Welcome to Reader Syndicate 3.0, the next evolution of the look into counterculture that is canna. My name is Matthew, owner of Riot Seeds, and this started as a one-man mission for strain history and breeding science. Over time, it's evolved into something bigger, better, and more of a team effort. We will be joined by members of the Cana Luminati and other friends throughout the seasons to hear their takes on grow techniques, breeding science, strain history, and more. Our mission is to combat the narrative that corporate cannabis and seed posters are obfuscating for their own financial benefit. Welcome to the Underground. We are The Syndicate. Welcome to Reader Syndicate. I'm Matthew, here today with Thousandfold and our friend Ben Chicken, who is one of my favorite masters of the mutants out of Australia. So with that, I'm going to kick this over to Thousandfold to start the show. Yeah, I think we're having like an interesting moment with ABC. It feels like, you know, Matt's obviously just released some testers with the subterfuge. We know that Caleb has had various forays into that territory. So yeah, quite very, very interested to hear from Ben here about his time working with it. So maybe to start us off, Ben. I'm just going to hold you, Ben. I know it's weird. You thought I was saying Ben earlier, but how did you get, why were you interested in ABC to start with? And when did you start jumping in or even here at ABC because it is one of those weird legends? Yeah, well, thanks for having me, guys. So my journey with ABC, we always, in Australia, it was known that it was getting around, but it was quite hard to obtain. And I always had an attraction to it because it's such a stealth variety. And I always thought if you could get your hands on the stealth variety, it'd be pretty good to be able to grow and just have that extra layer of disguise, getting ABC in Australia. And I did try and I tried multiple methods of doing so. I look at all the forums and I did find some people who had ABC quite recently before the releases. But I was never able to acquire any physical seed of them as it turns out, the person who held ABC for all this time was definitely very much offline throughout that period to being an older fellow up north. I had one prompt here, which was, does the fact that it's called Australian Busted Cannabis, like, did that resonate with you at all? Is it even from, like, I don't know much about it. I think you two know quite a lot more about the backstory and I know we're going to probably dig into that a bit. How does this all begin? Someone tell me. So, this is just my understanding of it and I don't really understand what happened before this point. But I've spoken to a fellow from up north and he's held it. He acquired it in a small town north, New South Wales at a tip, which is a dump, what we would call it, America. And he acquired those seeds around 1990 from just a local fellow. And he grew those seeds and he found what we call now Australian Busted Cannabis. It had different names back then. So then he grew this plant and preserved it in a sense where he was, he's just an avid gardener and he's always keen. He grows a lot of plants and he was always just keeping it pure. It's quite simple and he's growing it throughout. He actually told some funny stories where there was a gardening show that came to his house and in the background of the film, because they're filming his gardens, he had ABC growing. So that's quite, it really shows the stealth of this plant. And he attempted to make a few hybrids with it, but he had no success. He didn't really have the breeding knowledge as it wasn't really shared at that time and he was completely offline and he did hand it out to a lot of people. And I imagine this is where ABC surfaced here and there on the forums with different people probably acquiring it from him would be a guess. Yeah, if you want to touch on what you know, Matt. Yeah, from the American point of view, it wasn't really well-known until Mark Emery dropped it in, I can't always forget what the Canadian, it's like the Canadian version of High Times. And there was an ad in there for being able to buy ABC Cross the Flow. And I want to say, I don't remember if there was any ABC peer in there, but he had a story about it and he was the first person, as I'm aware, to call it Australian bastard cannabis. And that's when most of us Americans were aware of it. A few of those people, one being Hybe, received those original seeds. But it was very limited, super limited. And a lot of people throughout the years up until, and up until as recent as the big release with CSI and Painted Forest, a lot of people didn't believe that it was even a plant that existed or that it was even cannabis. There's been a lot of arguments about that over the years. I think we touch on a later episode, too, that's coming out maybe before this one, but recorded before about Fett from Spice Brothers having a plant called Dizzy. It was very, very similar and that also showed up on the forums. Not sure where he got his from, but he always said it wasn't related to ABC, but it was obviously the same mutation. So that's kind of like how the Americans took on to this. And it's been a big myth, and only a few people had it, and like you'd have to pay, you know, $500,000 for a clone if you wanted it, some absurd amount. Yeah, but a lot of us were obsessed with chasing it. Buddy