The High Times Interview: Cannarado Genetics

The post The High Times Interview: Cannarado Genetics appeared first on High Times.

If you had the chance to sit down with some of your favorite cannabis breeders, what would some of your questions be? It was an incredibly humbling and intimidating experience to sit down and talk to one of the hottest cannabis breeders in the game—Cannarado Genetics.

His seeds are some the most sought out on the market right now, for retail and resell, and for good reason. He’s a great breeder, and there many people around the world taking notice. I tried to find out a little more about his background, when and how he got involved with cannabis, and then jumped into some of the more interesting, in-depth questions that many people want to know.

High Times: When was the debut of Cannarado Genetics?

Cannarado Genetics: I started playing with the idea around 2009-2010 when I jumped online. I had never really gone online. I popped up on IC for a minute, and once THC Farmer was big with the Raskal and Top Dawg auctions, that’s what got me going and then seeing the initial mass influx of all these people, I realized I had been reading and breeding for so long, [but] I had never sold any seeds for any reason. Seeing the market and the industry change, I just jumped into it. No better time than now, right?

HT: What’s your focus on more? Feminized or regulars?

CG: I kind of focus on the fem thing since it’s a niche. Not as many people were doing it when I really first started doing it under the Cannarado company. I think I dropped my stuff on The Canna Collective with DJ back in the day. It wasn’t that long ago, but like I said, you just see all these people kind of coming out with these seed companies. I have been doing this so long, why not just package some of it up and kind of jump into the industry?

HT: So do you prefer fems over regs or vice-versa?

CG: Depends on what your ultimate goal is. With fems, you kind of know what your getting. You’re going to have that hermaphroditic tendency in that lineage, but your pheno variation is going to lean way towards the elite cuts you used to make those fems. You are going to have leaners towards each side on more of what you’re looking for.

Sometimes with reg seeds, the selection, as many breeders have seen, can go where you think you have a great stud and you breed it to something, and you see these absolutely recessive genetics that come out that you were not looking for. Do I like working regs? Yes, I like working them more than fems, because it’s more work. It’s more rewarding when you finish something like that.

The fem thing, it has a purpose. People like fems, like those who do not have a lot of room, people who don’t want to have to choose a male, or pick males out. Some people don’t even know what a male looks like. They would rather have a fem stock to go through and be sure they would be seeing female plants where the phenos might vary, but they don’t have to worry about males. It just depends. I like working fems. They make some fire seeds. It’s a matter of getting through the hermaphroditic traits to find the fire. Some do better. The White does well. I did the Grape Pie thing, and it had a little more tendency to herm, but it’s just part of it. We are circling back to things. We kind of did an R&D with all those crosses—the Jack, the Lemon G, Sour Dubble, The White, Thin Mint and Grape Pie. Now we see where we are at, now we’re going back to The White pretty hard. It puts out fairly stable feminized seeds. Probably the Legend OG again, which does pretty well, depending what you hit. And back to the Sour Dubble.Getting back to the solid things and filtering out the things that don’t sell because it is a business as well.

HT: If you did (A x B) would it be the same as (B x A)? Let’s say, for example, you have a Purple Punch female. You dust Feminized Kromes White Pollen onto the Purple Punch female. How Different would It be if it was done vice-versa? Feminized Purple Punch pollen onto the Kromes White Female?

CG: There is a difference. One thing I found with The White as a mother plant, this is with regs more so than with fems. I hit The White, there are some instabilities that come out, and the flavor transfer is not as prominent. It’s a lot more hashy and earthy. The White tends to dominate when you do it with regs. When you use The White as a father plant and reverse it, it lets the mother progeny shine for some reason. The mom usually over-dominates The White, but you’ll have the structure of The White, and the frost from The White. If you carry the trait from Purple Punch or something, it also adds potency and adds a stouter structure. If you’re looking to stout things out and maybe increase potency, The White is a good one to use. I haven’t used it much in reg crosses because like I said I have seen some different tendencies. Just more hashier plants.

HT: What do you look for in your males?

CG: What are you going for? Are you looking to pass the male genetic trait? Are you looking to pass structure? Terpene profiles? Lots of people are testing their males now so you can actually test for what sort of terp or potency before you really get to using them. I have not done that in my practice yet but it’s something we’re going to do. Something as basic as a stem rub. The stinkiest plants are always in the running. Then, you have to do your stress test, let them drought out, mess with the lighting, crop them heavily, just do different things to them. See if they throw any male intersex traits in flower. It happens quite a bit. Especially with the Cookies, OG and Chem hybrids that are out there.

