Super Male Project

@canna, what i do if im going to use it in a week or 2 is collect it in a small tub or bag like you do, you can add a small big of flour to it so it dont get damp and thats ok to do, but storing it at room temp dont last long, possibly just 2 weeks to 4 at a push, any longer and its not viable,
the only way to store it long term is in the fridge, but you would have to collect the pollen in a bag and put it into a small tub, then get a jar and half fill it with rice, then put the tub of pollen inside the jar but leave the lid off the pot the pollen is in, then put the lid on the jar and store it in the fridge or freezer, ive not tried either method as ive not stored pollen long term,

pollen gets everywhere but if your careful their your ok,
what i do is grow my males in another room, when i collect pollen i wait until i see the male flowers open then i hold a tub under the open flowers then gently tap the stem and then the pollen falls in the tub, i do this for a week or 2 then its ready to use,

then i get a female out of the flower room and take it into the male room, make sure all windows and doors are closed so it dont spread, then i open the tub the pollen is stored in then i use a small brush or que tip/cotton bud and dip it in the pollen then gently brush it on the pistils that you want seeds from, what i do is put the pollen on the lower buds so the rest of the plant can still be smoked and remains seed free, so i brush the pollen on the pistils i want seeds from then leave that female plant in that room for 4 or 5 hours,

then i get a spray bottle and go back to the female and give it a good spray down with water, then i take it out the pollen room and place it near the grow room while it dries off, the water kills any pollen that has not pollenated the plant, this stops it spreading in the grow room, then when its dry it goes back under the lights then within a couple of days the pistils die and you will see the seeds forming, then 3 or 4 weeks later the seeds are splitting the seed pods, i then leave the seeds to either fall out the plant or i collect them when the buds have dried after harvest.

ill update this thread with pics in the next day or 2 as ive got a couple of males ill be using for this project, ill also document the pollenation process as well in this thread.

ive not tried storing pollen in freezer but thats the best method for long term storage, short term storage i keep it in the bottom of a cupboard in my living room, i have it in a tub with the lid off so it dont get damp with the lid on, then its ok for 2 weeks, ive kept it viable for 4 weeks but did not produce as many seeds as fresh pollen would,

but i think freezing is the best method to use for long term storage, ive read you can add self raising flour to the pollen to make it spread out more and also to keep the moisture out, again not tried it so cant comment, but what i would do for long term strorage is collect the pollen in a paper bag or on a sheet of paper then gently tap it into a small tub or vial like them seed vials, then place this inside a jar with rice in it and put the lid on the jar then place it in the freezer,

now the only reason i have not tried his is because when i take drinks out the fridge they condensate so this would kill the pollen, but the rice should remove all moisture so when its taken out the freezer it should be good to use, but id leave the jar closed until the jar was back at room temp before opening as im guessing it could condensate up if you opened it strait after getting it out the freezer,

ill try and find out some info on long term storage and post it in this journal, then we can come back to it in the futre.

alls good mate just been busy with my kids and haloween so not had chance to get on here as much as i normally am, so ill get this thread updated with pics either tomorrow or the day after, once ive collected pollen from the males then ill stress them to try and produce a super male, then i can experiment and see what kind of results i can get,
 
Glad to hear from you DP! I was going to send a posse out soon. LOL
Take care of the kiddies, no worries here. :-)
I'll read your post with much concentration in the morning. I'm a bit foggy in da' brain right now. Quick read through was very enlightening though! Gonna collect some pollen tomorrow.
I've read a lot of pollen collection threads on the net where growers use Silica gel packets in the pollen when they store long term. I'm going to try that and see what happens. Makes perfect sense to me.
:thanks:
 
Exciting experiment, DP! Sub'd. :) I've been wanting to breed, but have no separate space other than the great outdoors. Would rather grow males indoors, out of respect for other outdoor growers that could be in my area, though. One question I have though, is how do you know if a male plant has good genes? It's not like we smoke males. Or is it as simple as keeping track of this strain/that strain? If that is the case, I may or may not like the males I could get from a big jar of random bag seeds.

