't one word that adequately covers them I think, some are speedy, some euphoric, some mind-expanding or 'trippy', I guess 'high' is a catch-all but it doesn't really cover the spectrum of effects.
I guess it is semantics but I've never associated 'stone' with a sat effect, we are talking in vernacular and there is no stoner's dictionary so it's all good but sometimes it does help to be on the same page, vernacularly speaking! lol
I guess it is semantics but I've never associated 'stone' with a sat effect, we are talking in vernacular and there is no stoner's dictionary so it's all good but sometimes it does help to be on the same page, vernacularly speaking! lol
joshuahazen
New member
Also keep in mind that the knife cuts both ways, if you are constantly refraining from selecting out the superior strains, and you are doing this because you think you are somehow preserving the diversity of the strain... Those superior traits that you covet so much, just might wind up getting lost in the shuffle...
joshuahazen
New member
LOL
Thinking about it, it makes sense actually. Stoned does a bit more apt for a really good Indica now that you mention it...
Cabron
Banned
So Nev
Since you are on the subject of NLHaze,,,,,please give me a percentage on a basis of 100% that this is a NLHazeC F1.
Because I'll bet all I own these aren't NL#5 X Afghani
Thanks in advance ...
Cabby
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british_hempire
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joaquin386
New member
By the way Neville by your standard what was a "good" plant (a mother plant).
What where the characteristics you look for? (you could even put an example like (ssh or any other). Out of 50 plants what do you saw in those 6 plants to keep them?
What where the characteristics you look for? (you could even put an example like (ssh or any other). Out of 50 plants what do you saw in those 6 plants to keep them?
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bushweed
New member
Highland Thai x Purple Afghan?
indica jones
New member
Are Afghani strains the only strains known for late bananas? In a breeding program would you avoid these? I have noticed that these strains are common in most all crosses today.
oscar the rotund
New member
I think his breeding aims are different. From my reading of his post he first breeds for resin, then back breeds to earlier seeds he's saved. He's trying to save the original. He mentioned crossing haze to another strain that he's going to bottleneck more. I've got eight or nine THH cloning now.