I’m considering doing some new genetics sourcing and thus a new round of pheno hunting. I’m just curious from where my professional growers are attaining their new strains? Are you popping new seeds? Do you have a favorite seed bank to which you might want to give a shout out? What’s your success rate with germination? How stable were the strains? Herms? Hmmmmm? Soooo many questions!
Clones? Are they local? Any problems with systemic issues being passed down through the clones?
Tissue culture? I want to know more!
Are you using services like Phylos or @strainly.io?
@mastergrowers, @Caregivers and @growopowners, I rarely take in new genetics…so this is a call to action to make sure I source the very best for my patients!
Seeds are the only safe way of introducing new genetics into a grow at this point. I get calls every day from growers that have brought in clones only to realize they now have someone else’s problems as well. There is an epidemic of broad mites, russet mites, root aphids, powdery mildew, and more right now up and down the west coast. Even worse, most of these pests have been so mistreated over the last couple of years they have become resistant to most legal ways of dealing with them. Another thing I hear every day is “the guy told me that his cuts were clean”. Of course he did! He wanted your money. The integrity of some suppliers is non-existent and why would anyone want to run the risk of bringing in one or more of these problems? There are countless seed banks across the US right now and while it’s a lot more work to start from seed, it’s also a lot more rewarding finding the true gems that are out there rather than having the exact same cut as everyone else AND having a clean grow is priceless. I have watched a lot of commercial growers go under over the years by taking shortcuts so ultimately you have to decide if it’s really worth the risk of bringing in infected material and dealing with the consequences or avoiding that pitfall altogether.
We have sourced clones from the various “clone sellers” and found all the usual problems reported in the op and by Ron. We are looking at experimenting with tissue culture at this point. From what I have seen in online videos and tutorials it seems that the process has a sterilization step that eliminates systemic problems that the donor plant may have. Any one else had any experience with Tissue Culture?
Our company provides clones throughout Oregon, we create our own seeds as well as we have a huge stash of seeds from banks from all over. We run a tight ship when it comes to insects and disease. Sure we have all the problems you would expect, and it is amplified due to the fact we have so many plants around that do not get rotated out as often as a standard grow. We never ship those problems out to our growers. We have over 1acre of quality greenhouse so we can empty one house to clean up problems as they arise. It’s no small task to keep so many mother plants, and have continuous propigation benches in action but it is doable. We try to hold our best genitics for solid returning customers, we try to avoid the ones that want our best genetics only to start their own mother plants. Cost are high to do what we are doing, popping seeds and flowering them out to test thc, terpenoids, for very little return for some time if ever.
Jim
@indoorgardenshop yes, Tissue Culture is a propagation mean that comes with great hopes from a cleanliness perspective. We already allow members to post their Tissue Cultures on Strainly and we’ll publish an article on the topic very soon.
Tissue Culture is really something we’re looking at closely.
I am also very courius about tissue culture on cannabis, I have been employed by 3 different companies that had installed tissue culture labs, and within 2 years shut them down due to the high costs. Another company I know of biased their whole business model on tissue culture of ornamental landscape plants, they have done very well. But you would be amazed at how many plants lose some of their genetics and have to be dropped from production.
The latest company I worked with built a very high end lab to produce blueberries it’s about 3 years old now and I think still producing but they produce somewhere around 8 -10 mil, plants. I think that’s what is needed to make a lab pay for itself. You must do genetic testing regularly to be sure nothing has been lost.
I am no expert, I have only been associated with these companies and not part of tissue culture teams, so anything said above is just my take away.
Jim
For those of you here who don’t yet know, I love shameless self-aggrandizing plugs, so here goes another one! In November, at MJBizCon in Las Vegas, I will be co-hosting a Cultivation Science presentation with Hope Jones, PhD. For those who don’t know, Dr. Jones is considered to be one of the worlds top researchers in the subject of tissue culture. I have already reviewed her Powerpoint for the presentation and it is jam-packed with valuable information about this subject that I must admit, I too have a lot to learn.
From my limited understanding, I think tissue culture represents a brave new element in the cannabis industry that has the ability to mitigate and minimize a lot of the systemic problems we face with traditional methods of propagation.
I think the event will be made available after the fact for viewing. I think can probably finagle a copy from Dr. Jones for you after the show is over.
So in Michigan we have a few clone groups me and a few other guys run on facebook its been a very good help as well I order and trade seeds with other breeders … and collaborate with the network of other caregivers we have.
I have yet to try clones from another source for my grows. Usually its the other way around where i literally gift them out to new growers. In my grows however, i start from seed, and go from there!
Where I get my genetics? Whew, long list! Most of mine come from overseas. If I run any genetics from stateside, its straight off the farm! I enjoy visiting farms all over the US when i travel, so i try and plan my routes accordingly, lol! Right off the top of my head at the moment:
Seedsman
Humbolt
Royal Queen
Steves Seeds
Guru Plant Genetiks
Those are my top favorites that come to mind! I have had nothing but awesome luck with those banks! I also network with a few travelling collectives that can source from overseas whats not in the banks when they go through.
I doubt i will ever be able to grow all i collect. No matter how many i get, as soon as i put one in the dirt, i have this overwhelming urge to replace it, times 5, lol! Bad habit!
I mainly buy mine from the same guy ive been dealing with for years. Im running mostly heirloom and landrace crosses. Most of my genetic line up is from 68 through 74. With some 90s in there aswell. Mine are true, stable, tested. Best of all UNTAINTED. Consider my genes grandparent and some cases parent genes. Hit me up @Growernick
Here in Colorado, we can only source genetics from other places in Colorado. Is this not the case in your areas as well? Crossing state lines or international lines obviously breaks some laws, and I think compliance is second only to safety… operations aren’t worth anything if they’re shut down. This is of course very limiting, and legal cannabis had to start with a blind eye towards sourcing genetics.
Overall, it appears to me that genetics in this industry are in their infancy. People have been growing out very small numbers of seed stock to chose from compared to any other horticultural sector. I hope more breeders get serious with a quickness so that we don’t all look like total amateurs when a big company like Monsanto puts a team of genius geneticists on the task. I don’t know much about breeding except that it was probably the hardest class I took in college, and that I’ve been hugely disappointed with pretty much every single “breeder” I’ve heard talk in this industry.
Because seeds are so highly heterogeneous, I do think clones are a good option if you don’t have the space and time to make selections. IMO, if you are choosing a genotype for commercial production, you should really be selecting the best out of 100 at least. However, I don’t think most “breeders” are even coming close to this with their selections (…and 100 is a low number).
All these warnings about pests and diseases on outsourced clones are very serious. Don’t take them lightly, but you can easily create a strategy to treat, isolate, and test new plants before just throwing them in your mix with everything else. If you get large numbers of clones as generally your only means of production, I would suggest developing a very close relationship with your source - tour their facility often, talk IPM strategy (know how they do it), make them prove they’re clean, and take another look at your own IPM to compliment theirs or make up for where they fall short.
