I could not have said it better myself Hick, I totally agree. And thanks for your kind words, you know I have the upmost of respect for you and all of your abilities and knowledge.
I have definiately seen a huge increase in the amounts of hermies being reported in the past couple years, and IMO, female seeds are definiately a major part of the problem. I don't see the problem as much being with the actual S1's or R1's, the problem is when unexperienced amatures try and breed those strains in which they may or may not know are femmed beans. Breeding with femmed beans is a very dounting task, to say the least. More on that in a minute.
The second major thing i have seen is a drastic increase in the amount of people who have decided to take up this hobby, which is great... But... this influx has created several problems in its own right. 1 of the largest being bag seeds... I have always avocated using bag seeds but with the invention and commericalization of female seeds, the game has changed. Because of some of the benefical properties a lot of commerical growers have now turned to female seeds, IME and according to Henk Van Dalen, Founder of Dutch Passion, the first generation of Female seeds (S1 or R1), are extremely uniform, as compared to F1's. The seedlings all tend to grow like clones from the same plant as opposed to seedlings expressing their individual phenotype variations. So if you are a commerical produer, this is extremely benefical, because not only do they not have to worry about not pulling males, they also get very uniform plants, from freshly sown seeds. That kind of takes the need of having mothers and cloning, right out of the picture, as the main reason to clone is to preserve the phenotype, but if all of the seedlings are basically the same phenotype, it becomes kind of pointless. Anyone that has beening growing for a while can tell atest to the benefits of starting new seeds, and not holding on to the same mothers/ donors for too long.
Now that sounds great but if and when 1 of those plants happens to hermie, and seed themselves it starts a chain of events, that eventually lead to potential growers hands. When the buds are chopped and dried and sold on the street, the lucky customer happens to find a few seeds in this killer strain and decides to give growing a try. The problem is that there is a very real possiblity that these came from a female plant that hermied. That would basically make these R2, now just like regular F2's, this is where you are going to start seeing some of the negative regressive traits from its parents, with the most dominate regressive traits showing first, now the same stabilization that worked for you with the R1's is working very hard against you with R2's... This is because there still is not much room for new traits to express themselves expect for weaknesses, and the opposites of things like disease and pest resistances. In fact taking a plant to R3's, some of the plants will be so weak that they can not even survive, and some that will have to be handled with great care, and these are the seeds that a lot of new growers are stared out with.
IME, a hermaphadite is not as much a trait as it is a response to other weak or stressful traits or situations. I know it doesn't make sense but my mind is kind of twisted, lol. If we look at what causes a hermie, i know everyone will say stress, but if we look at how stress causes hermies it becomes kind of interesting. Science says that a hermie is caused or triggered by a lack of ethylene or a problem with the ethylene pathways in the suspect plant, with ethylene being the plant equivalent to estrogen in humans. So how does stress equal into this equation... Stress is what closes and/or damages the ethylene pathways. This is the premise that breeders work on when they are creating their female seeds, because their are substances that majorily inhibit the pathways, things like dissolved Silver compounds and excessive amounts of GA. These work so well because they concentrate on controlling which pathways they damage giving a more controlled reverse as opposed to say light stress which could occur anywhere in a very uncontrolled manor.
THis is starting to get kind of long and boring to read so this is the last problem I see with the influx of hermies and influx of new growers.
In the past when growing weed was not so commericalized and glamourized a very, very high percentage of growers took their hobby very serious, dead serious. They went to every length to ensure they knew what they were doing. They took time and actually cared, they understood that this was something that the had to commit to... and that is the problem, I see the tides shifting and everyday i see another person that is not commited to their craft. I call it the set it and forget it syndrome. This is the person that will ask a question before reading to see if the information is already availible in a convienent source. This is the person that feels they can just set up a hydro system, buy a light and produce pounds... all over night. I promise you this is not dedicated to anyone and i am not writing this with anyone in mind, because I personally love to help, but over the computer I can only do so much for that person. I am not even saying that this person shouldn't grow, but they are setting themselves up for failure. Once the novilty of growing wears off this person tapers off with their care, which stresses the heck out of the plants, of which the seeds are probably R2 bagseeds, which will quickly lead to problems and probably a room full of hermies. Basically if you have a general treand of producing hermies then you have to look into what is causing the problem because it is probably something avoidable.
I actually have 1 last thing to mention which is becoming more and more of a problem everyday. While yes some of the strains nowadays are super potent, we are starting to majorily limit the genetic potential of most popular strains and the enitre cannabis genopool, because of our infactuation with a few strains, namely; White widow in amsterdam and og kush/sour diesel in america. Most strains produced now carry these genes somewhere along the line. I am not talking about some of the wonderful Ibl's, i am talking about something like breeding OG kush and sour diesel and claiming this is a new strain, when in fact they are both really just phenotypes of the same strain and by combining the two you are not adding anything new into the gene pool. This stagnates the stain and causes genetic weaknesses, that will eventually lead to not only a reduced vigor but also will lead to hermies. So yes it is true we do have some killer strains, but we are looking diversity, and are headed to a world were there is no diversity and only 1 weak genetic strain, that is just a combination of everything due to the continued infactuations on creating super strains. Do not get me wrong i am all for creating new and exciting strains but we have to get back to doing it the way it is suppose to be done, starting with totally unique and unrelated LANDRACES and starting from the bottom up. All of the short cuts are taking use to a place that I am not prepared to be.
Basically, IMO, their is a place for everything, except a weak enviromental hermie, lol, but you have to understand how it fits in with what you are doing, and more importantly you have to understand how it works and what are they requirements in order to make it work as described. but anyways I said I was done two paragraphs ago, and I am starting to ramble.
Mass