Resolong tried flying out to Australia at a few different points to pick it up and was never able to find the person who had it, you know, asking around in Nimbun and elsewhere. Yeah, that's kind of how the American backstory goes as opposed to the Australian. I kind of want to ask you, Matt, what are your impressions of it, given that you've recently done some work with it? It's what I expected except for that I didn't expect it to be longer flowering. Looking at it, you think of it as like this little slow growing plant, so you think it must be some kind of Afghani offshoot, but I think it's a much longer flowering, typically Sativa type variety. It has thicker leaves like ivy, and it looks more like an ivy plant to me, or basil, as it were. But yeah, that's the first impressions. We can get into Terps and all that stuff later. And of course, I'm speaking from a hybrid perspective, so yeah. Can you touch on a funny story when you mentioned the Flow F1 seeds released by Mark Emery? So the old mate up north of me, he was aware of this release, and he had a friend who actually purchased these seeds from Mark Emery, and he purchased it for the Flow, which I thought was quite funny. Flow was not available in Australia. But I thought that was quite an interesting take on that's how Australians perceived it. So people were buying this ultra rare mutation, and they were searching for the population to remake Flow. That was funny. I never really guessed that. Mark said he used Flow to increase the potency of ABC, which I thought was a weird choice for a potency increase on anything, to be honest. So just so I can get this right. You were saying that originally these seeds were from Australia, but then some other people from Australia got it from Canada as well. Is this correct? That's correct from Mark Emery. And that would have been late in these early 2000s, if I remember correctly. Fascinating, yeah. Okay, well, how about you tell us a bit more about your actual journey? How long has it been that you've been working with it? With ABC, I've been working. So I acquired ABC from CSI Humboldt through that painted forest farms co-lab in 2019. So I was pretty quick off the gates. I saw it. I knew it was coming. And that was the first purchase through CSI that I've made. And my first seeds I actually bought from America. I've been waiting to get ABC. So I was definitely going to grab them. And then pretty much as soon as I got them, I did a small open pollination seed increase style. And then I dug through that population. And I did my first outcross to a plant from Wally Duck. And that's a double sourdough example. So it's a good plant. And it really suits the Australian climate. Looking back, I did a lot of work with ABC. I ended up being dead end. And you'll find that when you're working with ABC. And really sometimes it doesn't hurt to just take a step back and realize what I've done here doesn't really work. So I did a freak show hybrid with ABC just to see what combinations those two plants would result in. And I grew out quite a large amount of the F2s, F3s. And then I started into the F4s. And I found the best plants in there were subterfuge one leaning. Oh, this is a subterfuge one hybrid I did later. Sorry. Not pure ABC. And then the plants that combined both mutations were actually worse than ABC and worse than freak show. So I kind of just call that quits because they just didn't want to grow. It was just that doubling up of mutations. And these plants were just too funky to function. That is no good. Yeah. But it was interesting to see. Yeah. Yeah. Good line. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. A slight tangent here just to give us a bit more backstory. How much breeding had you done before this? And why? What kind of stuff had you worked with prior to? I'm relatively young and I worked with Aussie Bushweed. So there's the first plants that I grew were in hindsight extremely difficult plants to grow. So I'm not sure if you're aware of the kind of seeds that get around Australia in the bush scene this is. And they were essentially Southeast Asian genetics that are kind of acclimatized to Australia. So you'd almost compare it to a tie. So these plants were flowering 20 weeks plus. They were very intersex prone. Just difficult to grow in general. And they grew like bamboo. These things grew humongous. So I go completely outdoors. And the first kind of project I did kind of was to... I really liked these plants. They were quite trippy and had really good effects. And I actually preferred working that over anything I would buy. And I combined that with another bush strain, which is just unnamed bagged seed within Australia. And I found it completely tamed the intersex traits. And it kind of brought that flowering time down to about 15 weeks, which still is long, but it's a lot more manageable. And then from there, it was kind of a deep dive. Because I realized, oh, hang on, I can actually... I've actually created a plant that, in my opinion, is better than both of these two parent lines. And then from there, I kind of got into the forums, having a look around. And then I kind of discovered ABC. And then I was trying to chase that down with no luck for many years. And then I kind of fell down that classic advertisement trap for about a year, which is, you know, the whole European feed banks. I think it's kind of a given for everyone who's new. Part of everyone's