hey rad and well any1 who cud answer me wud be great but I jus had a question what is selfpolinating mean is it where u just let ur plant grow out till it produces a seed?? also what does backcrossing mean I'm just wondering I'm trying to look into tryn to take an auto strain I'm getting (dark devil ,and red poison) and makn seeds from them also wud those seeds be fem seeds or regular regular I'm guessing??
Self pollinating is when the female plant produces pollen, the pollen fertilizes the female flowers, and then the flowers produce seeds.
The ways I know of for a female plant to produce pollen are a) the mature female plant produces 'nanners, b) the flowering plant is both male and female (hermaphrodite), and c) a human applies colloidal silver or something to induce some of the buds to produce pollen.
If the pollen is male, the seeds can be male or female.
If the pollen is female, the seeds will be female.
Hermaphrodite pollen is male.
I THINK 'nanner pollen is also male. I don't know for sure.
Colloidal silver pollen is female.
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Now the hard question ...
According to my reading ...
Backcrossing refers to taking the offspring of 2 parents (a cross/ an F1 hybrid) that has the desired traits and breeding it (back) with one of the parents to 'stabilize' the new strain. For backcrossing to produce a stable hybrid strain, multiple generations of crossing and back crossing need to occur, with the desired traits verified in each new generation, to produce a stable hybrid. This might be known as an In-Bred Line (IBL.) Lots of hybrid seeds being sold are not very stable as evidenced by multiple phenotypes in one hybrid strain. Unstable hybrids can be great because they have 'hybrid vigor' whereas in-breeding can produce weaker, but stable plants.
At the simplest level of breeding, crossing two parents to produce a couple of hundred seeds creates F1 Hybrids. Most F1 hybrids are a lot like the other F1 hybrids with the same parents IF THE PARENTS ARE STABLE. They are almost like clones of each other, and can be called a strain.
When F1s are bred together, from the same parents or different parents, they produce F2 hybrids, which tend to have divergent characteristics (as in they are all over the map in their behaviour.) The best of these can give years of service as 'clone only' strains but the F2 group as a whole is unstable/unpredictable.
Most seeds sold are some kind of hybrid, so crossing to strains creates an F2 (or F3 or F4...) Backcrossing a homemade hybrid with good characteristic to the parents create more stable genetics.
Dark Devil Auto seems to be an F5 strain with three Northern Lights Backcrosses(from the Jack Herer) and ruderalis on both sides.
Red Poison seems to be an F2 strain (with Ruderalis on only one side.)
Backcrossing to Red Poison probably makes more sense than DDA.
If you want to create a clone only strain, breed the two and save the clones you like
If you want to create a stable strain from your favorite clone, learn all you can about breeding, because the project might take several years.
If you start with frankenstrains like DDA, I imagine it will take even longer.
If you start with true landrace strains or IBL, I imagine the time will be shorter.
I only know of one person on 420 that has created a fairly stable strain (over 15-20 years,) but there are probably many more.
Then again, I may be all wrong and a BC2 strain is different than an F2 strain and what I call and F2 might be an S2. I didn't really get Mendel in high school and there has been a lot of advance in the science in the 200 years since Mendel put forward his theories.
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If you can't control the environment, try timing your grows so that you have plants vegging during that time of the year.
