What makes a great male?

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Dr. Manny Bowles

high on my own supply
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We all have things we are looking for in a female plant. But...
As far as breeding is concerned, what sets a male 'keeper' apart from the rest of the crowd of males of the same strain?
I have grown my share of males from seed, but have always culled them as soon as they show and just kept females because I've never really had much interest in breeding.
Most of the male plants I've grown and killed have looked very similar to other males of the same strain. I see more variances in females, but this is probably because most of the time I let them finish and don't kill them :)
I have read 'breeders' notes saying they "selected" their male, making it sound like they had a bunch to choose from but that one stood out.
So, what is it? What makes up a great male plant? Is it the stature/branching? Growth rate? Again, I've seen little variance in the males I've grown but 6 weeks is the longest I've ever let one go.
Do they show more variations down the line?
 
:yeahthat:
I don't think i've come across a solid answer either:confused2:
 
There is a sticky in the 'Breeding' section that addresses this very thing.:holysheep:

Wet
 
I remember there being a cpl different things you look for....I think late showing males are preferred. Or that cld be early showing...:) One too many bowls of Larry tonight...lol
 
Gee, I get all ready to put my 2 cents worth in and then I find out you are talking about PLANTS:rolleyes: :giggle:
 
:rofl:

chose me chose me...

I look for structure and rub the stalk for smell...I also make sure there are trich on the pollen sac..when we say solected is from the males we have at the time...but remember not all sollected males are the best...when I make beans I like to start 30 or more and go from that..sometimes i win....but most times I dont..hope this helps...

take care and be safe:bolt::bong:
 
Some go as far as to smoke a little of it too. flavor slightly higher THC then normal males, all males smell funky IME tho
 
If I had the space, I would love to do some breeding.:hubba: I personally would (space allowing) keep all of the best looking males and then take a couple clones from each one and label them so that I don't lose track. Then grow the boys to completion to see how they do. Then I would dry and smoke some from each male and select for taste and effect. Once I have narrowed the field a bit, I would take a couple of my best females and label each branch when they are flowering so that I could polinate the same female with all of the available males. Do that on each female that I want to test from, then take pollin from the viable males and pollinate each bud by hand so that I could isolate the seeds produced. meanwhile, I would have to continue to maintain each male either through cloning or revegging so that I could save that phenotype from each male. Once I have seeds, I would plant so many from each cross and grow them to harvest and judge the phenos at that point so that I can isolate my best male/female crosses. Once I do that, I can repeat the crossing again except this time I could pollinate whole plants with one male phenotype for each female so that I can maximize my seed production from there.:hubba: sounds simple enough :eek: It would probably take 2-3 years to really do it right unless I had a really large space to do it in and the money to supply the energy and setup costs. I imagine that is why the best beans cost so much.
 
Wetdog said:
There is a sticky in the 'Breeding' section that addresses this very thing.:holysheep:

Wet

Thanks Wet, a good read but I'm looking for a few more opinions. Thailord had some good points in that thread, as did Mutt.

I guess the concensus is vigor, structure, smell, taste and maybe even 'high'.
I don't have room at this point but it would be fun to play with in the future if I had the space. Time would be another thing I would need lots more of to do it right I suppose.
 
Well, I'll report as I go since I'm going to be doing exactly this, growing and selecting males.

When I was gifted some un-named seeds back in 2009, I stupidly didn't pollinate the plants. Got 2 females and 1 male, so the seeds weren't from a hermi and if not pure, I'd say at least 90% Indica. All the plants have 3 bladed leaves and no smell till the chop. This last feature is what allows me to keep growing it without the wife complaining.

Anyway, my kid grew a seed from some decent smoke to call his own. It came in 100% male and I pollinated some pre flowers on some extra clones of mine as an experiment.

It worked, and I have some in a shot glass right now and cracking. I'll plant them this afternoon when it cools off some.

What I plan on doing is cubing the strain I have going now. I'd like to have some seeds set back 'just in case' and I figure I can do the first cross in a couple of months and another next spring, the third next fall.

Gonna be a bit weird trying for males and killing females. We'll see how it goes.

Wet
 

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