The Cannabis Breeder's Bible (17 page)

The correct way to establish the hybrid parents is by using the female first followed by the male. So if the Northern Lights was male and the Skunk#1 was female then the correct protocol to use would be Skunk#1 x Northern Lights and not Northern Lights x Skunk#1.

However this rule does not hold steadfast any more as a lot of breeders have decided just to list the cross in alphabetical order. The old method provides more useful information.

8

TISSUE CULTURE

TISSUE CULTURE IS A RELATIVELY NEW CLONING METHOD involving a certain degree of lab work. However this is the twenty-first century and this kind of lab equipment can cost as little as $40. What follows is a basic rundown of what tissue culture is and how it works.

A mother plant is selected and a leaf is clipped off a shoot. The leaf is then cleaned of any contaminating microorganisms, spores, dirt, insects or any other foreign bodies. A small sterile chamber is then used to cut the leaf into a number of very small segments. These are referred to as “explants.”

The explants are then placed in a special chemical medium for tissue culture.This medium provides nutrients and hormones for the explants to grow. While in this medium the explants start to develop new cells and organs before finally developing small roots and shoots. The process takes between four to eight weeks. The new shoots will start to look like a small leaf with a stem. When big enough the explants can be taken from the solution and transferred to a propagation chamber. The process will result in a new plant that is identical to the mother plant.

Getting started in tissue culture is easy if you maintain a clean environment. The process of cleaning down the leaf is called “surface cleaning.” A simple rinse with clean water is the first step. To get the best results use de-ionized water with some cleanser. Tween 20 is a popular brand of cleanser used in tissue culture. The idea behind the cleaning is to prevent any other cell tissues from growing other than the tissue you want to propagate. After the wash you need to prepare your leaf by dipping it in either ethanol, alcohol or sodium hypochlorite. After leaving for ten minutes the leaf is ready for the next stage of the tissue culture procedure. There is already a great product on the market called Clorox which serves this tissue culture cleaning purpose.

After completing this sterilization, place the leaf inside a unit called a “laminar flow hood.” This hood is essentially your miniature clean room. Inside the hood you slice up your leaf into multiple little explants. Each of the explants can be placed into separate tissue culture mediums. The slices are made using a sterile scalpel.

The tissue culture is a semiliquid medium. The explants are placed on the surface of the medium. There are many tissue culture mediums available on the internet. Most of them contain the same ingredients, the most common being Agar. The mediums usually contain the elements N, P, K, Mg, S, Ca, Fe, Zn, B, I, Mn, Mo, Co, Cu with the vitamins thiamine, nicotinic acid, and riboflavin. Sugars are also present in the medium along with sugar alcohols. The final ingredients are hormones such as auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, abscisic acid and ethylene. Some products may contain all of these or only some of these.

The medium must be prepared before use so after you have read the instructions and mixed up your medium on the tissue culture bottle you will have to take a pH reading to make sure that everything is okay. You should have a pH of about 5.5 to 6.0. It should not really change from this pH if you have mixed the tissue culture medium as directed on the bottles. Some tissue culture mediums only come in one bottle.

The medium is then placed in the tissue culture vessel, which has been cleansed much the same way as the leaf was. The vessel can be a test tube, a canning jar, a small glass jar or a special tissue culture jar. One widely used tissue culture jar is the Magenta Vessel which is widely advertised on the internet. All the vessels must be capped off with a gas permeable lid.

Now cannabis plants should form in the jar without much light at all although some light is needed to allow photosynthesis to occur when the explants start to grow. You will find that a window or very mild fluorescent light will provide enough light for your explants to grow under. Also keep the area cool, but not too cold. If you find that your tissue culture does not work too well then try starting the tissue culture in darkness for two or three weeks before transferring the explants to a light source.

There is fine line between which methods work for your strains and which do not. You may have to experiment with a couple of mixtures, temperatures and light sources before you will find the conditions that suit your strain the best. Tissue culture is a very easy method of sending other people clone material in the post but it does take a long time to propagate the explants and the recipient must know a little bit about tissue culture. Most cuttings only take two to three weeks to root. Tissue culture can take two months to form anything that can be considered a new plant. However you can only take a limited amount of clones at any one time from a plant. With tissue culture you can create up to 50 plants per leaf! So if you take one mother cannabis plant with 20 leaves then you can make 1000 clones from those leaves—sometimes even more!

This is why tissue culture is quickly becoming one of the most sought after methods of cloning propagation in the market today.

9

WHAT THE MARKET WANTS

SEED PRICING

The market wants cheap seeds that are high-yielding and very potent, or at least that is what most of the market is looking for. There are many strains on the market today that cost a pretty penny. Some of the more popular seed banks sell seeds that cost as high as $200USD for 10-16 seeds. When you see seeds at this price you can probably guess that the seed has won a prize in a Cannabis Cup competition. Generally when a strain wins a prize the price of that strain shoots up above the $100 mark. Supply and demand sets these prices.

Pure Sativa strains take quite some time to breed true because we are looking at an overall grow time of five to nine months. Indica strains can produce new seeds as early as three months from seed. It is actually quicker to breed an Indica plant than it is to breed a Sativa plant. Sativa strains, especially Haze strain, tend to be expensive. Some people can afford to spend $1000 on a couple of packets of seeds, but the new grower probably does not want to part with more than $100 for some seeds.

It is interesting to note that the majority of cannabis seed customers are new and are looking to spend no more than $30 for 10 seeds. There are many different fixed prices on strains but the following gives a basic rundown of what the seed banks charge for different types of strains.

This refers to all good hybrid or IBL strains. We are not talking about problematic unstable strains which can be bought as cheaply as $5. We also do not include feminized strains (selfed plants).

Afghani

Big Bud

California-Indica

Durban

Skunk

Hindu Kush

Haze Strains

The cheapest Haze strain on the market is priced at about $35. The most expensive Haze strain costs $150. The average price of a Haze strain is $80.

Kush Strain

The most expensive Kush strain on the market is $40. The cheapest is $20. The average price is about $30.

Skunk Strains

The most expensive strain is $60 while the cheapest is $15. The average price of a Skunk strain is about $30.

African Strains

They are all priced at around $60.