variability in plants from seed

[MrSlatersParrot]

Hi folks

I'm growing some Banana Kush Cake from a well-known seed house.

 

I've got one plant which matches the description:

 

'The 65% indica dominance means that the plants are usually compact....
with closely spaced nodes, plenty of branches, and a roughly pyramidal
shape....the plants are small...'

 

And four really big leggy sativa types! I've chucked the biggest one, the others are nearly twice the height of the one typical plant at 6 1/2 weeks (10 days into flower) and are very different in growth habit.

 

Is this expected behaviour? It's like the description is just any old flannel! 5 seeds is a very small sample so I could have been unlucky, but I'm struggling to see how they can even call that a strain.  I'd hoped that a reputable seed house would make some effort to stabilise the cross before punting it out to customers. Is that unrealistic?

 

I've emailed them to say what's happened, the response has been basically 'yeah whatever, here's a discount code for next time'.

 

I'm not sure whether I'm being a twat or not, what do you think?

 

Cheers me dears.

[ukbudz]

If it's sensi seeds banana kush cake, then it could be anything tbh and I'd take the description with a massive grain of salt . I'm pretty sure they don't even make there own seeds anymore.

 

 

 

 

[KC]

There's loads of strains where you get totally different plants from the same packet. Well that's how it always was, lately they do seem a bit more uniform. 

It's like when you have siblings with the same parents but they're nothing alike. 

Some people actually like the variety, I find it annoying, when I grow a packet I want to know I can get the same sort of plants again.

 

My packet of sensi sk#1 had no 2 plants alike

[Slippy One]

I’m no breeder but this is normal, for uniformity, look for f1 seeds, but even then there’s probably some variation. That’s why clones from a known mum work well.

[MrSlatersParrot]

Sounds like I'm expecting too much from seed sellers! Yeah I expect some variation but this is a bit extreme IMO:

 

In fact I've missed the top of the tall one because it's so tall!

 

I've been growing since the mid-90s but always from cuttings till the last 4 years. I grew NL x Haze for a long time, then White Widow. This is probably my 5th grow from seed.

 

All the seed lots I've had have been a bit variable, that's understandable but 80% of the plants being different from the description is a bit shit.

 

So I've bent the three tall ones over and I'll have to do an imprompu scrog  - except I would have pinched them out first if I'd realised. Arse. I've taken cuttings from the lower branches of the smaller one, they're in a heated propagator under one fluorescent in a cupboard. Maybe I'll do the grow  I was hoping for next time

 

Thanks

[stu914]

I used to grow from cuttings all the time until I lost my mums () and found the same as you with seeds.

I now start just a couple of same strain seeds, select the nearest one to what I want, only flower her clones

and bin the rest...this way they all stay pretty uniform and saves me a packet on buying seeds.

[MrSlatersParrot]

Hi Stu, looks like I shall have to do the same, it's so much easier in a confined space if the plants behave the same!

[KC]

There's always the option of putting the smaller plants on top of an upturned pot. It's ok if you don't rely on heat mats to keep your roots warm.

[MrSlatersParrot]

Yeah I could but what I really need is to dig a hole for the tall ones because they're too close to the light already!

[stu914]

I would either supercrop the tall buggers (and tie them down) or take the top off completely.

If this is done during the 'stretch' I've found they've plenty of time to recover and you don't really lose

much yield...if it's banging against the light it's already lost anyway.

[MrSlatersParrot]

I've tied them down now. Nah they weren't quite banging the light! But I didn't want to switch it to 600W (was 400W) because they were so close. I have now.

 

I'm surprised you find there's little loss of yield if you chop the tops off, even early in flowering! But I've never done it myself, always learning on here!  I'd pinch them out when they're small I usually do it to 3 nodes and then take the best 4 shoots when flowering time comes.

[Isoterrapine]

I am having a similar problem with the devil line from sweet seeds they are almost all different no stability.