Very interested in seeing how this goes!:thumb:
 
Heady said:
Knowledge is power, thanks for sharing. Learning so much here. :thumb:
Click to expand...
:ciao: Heady,
DP is just a walking mountain of knowledge. LOL Love reading his posts. :thumb:
 
@AMK, welcome to the super male project, when i pick male i look for a few key things, 1 speed of growth, 2 node spacing, 3 genetic problems, 1 and 2 is easy to tell but 3 is a bit hit and miss, for example if i grow a male and it has deformed leaves then ill usually kill it and not use it, but some potent strains produce deformed leaves so the deformed leaves might play a roll in the potency of the plant, but that would take more testing to do.
but basically if the male grows well and quicker than the females which males should do then it ticks box number 1, if the node spacing is night and tight and leaf coverage is nice then it ticks box number 2, then that plant is a good condidate for collecting pollen from.

we dont grow many males and some just grow 1 male and use the pollen from that, well this is ok if your not planning on creating a new strain and working with pheno types as your not back crossing your just using the first cross to produce seeds, the first cross you make is always going to produce pretty stable results, but if you want to work with a pheno type from the batch of seeds then you would need to back cross with the male strain or back cross with the cloned female,

but if you are just making 1 cross to produce a new strain then id pick a male from a strain you like and have tried if possible, if thats not possible then check the strain out and see what others think about it, for example i purchased about 8 ken estes gdp seeds, all turned out male so i kept the best one, i had not tried or grown gdp but from the info on this site i knew it was a really nice strain, so i then used it for a male to cross with. working with pollen is ok if your careful, theirs no reason why your whole room should turn to seed and you can just produce seeds from 1 or 2 buds on the plant, so the rest can be smoked.

quick update on the super male project.
candidate number 1 decided to kill himself, he was to weak and could not put up with the training regime he was forced to work under, so he decided to top himself and was laid to rest.

candidate 2 is doing well, under light schedule stress at the minute, its only just showed signs of it being male so got some way to go with this one, but ill try the light stress method first before pushing him to far.

ive planted my purple strains and all are regular seeds, so their should be a male or 2 when these get to maturity, ill be trying nute stress and heat stress as well, the project continues and its only a matter of time before i get a male go hermie on me, i cant start the stress treatment until i know if the plant is male as i could start it early and get one go hermie but it could just be a female that turned hermie.
 
Hey DP, one of my males started to develop pistils, and I killed it off before I noticed. I didn't see them until I was uploading the pics a few days later. :laughtwo: I think it was stressed from being moved from 18/6 to 12/12 back to 18/6 and then repeated the same. Long story...but that's what happened. It definitely was a born male. :biglaugh: I might try to repeat that "stress test"...if you will...and see if I can get it to work again.
All of your information is very helpful. I wish I had 1/4 of your growers knowledge. :thumb:
Glad to hear the project is still under way and very sorry to hear about the first one. :rip:
Good luck as always!
 
thanks for the info canna, hopefully my males will do the same, ive had 2 males go hermie in the past but that was before i read up about them, thats who i came across the super male project on an internet site

its an interesting idea for sure, it might lead to nothing but until we try we just wont know. i dont know if the pollen from a super male is used on a female to create a nice strain, or if you let the super male self pollenate, or maybe you pollenate the super male with the pollen from another male, so just that gives me 3 different tests to do, all will produce different results, so theirs a lot to do so cant wait to get started, theirs just not much info online about this, just bits and pieces, maybe its a trade secret and its how the potent strains was produced, or maybe it produces poor results, but im thinking if it produced poor results then it would not be called a super male.
so hopefully ill find out if its something worth doing,

without doing things like these we will never know what the end results can be, look at polyploid for example, if they was killed early on due to all the strange mutant leaves then we would never have potent strains, so polyploids and triploads like ducks foot are also on my project list, i did try forcing a plant to turn polyplod but i couldnt get it to work, but crushed up roots of a certain plant can be used to soak the seeds in then most the seeds die but the ones that survive after planting will be polyploids, so lots of experiments for the future.
just wish i had more room and more money, then i could run several projects at once, for now its one at a time.

i got all my info off this site, when i joined this site i didnt even know you could buy fem seeds, i grew many years ago and cloned plants but never knew much really, just used miracle grow and grew a plant, it grew ok and produced well, but didnt know anything about topping or any other training method. Ive never been interested in gardening, so when i decided to grow again i searched the net and come across this site. this is my main source of info, anything else or if i want to take something further then ill search the net

for example not many people or growers know what the strain G13 stands for, G13 was suppose to of been produced using plants treated with a chemical to force them to turn polyploid, clones of these polyploid plants where stolen from a lab and this was then used to create G13, or at least thats what the info suggests, so it was made with genetically modified mother plant, so now look at the name
G13, look at the 13th letter of the alphabet =M,
so G13 = GM, now does that suggest the storey is true, after all a polyploid is genetically modified.
 
I gm bud means potent bud then im happy to go down the gm option, ill try and find out what the chemical was that you treat the seeds with, at the moment id have to say the word cochlene pops up in my head, not sure on spelling but im thinking that was the chemical used to force a seed to produce polyploid plants, i know the chemical is dangerous and you get it from crushing up the roots of a certain plant then you soak the seeds in the chemical, most seeds will die but the odd one or 2 will survive and grow.
could be chocline or something like that. but thats another project for another day,
 
Dj short has also talked about males becoming hermie he called them " reverse hermaphrodites" and has also state some phenotypes have a high thc%. So it will be interesting to see what techniques force a male to hermie. Like this
 
Great reading!

