Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
female that you like and clone this female and her male parent. Take
pollen from the male parent and pollinate the female. The offspring
should contain a 50%/50% of the genes for both parents.
Take pollen from the males of that offspring and mix them
together. Pollinate a clone of the mother. This step should insure that
selection is no longer random and you are promoting the frequency of
the mother's traits in the next offspring.
Repeat the process two more times and you will have
effectively CUBED (meaning backcross x 3) this strain. This can push
the mother plants traits as high as 90% in a population but we will
probably get some non-uniform plants in the offspring too.
Cubing does not really help us to select for traits that we
want, like in our Silver Kush experiment. It simply helps us to keep a
few traits that a mother plant has. Cubing is a common procedure
adopted by breeders who find a good healthy mother plant in a
selection of seeds that someone has given them.
This method can also fail very quickly if your selection of
males are the wrong choice.
SELFING
Selfing is the ability for a plant to produce seeds without the
aid of another plant. This refers to hermaphrodite plants that self-
pollinate. There is no such thing as a 'gene pool' or population with
regards to hermaphrodites since the only pollen that a hermaphrodite
will use is the pollen that it generates itself. Both male and female
flowers are located on the same plant. There can be variations in the
offspring though.
It is nearly impossible for a hermaphrodite to create any male
only plants. A hermaphrodite may create female only seeds and
hermaphrodite seeds. Also the female only seeds may carry the