HT: Do you ever notice any auto flower traits or tendencies in any of your projects?

CG: Yea. A few of the Cali-O’s did. A lot of it was that I left them rootbound. That’s one way to stress them. Putting them into the solo cups and just flat out mistreat them. Water them with odd pH water, straight water, heavy nutrients, mild nutrients, just kind of treat them like you would if you first started growing!

HT: That’s how you stress them?

CG: Yea! That’s how I stress them! Just like I stressed that first batch of Purple Kush that I had that made all those seeds back in the ’90s! You want to stress them. We see nowadays people buy a 10-pack of seeds, they find a male or two, they have a couple elite clones, dust them, that’s not really breeding. I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. If you’re looking to really do it, you’re going to want to dig into it a little more than that.

HT: Any future releases you working on that you can discuss?

CG: The reg thing I am doing kind of as a hobby. I do those, but I really don’t release those too much. With those, I’m doing a lot of the old Dutch stuff, like the mid-’90s Dutch stuff before the raids, before they got tainted. Looking for some Pot Of Gold seeds. I have the NL5 x Hashplant, I popped some old White Widow stuff, gonna F2 some stuff.

With the fems, we’re going more into The White crosses. I’m going to focus on the White OG’s. There’s definitely is a market for that. Raskal’s White Fire is unbelievable. It’s been around for six to seven years now. I made a Fire OG x White Dawg. Those came out really nice. Crazy garlicky. The White Dawg was nice because I had a real nice Garlicky pheno. That was one where The White came through nice in a hybrid. GMO x The White would be interesting. That’s coming up soon too. White Cookies, White OG’s, I might hit a couple of other things too. I might go back to working with Sour Dubble which sold well a few years ago. I might do another Legend OG fem line again. I’m just kinda circling back to what was working and what there’s demand for.

HT: How did you get to work with Jungle Boys?

CG: I don’t even really know. Jack was on the farm, and he was doing his thing. He ran a lot of Raskal’s stuff. He liked The White crosses and the OG crosses. Down the road on Instagram, he just hit me up and asked if he could get some, so we sent him The White. The White and White Durban. The White IX, which is Wookies #3, which is (Forum x White) then hit back to The White. That’s what Strawberry Shortcake is. It’s a White IX. He runs such large seed runs that it’s nice to have a source that can run through your genetics and pick the real “Cream Of The Crop.” He’s not just popping a pack of seeds or whatever. He’s popping a minimum of five packs, but he usually runs up to 20 packs of seeds at a time. Kind of like his White Fire stuff. He went through about 300-400 seeds when he found that #43. I think there were a few others like the #97 that were really nice, but that filtered out. Getting through selections, going through lots of seeds there, he just kept finding stuff from my gear, then we just kind of formed this little collaboration where I send him seeds, he runs numbers, and he always finds really nice stuff, and it seems to work really well. This “Exotikz” line is kind of nice too. He’s working with Berner, so it’s just really expanding. It’s interesting, the evolution of the industry. It started from making some seeds to a bro hitting you up for some, and then it expands. And his shit is going crazy, what he’s doing. It’s kind of nice to be a part of it.

HT: So you were indirectly a part of it?

CG: Yea. I was never begging for anything.

HT: They just wanted your stuff? He saw it was good?

CG: Yea. And obviously, I wanted to send it to them because look what he does. It was just a mutual thing. I was making some fire, I’ll give him some fire, and now he’s got whatever he’s got on Instagram and Facebook. It’s crazy. It’s a big deal. He’s blowing up.

HT: If you could choose one strain to work with and only one forever, what do you think it would be?

CG: To work with how? To make fems? We talked about how I like the Chem stuff, but you have to worry about stability. I really like Daywrecker. My TK91, I really like, it has an OG thing going, but it’s a really nice Chem. I think it would have to between those two. Daywrecker or TK91. Good shit. I like fuel, I like the gassy stuff.

HT: So you like Chem more than OG?

CG: Yea. This fruity stuff is unbelievable. Stuff that wasn’t even good five to 10 years ago is just good again because of concentrates. We did the grape thing for a while, but I’m going back to the gassy thing.

HT: What strains are you trying to access or would like to work with? If you could pick any strain from any time period, what would it be?

