F#$% Growing hops, BREED HOPS!

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I posted that link a few months ago but it's such a good read it's definately worth bringing back up. :mug:

The breeding history of some of our favorite hops is strange but who cares...those hop parents made great babies.
 
That's way cool! So how would you go about breeding hops? Presumably in addition to the lady hop vines that a lot of us have, you'd need a male plant - and I guess you'd have to grow that from seed? Though once you'd grown a hop plant from seed, how could you tell if it was a boy plant or a girl plant? I wouldn't want to spend all that time growing hop plants from seed only to find out that they were females, and I'd invested all that time just to set up some lesbian hop-on-hop action. :drunk:

I imagine the whole process would take several years, but how cool would it be to have your own unique house hop?
 
Sometimes, you can stress a hop plant and it will put out male flowers.

Hops grown from seed can be either sex. It's really obvious at flowering time.
 
....., how could you tell if it was a boy plant or a girl plant? I wouldn't want to spend all that time growing hop plants from seed only to find out that they were females, and I'd invested all that time just to set up some lesbian hop-on-hop action


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That is how you know you have a boy.

It's no picnic spending the time and effort to grow what you expect to be a girl only to find you have a boy. As much work as first year hop require to find this in your yard kinda talke the wind out of ya'.

I opted to let this guy stay. I have a place to donate this one to and I am waiting til the end of season when it goes dormant to collect the crown for the new owner. I may even wait til spring in the best interest of the plant.

I have yet to collect any seeded hops. This plant is of the Chinook varietal and immediately adjacent to it are Centennial and Crystal. I had planned that if I do find any seeds to harvest as many as I can and try to propogate them next year.
 
Looks like a great read, cant wait to dig into it later. Isnt that the obvious advantage of homebrewing though, the ability to experiment/ Back in college i knew people who bread their own dope based on classic strains, don't know why this shouldn't be the case for hops too. you could select for characteristics for your climate and latitude, make heartier plants, tastier hops.... It might take years and you'd need multiple generations, but no reason why this shouldn't be a thriving hobby itself given time.
 
i'm new to the hop growing forum, and just now came across this...alas, the link is broken. does anyone know where i can find the information? any help is much appreciated in advance :)
 
mrkstel, thanks for finding that. I saved it for reading an another time.

So the biggest hang up I can see with trying this is getting males of known genetics. The fathers of known hops are not available, and most have been killed. I've seen seeds for sale (and a quick google search will yield some more), but they are sold as just "hop seeds" not "fuggle X cascadin's daddy", even giving just the name of the female would be helpful. It would take many years to asses a cross, so I would want to have some information about the father, or spend 5 years cubing them (recrossing offspring with their mother to stabilize genetics). Unless I can force flower them 5 times a year inside...

anyway, this is very interesting stuff, and I would love to get my hands on some seeds of known origin, and to a lesser extent, some mystery seed.
 
That's because most of the hop breeding is done with proprietary plants. You have a long path ahead of you if you want to create your own (and useful) cultivars.

But if you do create that Sativa Goldings or Cascade Kush, send me a sample (p.s. - this is impossible, don't waste your time!)
 
You can also obtain seeds from the wild or from the US Dept of Agriculture. All of the seeds that I have collected from the wild have not germinated, but I will be collecting more soon.

Does anyone have any success with germinating hops seeds? Methods?
 
That's because most of the hop breeding is done with proprietary plants. You have a long path ahead of you if you want to create your own (and useful) cultivars.

But if you do create that Sativa Goldings or Cascade Kush, send me a sample (p.s. - this is impossible, don't waste your time!)

From a little internet searching I found claims of people getting seeds from a hop cannabis cross on some dope growing forums, this is likely BS, and even if not; no one claimed they germinated.

Brent_in_Aurora,
From what I've read the best way is to soak them for a day or three, then put them in the frig for a few months. After which they should germinate in a warm growth medium. The few months of chilling makes it quite the project, but may not be necessary. What have you tried? If you have some seeds to play with I would suggest soaking a few of them for 24 hours, then putting them in a damp paper towel in a zip lock bag some where warm (like on top of your computer, or water heater).
 
