Sexing Cannabis Plants

Most websites that sells cannabis seeds today have in stock only cannabis seeds feminized. 10 years ago, they were seen as something for the professionals, but now everybody grows. Why have they become so popular? To answer this question, we must first know a little more about the cannabis plant, and consider the purpose of production.

Marijuana is the mature, unfertilized (unpollinated) flowers of cannabis varieties specific, selected for their high content (> 5%) of THC and other cannabinoids. Given this definition, it is easy to understand why the producers are only interested in female plants.

The revolution in cannabis seeds industry

Each of cannabis plants in nature can be male or female - the male produces polm that fertilize the female plant, which develops seeds. This is quite unusual for an annual plant, but true. These "regular" cannabis seeds can produce both male and female plants, in different proportions. There is no way to predetermine the sex of the plant in search of a seed.

The only way to select female plants was until a few years ago, to cultivate a greater number of ordinary seeds, give them enough time to bloom until sexual characteristics were presented. At this stage the male plants were eliminated manually. This means a growing plant as needed and discard many of them. What a waste of cannabis, time and money!

Feminized cannabis seeds have been created to satisfy the need of having only female plants the seed. Experiments began in the early 90s, but the technology to mature early around 2005.

What exactly are femminized cannabis seeds and how are they produced?

Feminized Cannabis is produced from selected clones of plants of high quality. In the Netherlands it is common choice to start with plants that are used for the production coffeeshops. The female plants are sprayed with special silver salts, it causes the production of male flowers. But polm in these flowers do the female chromosome. When crossed with another woman, the offspring will be female.

Are there other benefits?

Besides the fact that feminized seeds only produce female plants, there may be other benefits. One of them is that it is possible to "clone a plant like a seed. Of course, this expression is scientifically ridiculous, but it really gives the idea: the passage of a plant with itself lead to the offspring of many of the characteristics of the mother plant, which really like clone. The producers of a plant that is illegal in most of the world seems to appreciate the predictability over all!