Jul '24 (edited) • Custom Connoisseur Cannabis
Exploring back-crossing and feminising techniques
Creative breeding techniques
Right so let’s look at some ways we can select and stabilise traits, and how we can use some creative techniques to cause dominant gene expressions or dominant expression of a certain strain making up part of a hybrid.
As always I’ll use an example as I believe they are the best way to visualise the actual process. Let’s look back to when “exodus cheese” was first offered in seed form. For those don’t know, exodus cheese, or just exodus as it’s commonly known, was a special expression of the original skunk strain many years ago. The expression was shared far and wide in come form and become quite famous especially around Europe.
It wasn’t long until one of the seed companies, I believe in Netherlands, had the idea to try release the strain in seed form. Since it was a “clone only”, we’ll look at the techniques they used to create the first seeds of exodus cheese, and then how they collaborated with another seed company some years later to create feminised exodus cheese, which besides the advantage of being feminized, they were the only and first true exodus cheese seeds made. You’ll see why if you keep reading.
So the first strategy was based on breeding knowledge and techniques available at the time. During then, the feminizing process was less known and undeveloped. So what was available was traditional breeding techniques. Their strategy was simple, look at the ancestry of the strain, in this case the all powerful skunk, Mexican and Colombian sativas crossed to an afghani with a roughly 75% sativa dominance. Choose one of the ancestors, they chose the Afghani I guess because the indica would only make it more dense, instead of if they had chosen to use off of the sativas parents.
They then did what is known as a back cross. This involves crossing the exodus cheese clone with a chosen afghani male. The resulting seeds are then roughly 50/50 cheese/afghani. Now in order to get something as close to the original cheese as possible, they proceeded to use one of the male offspring (f1’s) and pollinate another exodus cheese clone. They back crossed it. Crossing the offspring back to the parent. After the first back cross, the resulting seeds are roughly 75/25 cheese/Afghan. You can repeat this process a few times, until the point where consistency and generic depression balance out. About 4 or 5 times is usually a good basis.
But the end they had a very dominant exodus cheese expressing strain in seed form. Years later developments in the feminising area allowed for self pollinating successfully and consistently. First a clone of exodus cheese was chemically induced to turn hermaphrodite. There are a few versions of this but preferably I’d go with STS solution method. Silver Thiosulphate. A simple mix of a specific ratio of silver nitrate and sodium thiosulphate sorayed onto the clones at a specific dilution once a day, starting 2 weeks before flower and until 2 weeks after first signs of flowers occur. The male flowers that form thereafter are collected when ripe, dried and pollen extracted and used to immediately pollinate other exodus cheese clones that have been left to naturally flower as females, when they are at about the 2 weeks after showing sex stage of flowering. The resulting seeds to form on those females are all female. Since it’s a self pollination, or written as s1, the seeds are a perfect pure version of the strain in seed form.
Both these techniques described are very powerful breeding techniques that offer different advantages to each other. Give them a go. I recommend starting out with back crossing to get a feel for it before attempting the feminising process. The chemicals alone are difficult to get and very hazardous. Good luck and have fun!
Warrick Duncan co-founder
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Exploring back-crossing and feminising techniques
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