I planted around 100 seeds just for an experiment in late April. I had read about the fridge method to however my results were completely opposite of what should have happened.

I did 5 different stages with 20 seeds each. All of them had a 24 hour soak in water in the fridge. I planted 20 with no more time in the fridge, 20 with 1 week, 20 with 2 weeks and so on. The seeds with only the soak and 1 week had 75% germination while the others had a obviously declining germination rate. If I remember correctly the 4 week soaked seeds only had 2 that were good.

I would suggest doing something like this with a lot of seeds. They're far from expensive. Just make sure you kill the male plants so they don't knock up any of the females that someone around you might have :) And, of course, post your results here.
 
I planted around 100 seeds just for an experiment in late April. I had read about the fridge method to however my results were completely opposite of what should have happened.

I did 5 different stages with 20 seeds each. All of them had a 24 hour soak in water in the fridge. I planted 20 with no more time in the fridge, 20 with 1 week, 20 with 2 weeks and so on. The seeds with only the soak and 1 week had 75% germination while the others had a obviously declining germination rate. If I remember correctly the 4 week soaked seeds only had 2 that were good.

I would suggest doing something like this with a lot of seeds. They're far from expensive. Just make sure you kill the male plants so they don't knock up any of the females that someone around you might have :) And, of course, post your results here.

That's great, thanks! I may try starting some inside this winter, all I need is to get the best looking male to flower. If properly stored; the pollen should last until my outdoor plants (of known genetics) start to flower.

Does anyone know of a good place to order seeds? or better yet; have a big bag of seed they would trade for a Sterling rhizome in the spring?
 
So this thread reminded me of this one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/hop-seeds-sale-136017/

I had always been intrigued because they had "seeds" for sale of every variety widely used today including many of the trademarked ones. I figured they did a tissue culture or some other magic voodoo science.

Turns out they were full of hot air. The website no longer exists and when you search for them, you find websites full of people complaining that they sent money and never received their orders. To good to be true.

Just order whole hops or better yet, go to your homebrew shop and look for whole hops in a clear bag and given them a shake. The seeds are roundish and half the size of a pea, maybe even smaller than that.
 
So this thread reminded me of this one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f92/hop-seeds-sale-136017/

I had always been intrigued because they had "seeds" for sale of every variety widely used today including many of the trademarked ones. I figured they did a tissue culture or some other magic voodoo science.

Turns out they were full of hot air. The website no longer exists and when you search for them, you find websites full of people complaining that they sent money and never received their orders. To good to be true.

Just order whole hops or better yet, go to your homebrew shop and look for whole hops in a clear bag and given them a shake. The seeds are roundish and half the size of a pea, maybe even smaller than that.

It's clear you can't have seeds of a known type; as all known hops are clones of one original plant. You could, theoretically, have seeds that were from the same mother and father of the original plant, but that's not really the same. Apple seeds, for example, are 99% trash (unless your making hooch, like Johnny Apple Seed was). It's that 1% that are really good for something, and worth taking cuttings from. I think hops are more predictable with breeding, but still, unless you have the original father... As far as tissue culture goes; This is a hobby I'm toying with, but don't really have the space. It's basically like taking a rhizome, but done on a smaller scale, in a dish of agar. No sex changes, or other magic... unless your into making GMO's, but I don't have the equipment for that... yet.
 
I read that I had to freeze the hop seeds to crack the husks for proper germination. I stored them in the freezer for a few months prior to attempting germination in some special germination media that was covered. The rest of the plants germinated except for the hops. Next time, I will just try to plant the hop seeds without freezing. I don't think that I will be able to collect any seeds this year as it has snowed.
 
If you induced male flowers on a named variety then you could do some home-breeding.

A friend of mine works in the hemp (for grain rather than fibre) industry and they have played around with silver thiosulfate in the past to induce male flowering on female plants. This will not make 'true' male flowers, ie with x and y chromosomes, but the pollen will still pollinate the females. All the seeds are female as the induced male flowers have only xx chromosomes. They do this to get higher grain yields, more females equals more grain. PLus one male will pollinate 50 females, far lower ratio than the 50/50 mix that nature gives them.

