Regular seeds contain both male and female chromosomes, so there is an equal chance that each seed will grow into either a male or a female plant. This is the way that cannabis plants have been grown since before feminized seeds were invented.
Working with regular seeds allows you to grow large selections of either male or female specimens, ideal for pheno hunting. This can save on wasted hydro system space and nutrient.
Breeding
When humans select the seeds of plants with desirable characteristics, such as seedlessness or larger oil content, this process is called breeding. Over time, this has altered many crop varieties from their wild ancestors to the landraces and cultivars we grow today.
The amount of inbreeding that occurs during a seed production field’s history affects the quality of future hay yields. We used a program to estimate the inbreeding coefficient (FZ) at each of the 32 alfalfa fields using microsatellite genotyping data for both parents and progeny.
The FZ of a seed is determined by the probability that alleles at a given locus were identical by descent and inherited from the same parent—in other words, that the seed is geitonogamous. Using multiple regressions, we found that field selfing rate and the number of racemes per stem both affected seed yield metrics. Seed set, however, was most strongly impacted by the number of racemes per stem.
Cloning
In cloning, scientists create a genetically identical copy of an organism. This happens naturally with some prokaryotic organisms (organisms without a nucleus) and some eukaryotic organisms, including humans. However, it is much more challenging to do with plants because of the complexities of their cell division processes.
Some trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous perennials reproduce asexually by producing seeds with an exact genetic match to themselves (called apomixis). Lombardy poplars (P. nigra Italica), a fast-growing, unique-shaped tree that’s used for windbreaks and ornamentals in our region, are an example.
Researchers have modified Garcinia xanthochymus to produce seeds with the same genetic makeup as the parent plant using gene editing. The resulting plants produce diploid egg cells that bypass meiosis and pass on the full set of chromosomes from their mother. They then use this technique to trigger the expression of a gene known as Sdr4. This gene controls seed dormancy, which is an important quantitative trait that affects the yield of grain crops such as rice.
Pollination
The process by which pollen grains are carried to the stigma of a female flower (cross-fertilization) or to the ovary of the same flower (self-fertilization). It is the step that initiates seed production. Pollination can be facilitated by wind, insects, birds or other animals, and it can occur between different plants (cross-pollination) or within the same plant (self-pollination).
Many flowers are attractive to a wide range of insect visitors through scent and visual cues. They also attract ants, bees and flies by supplying pollen or nectar. Some plants rely entirely on animal pollination to produce their seeds, including major crops for food and industrial products.
Pairwise comparisons of seed or fruit set from plants treated with a variety of methods for restricting pollinator access—including leaving flowers open, bagging them to exclude certain pollinator groups or caged to prevent any pollinators from entering—can reveal the factors that influence a cultivar’s pollination requirements. For instance, a high-pollination environment might induce maternal effects on offspring fitness, such as through the selection for traits that trade off between early and later reproductive effort.
Genetics
Unlike feminized seeds, regular seed produce male plants by default. This means you’ll need to identify and remove the male plants from your grow, which lowers yield levels. Fortunately, this is not difficult, but it does require a lot of experience and knowledge.
The genetics of seed size and number are important plant traits that define crop quality and contribute to yield (Venable 1992). Although the trade-off hypothesis suggests that there are finite resources invested in reproduction, evidence for such trade-offs is often contentious.
Gunjaca et al. phenotyped 174 common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) accessions through a seed composition assay and genotyped them with 6,311 high-quality DArTseq markers. They identified 31 QTL that explain natural variation for nutrient content in the seeds, including 22 QTL for nitrogen on chromosomes Pv01, Pv02, and Pv04; five on chromosomes Pv07, Pv08, and Pv10 for phosphorus; and two on chromosome Pv05 for potassium and zinc.
They also found a QTL for seed weight on chromosome 1, which explains about 15% of variation. There was no overlap between this QTL and the QTL for seed number per fruit, suggesting that the two traits are determined by independent genetic factors.