CG: That’s a good question too. Probably some of the old Dutch stuff like that ’94 Pot Of Gold. I haven’t looked for it, but I should probably get it. That old Super Silver Haze cut that won ’97, & ’98 from Shanti. That would be nice. I think just the old Dutch stuff. All the new stuff floats around so heavily. There’s no thrill in the hunt anymore. They’re easy to access. Even 10 years ago, you had to know somebody that knew somebody. Now, it’s like you shoot a direct message on Instagram, and you’ve got a box of cuts coming.

HT: What strains give you trouble either growing or breeding?

CG: Oh God. All the OG’s. You have to top them a bunch to get decent tops for a decent yield. They can do well, but you’ll need a big shrub. Some of the Kush plants like the Bubba’s are so tight, so hard in their formation, that they actually tend to squeeze the seeds when they form.

HT: Are they viable?

CG: You’ll have some good seeds, but you’ll have seeds that are half the width and longer than usual. Just like little, banana-looking things. The buds squeeze the seeds so much, the seeds have no room to grow. OGKB is obviously horrible. I don’t know what happened to that plant. It’s just some mutant.

HT: It’s like it wants to kill itself it’s so slow.

CG: Yea! But honestly, I’ve thrown that shit in the garbage once, and after like three or four weeks, it’s been dried up in the trash, and I could see it just growing up out of the trash can. I just lost a bunch of my mothers. A couple were fine, but the OGKB was all smashed from a fallen light right on top of it, and the plant is still sitting upright. It doesn’t do well, it doesn’t do anything, but it doesn’t want to die. Fuckin’ alien plant.

HT: Did you expect Sundae Driver to blow up like it did?

CG: Not really. Well, I don’t know. Anything with Jungle Boys tends to go pretty well. I sent them the Pie Hoe and Sundae Driver when I initially made those crosses. You can see what he did with them. Those guys are marketing geniuses. It comes back to the phenotype runs. L.A is its own country. Whatever does well in L.A, pretty much does well around the country. That and the Bay stuff. Any of that stuff is going to do well. Anywhere in the country.

HT: Do you think just forwarding your seed stock out there to L.A and waiting a year or two for it to blow up slowly is a good idea?

CG: Yea. I think because of the market, people are watching California. Colorado is the model for recreational, but as far as being the experience, and the pot that’s grown, California is where it’s at. It’s a huge place. Getting your product into that market, that’s probably where you want to start. Look at a lot of the main companies out right now. Seed-wise and cannabis-wise. I don’t know the percentages, but I would say half of them are in California. Wouldn’t you? It’s huge. I think getting stuff out there is probably the best thing I could have done.

HT: Are you doing any work overseas? Or is it all U.S-based for now?

CG: U.S.-based for now. I started overseas. I started with Stax.

HT: Firestax?

CG: Yea. And Canna Collective. It’s hard. Getting seeds over there, and getting stuff back, it can be an issue. We kind of localize for that reason. I would like to get out there, but if I do, it would probably be more of finding a place out there to make the product, so it’s easier for distribution since it would be local.

HT: If everywhere was legal, where would you choose to set up shop at?

CG: Spain seems interesting. There are big things happening in South America from what I am hearing, I don’t know. I would like to stay in Colorado, but it’s such a limited market. I would like to get out in California as far as legal grow stuff. Maybe get into the market in Colorado. I would probably stay in the states. I have family here. I would love to go down to Belize, but I don’t think there’s much of that going on yet. I’ll stay in Colorado for now.

HT: Anything else you would like to let the world know?

CG: Basically, I’d like people to know that I have been doing this for a while. I think there is some misinterpretation of me not selling seeds for a while, so there’s this thing that I haven’t been making seeds for a while. I think I lie between some of the “Ol’ Skool” and “Nu’ Skool” in this grey area. There are a lot of guys who have been selling seeds and making seeds for a while. Especially selling it longer than I have. I also was not a big online person. So people don’t know me in that sense from not having any “Internet Lure.” There is a lot of that, and there are these guys from the forums. Inspecta, and Doc, Bog, and even getting into Subcool. All those guys have been on the computer for forever.

Meanwhile, I was just doing other stuff. I have been doing this for a while. I just decided to get my product out there, focusing on the fem thing, and that’s about it really. Hit up RadoGear.com! Got my little website going as well. Not so much for stock that I have laying around, but stuff that I’ve surplus stock of, and some one-off stuff, and some specialty stuff on there. Follow me at @ReallyCannarado! Buy some seeds, and grow some good pot!

The post The High Times Interview: Cannarado Genetics appeared first on High Times.