Female or Feminized Seeds?

[web420]

Let's start to make clear how No Mercy does NOT do it: say goodbye to mother
nature.

While during the sixties and seventies a true 'breeding frenzy' took place in the agricultural world, quite some cannabis breeders took to experimenting with colchicine. Colchicine (a powerful mutagen for both man and animals) simply stops cell duplication, while the cellcore duplication continues all the same.
Result: a doubling (or even more) of the chromosome set. With plants this treatment can be advantageous, for when they survive they often show enforced properties such as, for example, a higher production of certain substances or an increased resistance to molds or disease. You can imagine that once in a while THC production went up as well (Netherweed). What also resulted were hermaphrodites.

When gender chromosomes double, the result is that male and/or female chromosomes appear manifold. What is the plant to do? Become male or female? No, they become all at once! The result is what we call 'feminised' or effeminate seed.
Maybe this went a little too fast? Probably it becomes more clear when you realise how nature normally organises these things: genetically spoken a cannabis plant is more or less predisposed to become male or female. This is regulated by 2 chromosomes, which are, just like with humans and animals, an X or an Y chromosome. A plant with 2 X chromosomes (XX) becomes female, one with an X and an Y turns into a male. Just like people and animals a plant has it's own hormones that regulate the plants functioning, of which gender is just one.

http://www.420genetics.com/images/NM-MF.jpg

This hormone balance is mostly genetically determined, but partly also influenced by environmental factors. When for example the roots are badly damaged, there is a big chance male flowers will form while genetically spoken the plant is still a female. This has to do with hormone balance. In this case a substance that is produced in the roots and normally slows down another hormone found in the leafs, will be produced in smaller quantities. Result: Male flowers. When you regard this phenomenon in an evolutionairy sense this is quite remarkable, for when a female plant is in bad condition it requires much less energy to produce pollen than to form female flowers, which eventually will contain the energetically extremely 'expensive' seed.

http://www.420genetics.com/images/NM-SF.jpg

Anyway, while discussing hormone balance, we get to FEMALE SEED: a female is a plant with XX or only female chromosomes.
When you have seed with only X-chromosomes, you can be certain this seed will grow out into a plant that is genetically female. But how can you get the plant to do this? As follows: a female plant (XX) is forced by hormones to produce male flowers. This is achieved by using a very low, very specific concentration of gibberellic acid. Gibberellic acid is a hormone which naturally occurs in the plant and is mostly involved with growth and flowering. When a plant thus treated produces pollen, this pollen contains only X-chromosomes (no Y-chromosome has entered the equation). When we offer this pollen to another female (also XX) plant we can be absolutely certain to get seeds which are 100% XX!
THESE SEEDS WE CALL FEMALE

http://www.nomercy.nl/en/framesets/fs-prod-seedbank.html

[web420]

Info "Feminized Seeds"
In an experiment done in 1999 we grew 15 varieties of "feminized" seeds. We started with 30 seeds per variety. The goals were: 1) to determine the percentages of female, male, and hermaphroditic plants. 2) to compare the uniformity (homogeneity) among plants from "feminized" seeds with those grown from "regular" seeds.

1. The results were excellent. Nine out of fifteen varieties had 100% female offspring. Percentages of female plants from the other 6 varieties were between 80 and 90%. These plants were all hermaphrodites, producing their male flowers at the end of their lifecycle. Seed-setting hardly took place. No males were found.

2. Approximately 70% of the plants of varieties grown from "feminized" seeds were far more uniform than plants grown from "regular" seeds of the same variety. About 20% of the varieties were a little more uniform, while in 10% of the varieties no difference in uniformity was seen.

From literature and our own findings it appears that the growth of a male or female plant from seed, except for the predisposition in the gender chromosomes, also depends on various environmental factors. The environmental factors that influence gender are:

1. a higher nitrogen concentration will give more females.
2. a higher potassium concentration will give more males.
3. a higher humidity will give more females.
4. a lower temperature will give more females.
5. more blue light will give more females.
6. Fewer hours of light will give more females. It is important to start these changes at the three-pairs-of-leaves stage and continue for two or three weeks, before reverting to standard conditions.


To produce our feminized seeds, we start with selected female clones. Under standard conditions these female clones do not produce any male flowers. By the method we found, we are able to have these female clones produce abundant male flowers and pollen (see photos). The pollen thus produced we use for the production of our "feminized" seeds.

http://www.dutch-passion.nl/engels/female.html

[stevesarich]

That's really interesting Rodge. We just need to find more information on the specific use of Gibberillic acid. I'm also told that aspirin, disolved in the feeding water during flower, will also cause male flower production.