journey, for sure. Yeah. So I grew plenty of those. And then I kind of dropped all that work. And then through the forums came across Wally Duck. And I started growing his work for a while. And that was kind of my first project I was really proud of. So I combined a couple of his lines. And that was the Z99 hybrids I did, which is sour Z99, crossed to a Laos type plant. And it created something that you need a good climate for. It's definitely an outdoor variety. But it was kind of like Aussie bushweed reworked. And I found it was just that little bit better than all the bag seed you're getting around. It was just so hearty, drought tolerant, just really suitable for our climate. And that sour diesel really kind of bumped up the flavor. Just make it a little bit more interesting. Yeah. So that was like my early work. And then not long after, a couple of years after that, CSI did the release. And then since then, I've just been on a really deep dive into ABC. And there's been growing ABC and other clone onlys and stuff in Australia. Australia is starting to form its own clone scene, which is quite interesting. So I'm growing a bunch of heavy days' work. And I really rate his work. He's got some really good genetics. And I'm actually using one of his well-known minds, the jelly breath, which is like a Mendo breath-leaning hybrid, a cookie hybrid, in improving the new work ABC line I'm doing. Just take that step further and try to increase the density. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at now. So I know that CSI also did some ABC cookies stuff. Why cookies? So I personally, go on that. No, go ahead. I personally chose cookies. So originally, I'll give you a backstory of where I'm at. So I've made this dual regard plant, which is an extreme outlier within the ABC population. So it grows like a normal plant. It's a very sativa dominant. You know, ABC, like Matt was saying earlier, it kind of looks like an indica, but it is not. It comes from Aussie Bushweed, which I was saying is a really long flowering, a climatised South East Asian varieties. So I imagine that the genetic origin of this mutation. So I introduced cookies later on because I really want to increase the flower density. There is pretty significant issues with pure ABC flower density. And it could definitely use a little bit of a potency boost. Well, potency is not as bad as people give it like the credit. I would say a cookie type hybrid could definitely improve a few characteristics. I think that's kind of obvious goals with working with ABC. And I think that's probably why CSI has gone down a similar path and you also use the TK, which I think offers quite similar benefits to bring you into ABC.  Yeah, Matt, what was your take on that, Matt? No, that's exactly what I was going to say. It was the calyx-to-leaf ratio and density. The other thing that, you know, maybe a bit of a stereotype or no, it's probably a true thing. I know that it tends to lean towards to pinnalling ABC.  What are both of your thoughts on the, you know, it's hard to pinnalling bent? Yeah, if you want to go first, Matt.  True, true. Okay, sure. So with pure ABC, pure ABC has this 100% of the population, in my opinion, I've grown quite a few of them in the pure form, and they're all to pinnalling. And they're quite a two-dimensional to pinnalling. I'll add it's quite a boring flap to pinnalling. Yeah. And that's where the hybrid kind of, I want to say, sub-diffuse one, it's still to pinnalling mostly. Although it is a little bit more, it's like three-dimensional, be one way to put it. It's a little bit more interesting. You can tell there's other plants within it. But recently, I've actually managed to budge this to pinnalling dominance, like this link trait. So I do have plants in the garden right now that smell nothing like to pinnalling. And they reek of almost a garlic kind of smell. So that's interesting to finally break in that. And I have the theory that once this trait's broken, I think it'll be quite easy to introduce other to pin profiles. I agree. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. Real quick. That's really exciting. Before we go away too far, and also because it keeps closing on my phone the longer it takes, I brought up the page from resin lung. When I first asked him, when we were going to do this episode, probably when we first started talking about doing it, I asked him for his the backstory on like the American version and his travels to the ABC thing. And he kind of told me more about the history with Mark Emory too and how Mark Emory got it. So I wanted to toss it in before we get further in. And this is direct quotes. It says, first to bring it to the table was Mark Emory, his magazine Cannabis Culture. At an article about a harvest festival in Nimbun, Australia in like 98, 99. Most pro-drug town in Australia, I guess. I don't know if that's correct, but. Dana Larson, chief editor of the magazine at the time, wrote the story and took the pictures. After the harvest festival, Dana hooked up with someone that called himself Mr. Avery, if I remember right, that drove him a couple hours away, but still in north-south Wales to his secret grow out in the bush to check it out. Dana left Australia with 200 seeds. And I believe some of the seeds were uncrossed and some were crossed with flow. The mutant article ended with Emory offering those seeds as a giveaway to subscribers. First come, first