Marker assisted breeding is not possible for what makes these strains so special. The traits are too complex and are governed by too many genes to make it feasible. There are no markers that will track all the genes of interest, and no one even knows what genes to track anyway.
Quantifying the thcas/cbdas is only going to give you a hint at TAC. No way are you going to track all those terpene synthases. And if you are thinking of the promoters/elicitors… How do you know you are tracking the right ones. Honestly the traits we are selecting for in these top lines are just too complex for markers as they are applied to simpler traits in other crops.
Please essplain your theory on how to apply markers to these traits if you want a decent conversation. Kinda just seam to be whacking off about how you know so much about genetics. But do you understand the complexity behind what people are really selecting for? Is it just quantity of TAC/terps?
Cannabis is federally illegal. Most of the universities with huge agricultural research labs aren’t working with cannabis yet.
New apple varieties are still pheno hunted from seed and then cloned because they’re so heterozygous. Just like humans. If you had infinite kids would they only represent a fixed number of phenotypes? Idk but if you fix the infinite variable to any reasonable finite value then each offspring would be unique. There is evidence that cannabis can be line bred so I wouldn’t suggest cannabis breeding is analogous to apple breeding but I’d also suggest it’s not directly analogous to tomato breeding either.
The priciest tomato hybrids can sell for a dollar per seed, and one tomato can make a thousand seeds, so therefore, yes, someone would pay that, but only for a near exclusive right, otherwise the value of the seeds would go down.
IP law still says that traditional breeding methods do not qualify for protection, at least effective protection, and that is a lot of what is behind the madness in prices. You can make the buyer sign an agreement to not resell the genetics, but good luck enforcing it effectively.
The first “blue” tomato, meaning antho variety, was created by Oregon state university. They never meant to share it with anyone besides Oregon farmers, but the tomato escaped from captivity, then bred rampantly with other varieties all over the world. That’s where the blue tomatoes in all seed catalogs came from. It’s hard to keep great genetics under wraps.
I’m glad you’re asking the question, but there is no one answer. $10k for a cut is probably never going to be worth it to a home grower, or caregiver, or even a mid-size indoor grower. They will almost always find something that suits their needs as good or better that will be much cheaper. For a breeder, or any grower thinking about cannabis more as a commodity crop, $10k for the right variety would be very reasonable.
Think of it this way: Your average corn farmer would be insane to spend more than a fraction of a $0.01 on a corn seed, but there are also companies and governments that send industrial spies to Iowa every year, and they’re spending much, much more than $10k/variety.
We know people that literally received millions for their azaleas! Still get residuals also. There’s orchids that sell for the amount. Breeding that stuff brings tons of money in. But again, they are flowers and accepted by ALL parts of our society.
A plant that’s considered virtually a weed, and dispised by a quarter of the population, and hated by at least an eighth will never bring that kind of money yet. Maybe so, maybe not… I wouldn’t personally ever pay that much for a cut. I can grow, pretty fucking good! I’ll find me something relative, and grow it the best I can!
Also I’m not, nor would trying to make my living from this plant.
Understand, people like us view this plant as priceless because it’s a medication that makes us right. However the rest of society? They’re coming around, but they being slow about it
That’s the way I articulated to Cloner anyway. It’s priceless to us, but not yet accepted. That’s really the entire issue with everything in my opinion
Knew some guys that crossed there own orchid strain back in the late 90’s and they were getting 15-25k a cut and severely limited sales. They made a killing off of a “ im bored in retirement “ hobby
I dont know that much about genetics, just more than I would like to know, to see there is a massive gap, and surely there are educated geneticist floating around here but keep it shut cause of all the hype and no tech talk…
MAS might not be possible for terpene(yet) but thc is…
So applying it first stage when poping beans will save you alot of time and space for lets say the cost of 1000 plants being screened. And the cost of a 1000 high grade beans… With the rents skyrocketing per sq. Ft.
So… For starters I would say it is feasible for a smaller company to select the first gen and go from there by the Nose or by GCMS… To select for your prime cros candidates…
About the sythases I would concur and change it over to metobolomics…
Wacking off…its being done its just hard yes yes… Ah its good to be europen sometimes…
I have a bunch of similar leds. quantum boards.some are 3 k some 3.5k some are all white others have cheapo reds others cree reds. I get crazy morphology differences on the same clones.
Again, cannabis is federally illegal … the companies using MAS like Monsanto can’t legally work with cannabis.
Who is it you think is going to do this if not researchers at a big university or a research lab at a company like Monsanto?
Further, you’re suggesting you can quantify thc content of a plant from dna of seed stock? I’m highly doubtful. you should definitely publish a paper with those findings imo.
I found this weird giant biotech conglomerate company offering their services. They can differentiate thc and Cbd phenotypes and it sounds like terpenes but doesn’t say quantity of terpenes. Plus how many terpenes are you going to look for? The good stuff has dozens of terps …
So people are using MAS in cannabis but it doesn’t sound useful to me for example because I’m looking for The Dank not one terpene and disease resistance (it’s a don’t care for me inside).
The website looked kind of weird to me but if you look into the company they are a real, relatively large biotech company that’s been around for decades.
They don’t offer up much about their service besides saying to contact them. I have a feeling they’re used to dealing with industrial scale so they’re not exactly public consumer interfaced.
Shit man you’ve never heard of Perkin Elmer… Sorry, cannot take your science talk seriously at all anymore. They make at least one version of like every instrument in any scientific lab ffs
Basics I look for (although admittedly not a grower)
Bulbous trichome production
Aromatic profile
Calyxing and structure
The big 3 for me.
Having the right cut matters as an extractor as well, it’s our job to capture the profiles the grower is putting down, you at least want an accurate representation of that strain, which means at least the genes express the right traits.
I’ve seen growers struggle with growing “good” bag appeal bud. So a cut in my mind is just a shortcut in having to deal with it as stated before. Is 10k justified? I dunno, what someone is willing to pay, and their necessities change depending on the time value investment involved/saved.
I can believe there’s thousand+ dollar cuts, the same way there’s strawberries that cost hundreds.
Monsanto and large agricultural firms can do whatever they want, there’s still gonna be those dudes playing in small craft environments doing something special.
I know I’m late to the party, and sorry I don’t have analytics to back it up.