STS may or may not work on hops, but they are closely related so its probably worth giving it a shot.

Sts will really impair a plants growth, you're really only doing it to make it produce pollen, you won't be getting hops from it that season either.

So to do it

Take a vegetative cutting (as opposed to rhizome cutting) of your favourite variety while its in its growth phase. Just stick it in some water for a week and then plant in some potting mix, hops root really easily, i have done this multiple times. Keep this plant in a pot as it will eventually be your male and you want to keep it away from all your female hops.

When its big and strong and about to produce flowers. Give it a spray with some STS. It will get very sickly looking but when it gets better it will hopefully put out some male flowers. Collect some of the pollen and put it on flowers of the variety you want to cross it with.


I have never done this with hops (or hemp for that matter). But i know it works with hemp. An interesting thing that i want to know is whether the rhizome left from the plant that you treated will be male or female when it pops its head up next season.

Also, doing this with triploid varieites may or may not work. IIRC i think they are bred for seedless-ness so they might not set seed/viable seed. Kinda like seedless watermelons.

Give it a go, the delights of centarillo and cascimcoe await. :)
 
I have a breeding program going here at the farm. Natives and well only can say so much looking mostly for a dual purpose w disease resistant properties Cheers Glen
 
When its big and strong and about to produce flowers. Give it a spray with some STS. It will get very sickly looking but when it gets better it will hopefully put out some male flowers. Collect some of the pollen and put it on flowers of the variety you want to cross it with.

This makes sense to me because I've seen females produce male flowers when the plant is under stress. It could be in a pot too small, lack of nutrients/sunshine, short of water, etc. But I don't think I ever saw the male flowers produce pollen. I'm just wondering if STS would push them over the edge into producing pollen or if they would just be more sterile flowers.
 
only one way to find out! What varieties have you seen throw male flowers? Was it a triploid variety?
 
This will not make 'true' male flowers, ie with x and y chromosomes, but the pollen will still pollinate the females. All the seeds are female as the induced male flowers have only xx chromosomes.

It was my understanding that they had a far more complicated sex chromosome than us vertebrates; something like 18 pairs of x's & y's. So some plants are more female than others, and those that are female with a lot of male are likely show both genders under stress.
This also means that the seeds from this pollen do have male chromosomes, and most likely; the mother flower will have some male chromosomes that can be given. Therefor these seeds will be mostly female, but not all. I don't know enough to put a number on the odds.
I would guess that most hops that have become popular to cultivate have very few, if any, male chromosomes, as seeds are not desirable. But undoubtedly some known hop cuttings are more male than others.
triploid? not checking chromosomes, so I can't tell you.

Its common in Cascades. I think I've seen/heard it happen in Magnums and Mt hood, too.
That's interesting that those are all newer verities, a different breeding program would have not allowed for this. I suspect that Fuggles, for example, would have not made the cut somewhere a long the line, and we wouldn't know them today if they did this.
 
Each time you a new hop plant. You have to let it grow and test the hops. Then judge what the properties of the hops, the growth, etc.

You might get lucky and get a good one out of 100 tries. Reason not to many different type of plants are available for any given fruit tree, hops, etc.
 
So, did anyone try the sts method? If so, were you able to get the plant to flower? If so, were you able to successfully pollinate the female? If so, did you get any seeds that germinated? And finally, if so, how did they turn out?
 
So, did anyone try the sts method? If so, were you able to get the plant to flower? If so, were you able to successfully pollinate the female? If so, did you get any seeds that germinated? And finally, if so, how did they turn out?

I have tried working with feminized pollen (both naturally occurring and silver induced). After a dozen tries with no success, I was thinking about giving up ... when all of the sudden, it seemed to work.

Last fall I germinated several dozen seedlings from a cross. They are now growing strong and starting to put off their first flowers. So far, they all seem to be female - which is a good sign.

More: http://gabriel.nagmay.com/2014/02/hop-breeding/
 
Very cool! Congratulations!! So were you able to get the pollen via STS or stressing the female out? I will follow your results with great interest! Thank you for sharing!!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
The pollen that worked was from a naturally stressed female. However, I have no reason to believe that STS couldn't work.
 

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