 

The whole right hand side is the devil lines not the tiny ones up front and a middle left is a devil line . 

 

The others are as the name suggests sweet seeds.

[Military Grade]

S1's give you the most stable representation of the parent/parents you're trying to copy in seed form.

[Amarillo slim]

5 seeds leaves room for benefit of the doubt, maybe the stretchy plants are 1 out of 10 and you just got unlucky, stuff happens.  

 

But yeah, sloppy breeding / poor descriptions aren’t exactly rare these days. Doesn’t make much business sense to spend several years and bunch of time / space & money to actually breed something, when can buy bulk stock from Spanish seed makers, and slap on a name like ‘banana kush cake’ , and know they will sell due to marketing / branding.   Again not saying that’s necessarily the case here, as don’t know company, just outlining what’s become common practice among many of todays Breeders businessmen.  

 

Nothing inherently wrong with high variation, so long as accurately reflected in the description.   As others have said, sometimes it’s desirable (to pick a mum).  Sensi seeds jack herer was like that back in the day, can pick what suits you on the spectrum from BLD to NLD (all good plants) .  Just meant that first grow was a bit of a mess but then you run clones of your favourite there after (which given price of the seeds, was only real choice anyway). 

[Cajafiesta]

The variability of plants from seed is entirely dependent on the total "details" of the seed line. 

 

They can range anywhere from nearly identical to almost hard to believe they're all seeds from the same plant.    If you want consistent plant from seeds you're going to have the best chance finding that in seed lines that have been worked to a high filial generation ( indicated by F#.  F2, F3, F4 etc.  Expect to start seeing some stability around F4 or so.)   Alternately, lined indicated as "IBL" or Inbred Line have a better chance of having similar plants. 

 

The term F1 gets thrown around a lot.  That's " First Filial Generation."  A cross of Mother X and Father Z.  Seeing stability in an F1 generation isn't a certainty.  The concept of " all identical F1 plants" is relevant, but it seems only really relevant in the sense of a TRUE F1 HYBRID.  That's not the same thing as a first filial generation F1.  True F1 Hybrids are more in the realm of two very dissimilar ( think something like a landrace NLD plant from Colombia crossed to a landrace BLD plant from Afghanistan)  parent genetics combined.  This generally gets you a better chance of standout first filial gen plants.  Vigor, consistency etc.  This is assusming that the starting inputs for the True F1 Hybrid were pretty consistent to start with.  Ideally, in my mind, you'd start the idea of making a True F1 Hybrid with those very dissimilar lines that, themselves, were Inbred lines to begin with. 

 

 BUT  Making a first filial generation from Mother A ( lets call it purple people eater cookie banana bread lollipop) and father B ( let's call it donkey dick strawberry shartzmuffin) DOES NOT produce the same result as a true F1 Hybrid.  There's a high likelihood that the first filial generation offspring from these polyhybrid modern parents WILL NOT result in very stable first generation offspring. This I have seen first hand many times.  It's common for me to pollen chuck some shit in a "see what happens" scenario.  I will find great plant's, but there will be variability that can totally be assigned to one or both of the parents.  " This one got the leaf structure from the father, but node spacing and resin looks like the mother.  it smells like a combination of the mother and father with some weird addition of XYZ smell."   or, alternately, " This one is a spitting image of the mother structurally but all of the positive traits like smell and resin production have been completely deleted.  It looks like the mother identically but smells and smokes like useless hay."  That sorta thing.

 

 

Hope that makes some degree of sense.  I'm not an expert.  Just throwing out what comes to mind here. 

 

 

 

 

Damn.  How have I not thought of "Shartz Muffin" as a strain name yet. 

 

Do  Y'all have the term "Shart?"   It's a shit-fart over here in the states.  You know, when you think it's a fart and it definitely wasn't...SURPRISE.  And no the good kinda surprise 

Edited March 30 by Cajafiesta