serve. That's how Hive got his. I believe he said a friend of his had subscribed and gave him the seeds. Cannabis Culture had like two little updates in the following years on the progress, which wasn't all that great, but proved that the line was still alive. Eventually, Fett came up and showed the pics with the backstory. And that was Fett from Spice Brothers, and D-Man. It's going to be on our show. He claimed to have gotten the line in the early to mid-90s after seeing a huge grow bust of some new super potent mutant weed on the news that had happened to be close to where he lived. I believe he claimed he went there and was able to steal it. Plants, cut seeds, I don't know. I remember reading posts from people that he claimed to have seen reports of the bust, and supposedly the growers were so confident about its ability to not be recognized as weed that they went way, way too big and screwed themselves. Fett could have found fields of it, I guess. Who knows? Not long after, I've started posting pics and messing with Fett. Fett claimed that what Emery was able to get out of Australia was bunk and not related to what he had. Fett claimed his was a tropical plant, and what Hybe was working with was more indica. Fett claimed his line was super potent and didn't display the dwarf phenotypes that Hybe's line did. Hybe would crush Fett with real botanical knowledge whenever Fett would start in on him. I also had just busted out the whole Femseed deal and seemed to butt heads with Fett about that too. Fett was not into Femseeds.  And then it goes on to Mongeyman. A few years later after Hybe and Fett started in on each other, another dude from Australia popped up with what I believe to be a pretty interesting story. And I'm going to have Ben chime in on this if he knows anything after. He claimed to have known two elderly people who had been the original discoverers of the mutant. Mongeyman or Mongeyman claimed that these two elderly growers had taken him under their wing and taught him everything they knew about growing. And when they had grown too old to grow and because he had shown interest in the mutant, they gave him all their seed stock of it. He claimed to have grown it everywhere in plain sight for years. He had crossed it with everything available at the time. All the sativas. He said that they gave the seed away for years to anyone who wanted it until he eventually noticed that it was being sold by a few people. At that point he disappeared and planned to never mention the line again until the internet was invented and he noticed two guys arguing about Mongey madness. That's when he told his story. And he said, oh, Mongey claimed that the elderly couple had stumbled upon the mutant plants while hunting for weed in Hunter Valley, a place famous for wild marijuana growing all over the region. And young Australian hippies making the trench or the track early each year to load up on the free weed in like the late 60s and 70s. Supposedly they walked into a patch of the mutant weed growing and were educated enough to recognize it as cannabis and collect living samples and seed.  A patch in the wild with all that non-mutant pollen flying around. Not impossible, but. And then he lists the names. He just basically said nobody liked it. Mutant, Bindi weed, Bindi, Parsley pot, Basil buds, Mongey weed, Mary gold and Claytons. When he went to Nimbin, he spoke to the mayor who runs the cannabis museum there and he knew all about it. Not where you could get seed of it, but everything else. Yeah. That's the backstory from someone who was much more educated than I am from the American version. I have a very, like, not important question to ask, which is, Bindi, do you think that's like Hmong? Like, not Mongey, but like Hmong? Like, you know Hmong? Good question. I don't know. I've always just read it online. I've read it as Mongey madness. But Mongey to me kind of refers to something that's a bit like obscure and like, you know, deformed would be a way. Mongey. Yeah. Mongey like. We know where they come from. I think we won't say that on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But sorry. Anyway, I'll let you reflect more broadly on what Matt said. Yeah. What do you think of that story? What's your take on that? I love this. I just got to say I love the, we have like a bit of a bit of a twist to this one.  I swear to God. That's why there was so much chase for it because it was just a mystery plant from the beginning. Exactly. So you mentioned the Hunter Valley. Yes. Wild cannabis fields. And that is recorded as something that was real. And the government did a pretty intensive job of making sure that was eradicated. That's too bad. But they did struggle for a while. And I believe to actually wipe it out because Australia has a quite a good climate and that area in particular is, it's relatively suitable for growing for that. The whole elderly topic of, you know, people taking him under his wing. I'm actually not too sure because I probably know just as much as you. All I've done is read that online. That was well before my, my time. But what I can say is I have tried to document everything that I can actually prove from this point forward. And that was talking to that old fellow up north. So he's had ABC for over 30 years. And he said he passed it out to multiple people throughout having it. And he said no one actually really held on for very long. So I think it takes