What are feminized marijuana seeds

Anyone who has ever used cannabis owes their admiration to the feminine aspect of the plant. This is because female cannabis plants contain higher concentrations of the much-loved cannabinoid, THC. For this reason, growers separate male and female cannabis plants to protect the female plants from pollination. Feminized seeds eliminate the need for this sorting because the plants are basically guaranteed to be female.

1. The creation of feminized versions of plant seeds did not begin with cannabis, but was used in agriculture for many years before being successfully adapted for marijuana in the 1980s.
2. There are several different methods for creating feminized seeds, but they all rely on stressing the female plant until it becomes hermaphrodite and begins producing pollen, which is then used to fertilize another female plant.
3. When feminized cannabis seeds were first released, some growers feared that the plants they were growing would be unstable hermaphrodites. These concerns have proven to be largely unfounded, and as feminization techniques continue to improve, this problem now rarely occurs.
4. Feminized cannabis seeds produce feminized, not female, plants, according to proper scientific definitions. However, they are still sometimes called "female seeds". Since all the plants they produce must grow and flower as females, it is easy to see how the two names are used interchangeably.
5. When feminized seeds first became available for sale, they were more expensive, sometimes much more expensive, than regular cannabis seeds. Luckily, there are now many different strains of good quality, very affordable feminized cannabis seeds, giving growers a lot of choice for their money.
6. Feminized cannabis seeds grow under the same conditions as regular cannabis seeds and do not require special additional nutrients, methods or equipment.
7. The storage conditions required for feminized cannabis seeds are exactly the same as for regular seeds. They should be stored in a completely dry place at a temperature of 5 to 7 degrees Celsius and in the dark. The refrigerator door is usually the ideal location.
8. Feminized cannabis seeds have benefits for almost all growers, but especially for those growing their own medical cannabis, as they may have less time and energy to check and weed out male plants when they start to appear, as is necessary with regular cannabis seeds.
9. There is a misconception about feminized cannabis seeds, namely that they are genetically modified. Genetic modification describes selection processes that can also occur naturally—Skunk #1 and all other cannabis hybrids can properly be called “genetically modified.” On the other hand, genetic engineering is when the DNA of one species is directly inserted into the DNA of another - for example, into tomatoes with fish genes.

Feminized seeds

When you buy a regular cannabis seed, there is a 50/50 chance that the plant will grow female. However, under certain stressful conditions, even a female plant can mature and develop intersexual tendencies.

In fact, this forms the basic principle behind the development of feminized seeds. But mitigating these cross-sex tendencies is also the goal of developing stable feminized seeds. Breeders have been perfecting the process of feminized breeding for many years, all so that home growers can minimize the likelihood of intersex in their plants.

Unlike more complex organisms, cannabis does not belong to one gender or another. This is a very unusual species because it is an annual plant that is also dioecious (produces separate male and female flowers on separate plants). However, each cannabis plant can produce flowers of the opposite sex under certain conditions. This is a survival mechanism for the species, allowing cannabis to thrive and reproduce while being both annual and dioecious.

Some plants become intersex quite easily in response to stress in the growing environment, such as temperature fluctuations, irregular light cycles, physical damage, etc. This is a survival response. The plant finds that growing conditions are unfavorable, meaning its chances of reproducing are lower. Poor conditions mean the plant is less likely to survive the entire season, and there is also less chance that a plant of the opposite sex will be close enough to cross-pollinate.

Under these conditions, some female plants develop staminate (male) flowers to produce their own pollen. They could then fertilize their own pistillate (female) flowers and produce seeds that would grow again the following season. Male plants sometimes bear pistillate flowers, but this is less common.

Old and new methods of breeding feminized seeds.

When feminized seeds were first developed, breeders used two female plants to produce feminized seeds. One was identified as having a tendency toward hermaphroditism (the tendency to produce male flowers when stressed), while the other had no such tendency. Irregularity in the light cycle and pruning have been used to encourage a plant prone to intersexual reproduction to produce male flowers. The pollen from that plant was then used to pollinate another female plant.

This method had a costly disadvantage. Since the “pollen donor” was a plant with strong intersexual tendencies, there was a very high probability that this tendency was transmitted to subsequent seeds.

Using various methods, female plants with very little tendency to be intersex were forced to produce male flowers. This meant that their offspring were no more likely to be intersex than a normal hemp female.

This technique did not require a female plant with a strong intersexual tendency, unlike earlier development methods. Thus, the likelihood of a plant grown from a feminized plant exhibiting intersexual characteristics was dramatically reduced. This is how feminized seeds are produced.

In short, intersex is a fundamental part of the cannabis genome. Each individual plant simply has a greater or lesser tendency to become a hermaphrodite depending on different conditions. Unfortunately, it is impossible to predict a plant's predisposition to hermaphroditism. However, feminized seeds are no more likely to be hermaphrodites than any other seed, thanks to new methods and technologies.