Any news on this project?

Btw. I think the name of the chemical used is "colchicine". According to wikipedia this is a synthetic chemical close to the one found in the autumn crocus plant.

I need to smoke a bowl now, and really dig in to all of this. Very interesting. :)

Thanks for doing this, and best of luck!
 
@potzilla, thanks buddy, if we dont try these things we wont know what happens,

@Coffeeholic, i think your right my friend, but im also thinking that it might be the product used to make polyplids which is going to be my next project after this one has finished, if i had more lights id run more experiments at the same time, but my only option would be to set up 3 rooms with leds, so id need 6 led panels and id want around 2 leds per room that total 1000watts, but leds are expenive and some are super chuffed with their results and others are not so impressed, so for me to spend £1000 to £3000 on lights and filters etc etc its a huge risk, id love to just test one led then i can do a side by side grow with hid and led, then if it gives great results then ill jump in feet first and buy all the leds i need. its just a big risk to take and i dont have the money to waste,

the males i got growing now ill try and stress with light shock and nute od or nute def, ill also butcher the plants and try what Spimp suggested a while back, im sure it was spimp, he said he knew an old guy who was doing the same thing and he got males to hermie by clipping off all the male pollen sacs then this forced the plant hermi so ive got a few methods to try over the next month of 2, i only need 1 hermie male to start with as that gives me 3 different tests to run
1, self pollenation.
2, pollen from super male used on a female plant.
3, using the pollen from a regular male and use this to pollenate the female pistils on the super male
the site i was getting the best info from must of been shut down as i cant find it anywhere, so theirs data i could of added for you all to see but i cant find the site, if i come across it ill copy n paste the data and test results.

@canabinerd, again i think your right, but ive just got something in the back of my head telling me its polyploid, maybe its use for both, so ill have a read up and ill either try and make some because if its the same product then its made from crushing the roots of a certain plant so i could possibly by the plant or even get some seeds and grow the plant needed, their was another option on turning males hermi and this method was using a spray that you sprayed on the plant when it was in full flower and covered in male pollen sacs

so got plenty to do and try and ill keep going until ive tested everything i can so then i have fair data and it might give us some ideas or even a new method of producing super potent strains.

my next project is going to be a polyploid cannabis, this is basically a genetically modifed cannabis and is suppose to produce monster sized buds and potency is anything from double to 4 times as high as the regular strains, so i got plenty of keep me busy, just wish i had more cash so i could set up one more room, i want to try led's as it keeps energy costs down or keeps temps down compared to the hid grown plants,

thanks for following along, sorry for the lack of updates but not had much to add as i didnt know what plants was male so now their under flower schedule i can start stressing them and see what happens, light shock will be really good to try
 
So glad to hear you are continuing with this project DP, I had almost unsubscribed thinking it was cancelled out for some reason. LOL
I am looking forward to what your results are as you go here. :thumb:
 
ok I wanna hear this one
 
donpaul.p said:
the males i got growing now ill try and stress with light shock and nute od or nute def, ill also butcher the plants and try what Spimp suggested a while back, im sure it was spimp, he said he knew an old guy who was doing the same thing and he got males to hermie by clipping off all the male pollen sacs then this forced the plant hermi so ive got a few methods to try over the next month of 2, i only need 1 hermie male to start with as that gives me 3 different tests to run
1, self pollenation.
2, pollen from super male used on a female plant.
3, using the pollen from a regular male and use this to pollenate the female pistils on the super male
the site i was getting the best info from must of been shut down as i cant find it anywhere, so theirs data i could of added for you all to see but i cant find the site, if i come across it ill copy n paste the data and test results.
Click to expand...

I have some data on how to stress the male. You could try this.
- A dry environment RH 1O-2O % all thru veg. I vegged mine for 2 months.
-Diminishing Light Schedule during Veg. Started 18/6 all the way down to 12/12
-Hot Tempetures between 28-36 C. Heat stress but no light burn
-Dry Periods between watering
-Extreme defoliation
-During the first week of flower I super cropped by breaking the main stem between the last node.
 
danishoes21 said:
I have some data on how to stress the male. You could try this.
- A dry environment RH 1O-2O % all thru veg. I vegged mine for 2 months.
-Diminishing Light Schedule during Veg. Started 18/6 all the way down to 12/12
-Hot Tempetures between 28-36 C. Heat stress but no light burn
-Dry Periods between watering
-Extreme defoliation
-During the first week of flower I super cropped by breaking the main stem between the last node.
Click to expand...
Good info Danishoes21! I am going to have some extra plants soon, so I will be trying your method too.
:thanks:
 
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