a certain type of person in Australia. It's a little bit different, especially back then. Like, how do you explain it? These people might not have understood exactly what they were working with or approached it. It's not quite, it's not very productive while I grow this and not actually seeing it as a breeding tool rather than just seeing it for what it is at that point in time. Because it obviously has the potential to be pushed a lot further. Just as a naturally occurring mutation is probably what I would say its origin is. And I can also, I've spoken to Painted Forest Farms and this older guy up north. And he's actually the fellow who gave Painted Forest the farms. And that ended up in CSI's hands doing the reproduction. So I connected all those dots. So that's kind of good to have at least recent history for once. Something about ABC is solid recorded. And that was Painted Forest Farms was on like a vacation holiday in Australia. And he was in a small town. I won't mention the name up north. And he met an old grower at the back of a pub, around a pub. Because he was smoking a joint and he was obviously drawn to that. And then he ended up going on a hike with him around the national parks. And he showed him a few of his grows. And he showed him that he had been growing this mutant plant, ABC as we now know it. And Painted Forest Farms obviously got seeds from this old fellow up north. And then, because this old fellow wasn't actually, he wasn't holding it tight. That's the funny thing. He was just offline. So he wasn't hoarding it. He just didn't really know that people wanted it because he'd given it out multiple times throughout history. And he just grew it in his garden, grew it in the national park and never thought much of it. So it's quite a, I think it's quite lucky that Painted Forest Farms got seeds. And of all the people to give that to, it couldn't be much better than giving it to CSI who was able to do a legit open pollination and then send these out at a reasonable price. I think he could have charged one more. The timing on it was insane because during those prior, maybe three years before that happened, me, him, and Resilung were on a massive chase to try to figure the history out and get the seeds.  So I was definitely skeptical when I heard the Painted Forest Farm story. Like, oh, you just happened to have it when we're looking to buy it, you know, like kind of thing, but it's very much faded. I think in the end, you know, like it had to have been so weird how the universe works sometimes. So I wanted to ask a really obvious question just to kind of signpost the, like, the significance of ABC because obviously for Matt, Resin, and Caleb to be chasing this, it must have some great potential impact. And I know we've kind of implied it, but can we spell it out a bit more? Like, what do you two see as the potential impact of ABC? Yeah. So for me, like, I'll kind of refer this to, it kind of relates to breeding goals with ABC. So you kind of see this, not for what it is, had its current point of a pure ABC plan, but I believe it's full of potential. Like, there's so much variation within it. And that's quite interesting. We actually don't really understand what this mutation is or how it works. And I've actually experienced it affecting other parts of the plant. So you see that the growth structure of ABC is completely different to non-ABC types. So first, I'll point out, like, the obvious traits that you'll be like, oh, you see this plant, I want to improve the flower quality and growth habits while retaining the stealth of the plant so you can kind of grow it in your backyard without nosy neighbors. So that's improving the flower density and flavor effects. But then I'd like to take it a step further and think about what ABC, like, what else it might actually have to offer. And I think it has, because of all these unique traits within its mutation, we might not actually understand how beneficial ABC could be. For example... You just cut out for one second. Oh, sorry. You're good. We don't really know what ABC might have to offer. And it's quite drought tolerant. It would be one trait that I've noticed within my garden, and I'll link that to smaller leaf surface area, maybe the thicker leaves, slightly waxier leaf. So we don't know. It might actually end up producing more drought tolerant plants that can grow in a more arid climate or be frost tolerant. It could potentially have some unique cannabinoids hidden within its gene pool that we don't actually know about. And then another thing, just to even take it one step further, would be, is there any value in the non-ABC types of the F2 population? And I say this.  And I kept some of the non-ABC types in that F2 population just out of curiosity. And one individual in particular grew like a normal plant, but it had traits from the ABC. So it had extremely long PDOs. It had an almost red-black stem. It had fingers coming out of the center of the leaves and a really complex webbing. You wouldn't call it a duck's foot, but it was more complex than duck's foot. And while those traits in particular aren't very beneficial, it's not a plant and you could run through thousands of these non-mutant types and you could find something that grows like a normal plant, is a normal plant, but it's drought tolerant because of a thicker leaf. So we don't actually really understand how beneficial ABC might become. And we might view ABC in the future as something completely different to what we view it today, of what it's brought to the market. And that could be compared to, let's say, how they fill the niche within these northern climates with the day-length cycles. So, exactly. That's kind of where I would say, I think it's got an unknown potential, but I think it's got a lot of potential. Yeah, I really... Oh, sorry, man. I was just going to say a little thing and then I'll pass it over to you. I was going to say that it's a really, really nice breakdown. And to me, really interesting because you're kind of also making a distinction between known unknown and then unknown unknown potential. If that makes sense. But yeah, sorry, Matt. Please take it away. What goes along with the drought resistance and I think you're dead on when you say about the leaf thickness and stuff. There's obviously better water retention in these leaves. Smaller leaf surface is pest resistance. You'll find that things like spider mites are going to have trouble penetrating to a deeper thickness of the leaf. So you get major pest resistance with a lot of this stuff. And I think, especially for outdoor growers in the U.S., that's like the number one other than mold. And I've watched these things go through a complete frost cycle where I'm at outdoors and it pummel through it. It has no problem with it. So for outdoor growers, this could be a complete game changer. And to touch on the other part, I truly, truly think that when you find things that aren't in our current gene pool being used, whether it's something like this obvious mutation or it's an old line with a trait that's not necessarily seen in other stuff being used or just not used, you always have the potential for cannabinoids that don't exist in our current gene pool. And testing for these kind of cannabinoids, like we only test for a few of them, but there's like several hundred, as I understand it. When testing gets to the point where it's affordable to test for all these other cannabinoids and our understanding is better of them, I have a feeling these are the kind of things that we want to hold on to because they're not going to be the norm. They're always going to be the outliers or they at least have the potential to have those outliers of cannabinoids that can have medical relevance or value. So that's a lot of what pushed me for it. And the look and the stealth, I mean, if you're growing in an urban environment like you have to hide stuff from neighbors or whoever may be there, you know, thieves even. And looking at this plant, most people that aren't cannabis growers and even most cannabis growers wouldn't immediately look at it and think it's cannabis. So that, yeah, you touched on pretty good points there. I wondered if we could do a little tangent here and compare the other mutants we know. You mentioned freak show, ducks foot already. We should go over ducks foot because that's one of the least understood and overused terms and people don't even understand that it was a string and a specific trait. Ben, are you friends with Wally? I am mates with Wally. And I spoke to him about ducks foot and his story behind ducks foot. So he acquired it through a mate and he just had some plants growing and he explained to him quite poorly.  These are pretty indistinguishable from cannabis seedlings. So he saw the stealth characteristics straight away and he was quite new to breeding at that point. He admitted that he did quite a poor job because he didn't understand what he was working with and he wishes he could take a step back and get those original seeds and start again. He's not sure where it came from from that point and it did re-pop up back in Hawaii at a certain point and that was brought across and he made a hybrid from that. So the one in Australia that popped up was actually quite an indica type plant and it was really skunky. And the one in Hawaii was a more sativa type and he reported that those hybrids were really good. And he said it was actually some of the most potent weed he's ever smoked was the original Duxfoot, which is quite interesting because I'm sure he's gone through some interesting plants. Yeah. Yeah. So in modern times, I see a lot of people using it to refer to like OGKB leaves as Duxfoot.  There's a lot of stories out there. As been referred to, there was the Hawaiian wed indica. And I don't know if it was more sativa necessarily, but it was definitely crossed to things like C992 before it came to the States and that would make sense because those are the seeds that were out there. I don't think anybody got the Hawaiian web pure. But what we're talking about with Duxfoot, it is a leaf that is fanned out and it's called a wed leaf because there's no individual leaves. It's one big leaf. And you can tell that it's meant to have individual leaves, but there's no serrations between them if that makes sense. And that's an actual webbed trait and that trait has been seen in Hawaii, which may be from the Duxfoot or maybe a completely separate plant. And then there's the Duxfoot from Australia. But yeah, it's very, very unique and people use the term and I've talked to a lot of people nowadays that didn't know that Duxfoot was a strain and a trait. They thought that it was just a reference to things that have weird looking leaves inside like herbal. So yeah, I wanted to clarify that part for a lot of the newer growers that aren't familiar with it with Dux. So beyond the superficial fact that these two mutant types look different from conventional cannabis, are there other connections between them? Like in terms of the traits, are there overlaps in the traits or like similar types of potential? In both of these? So firstly I'd say just for anyone who doesn't know, ABC and Duxfoot in my opinion are completely unrelated. And if you grow them side by side, you see the very different plants. So I'd say, I'm definitely no expert on Duxfoot, but I don't actually know what it could bring to the table. It's kind of a similar argument with ABC where it could offer some sort of things we don't actually understand. It could create a more beneficial leaf shape, not too sure. Although when growing Duxfoot, like when Wally first received it, his initial thoughts were that it could be used as an incognito plant. And I think that's a good value that Duxfoot has, especially back then when ABC and Frick Show were not available or Frick Show hadn't been bred yet. One of the first things I wanted to do with it was make the auto flowering Duxfoot. That was my original goal with it. And I was actually growing Duxfoot out like in the apartment complex that I had at the time when we were running a bunch of different apartments. I would keep it outside on a ledge next to this big condo thing. And you could see it on 8th Avenue. If you walk by you would see these plants and nobody would identify them as cannabis except in the morning because when the sun hit it smelled like straight skunk. Like skunk skunk. But I remember when smoking these and I want to say these were F2s or F3s from Seed Bay back then. I don't remember if it was via DirectWally or someone else that used them to make the F2. There was no potency whatsoever to them by that point. It was very hempy for lack of a better term. So I ended up not going through with it but the idea was to make like an auto flowering stealth plant for people to be able to grow outdoors in urban environments. That is my main point with that. That's cool. Thanks to both of you for that. Can we talk about Freak Show for a bit as well since we're here? How do either of you think that lines up against the other two as far as the mutant types go? I had no experience with this one. I've grown a fair bit of Freak Show. I find it quite fascinating and I find it's a really good accomplishment for someone to actually create a mutant which in my opinion is it's a very extreme serration of a leaf. It makes it, for birds who don't know it almost appears like a fern and it grows quite well especially in high rainfall areas. It's quite mould and pest resistant and to the untrained eye you just don't pass it off as cannabis. Kind of that similar thing with ABC where I actually think most people identify cannabis from the traditional leaf shape and not actually the flower or any other traits or the way it's growing but just the classic five finger or just the typical cannabis leaf. That's what 99% of the people when they think of cannabis that's what they view. Yeah, it's iconic. Yeah, exactly.  Freak Show is, it's a mutation but it's not quite like ABC where it's ABC or not ABC. Freak Show has these intermediate types within the F2 which I thought was interesting and it's actually I'm getting a bit of a tangent here but it's also quite a potent flower I found, not overly potent but it's not like ABC or like those ducks you're talking about Matt. Like it's quite comparable. It has an interesting a terpenaline-ish but different kind of skunky terpenaline smell to it and I know there's some hybrids out there now that are like the berry freak and they're pushing away from that profile and still retaining that leaf shape and that's the work I'm not 100% sure about, I believe it's the son of the guy who originally bred Freak Show, the shape shifter I'm not too sure on the 100% backstory of Freak Show but growing up it's a great plant it really shows what can be pulled out of cannabis like it's a very extreme outlier it's really interesting Very cool I think this is a good tangent just because it gives more context to the ABC, comparing it to these other types and also I think it might disambiguate I think for some people these mutant types are kind of all rolled up together or they might seem like they're overlapping but they're all actually quite distinct It takes a certain type of person also to chase mutants I really think so It's not big in the niche cannabis collection genetics community even everybody who's interested in genetics and zeroes in on that not everyone is also centering in on mutants it takes certain kinds of minds and I don't know how to explain it any better I think one way I can see it is that there's a longer view it's a long play and you have to be ready to commit to that and have the patience and have the dedication to commit to that you have to be able to look at a plant for more than it's what it's showing you and not everybody's ready for that I can frame it a bit more like brutally it's more than just what the plant can give you in the short term Exactly Yeah and I'll push that even further by saying ABC comes with a lot of challenges it's not like growing plants to be called plants especially in its pure form and I'll also note that a lot of and I might be wrong a lot of the seeds in America are sub-diffuse one hybrids so a lot of people haven't actually seen how painful and how interesting pure ABC is these plants barely grow vertical they grow sometimes wider than they do tall and there's some serious challenges with those traits and they go extremely slow and they're all kind of linked traits like if you do an outcross and you bring it back to the F2 I'll say almost all of your ABC types will revert back to that growth habit so that really dwarf really small leaf, low flower density to paneling dominance, low potency all those traits kind of come with this bundle of what is ABC and I'd also like to say how you were saying a lot of people don't work with it and I think that's because it takes so long to get results so I've done like I was saying that freak show hybrid I've done multiple ABC hybrids and I've grown like that freak show hybrid I sprouted thousands and thousands of seedlings and I completely just abandoned that project and so there's four generations of breeding and I kind of just came to a dead end and then I had to start again and try something else so it definitely takes a lot of patience and it takes a certain type of person someone who's doing it because they want to do it not because they're trying to get an immediate result it's definitely a long game like you were saying, I was like oh and also add one more thing ABC is super unpredictable like I'll come up with these theories and I'll get this giant door guard type plant so I'll touch on where I'm at now and this outlier male plant and it grows like a normal plant it produces offspring it's an ABC type but the leaves are about the same size as a normal cannabis plant slightly smaller it grows, it grew about 3 I think it was 3.2 meters in a single season, tall so it's definitely not like normal ABC and the offspring that it produced it actually passes these traits of the large leaf 280 small leaf ABC it's hybridized with which is really interesting so it's a really rare phenotype but it breeds dominant so I think that's quite interesting and then when I say it's unpredictable I've recently done some Jelly Beth 3 BX1 hybrids with this plant and I've taken that currently to the F3 but I'm digging through the F2 population and I've found plants that are completely comparable to pure ABC once again within this pool which is amazing because this thing is multiple outcrosses separated from pure ABC and it's still popping its head up on occasion which I find is that's extremely stubborn and while I am finding the average, I'm finding some really nice plants but I really am surprised to see these pure ABC types poking back up yeah anyway that's about all I can say for the challenges with ABC that is really cool one thing I actually wanted to ask earlier was what have your conversations with CSI been like I know that you've had a few exchanges with him in your process and I'm quite curious to know what you guys talked about if you're keen to share yeah for sure so when he first announced that he was doing a ABC reproduction I hit him up immediately because I was pretty shocked to be honest it's finally happening and then I think I might be wrong with saying this but I think initially not that many people gravitated towards working with ABC for the same reasons I just mentioned it's not a fast process it takes a certain type of person and I think I originally shared my ABC and sub-diffuse freak show hybrids with CSI I think he did at least an F1 hybrid of freak show and ABC just to see if those traits appeared in the F1 and I took that step further by taking it to an F4 I think he was quite interested in that and then as soon as I found this dual-gar mail which is quite an interesting plan it was to do with a failed reversal and introducing a mail from another ABC gene pool as a replacement so it was actually a double sour XAML timed ABC site 4 and I did an F2R of those and then I reveged my favourite female from that population and it was a sour diesel leaving F1 and then I was planning on doing another reversal with another plant onto this and that didn't reverse well and I had, luckily I had a peanut butter breath timed sub-diffuse one and I actually got that off a mate, Captain Nemo Cannabis and that was a mail and I pollinated a large branch of this double sour XAML F1 ABC and from that I found that extreme outlier and I immediately, when I saw that play seedling, I was like, what have we got here? because it was growing faster like, I'm not even lying, it was actually going faster than everything in the garden non-mutant and mutant so it was a super vigorous plant large leaves so I immediately sent CSI an email saying, oh this could be kind of like an outlier that would be very beneficial to the population and luckily the year before that he sent me the Girl Scout F2's, the TKF3's and then I had a few of my hybrids which I was all growing and I was also growing a pine tart kush sub-diffuse one hybrid from a buddy on Overgrow and I pollinated everything in the garden and I had I can't exactly remember how many but I had a bunch of the TKF3's and one of them was really nice ABC type, it was definitely an OG kush leaner and I had a Girl Scout Cookie leaner in the F2 population and then I had one of the pine tart kush that was really nice and that kind of created what has been the most well-received hybrid which is the pine tart door we go across and it in my opinion produces plants that are probably the best ABC's out there I would say while it is to a penalty and it's kind of a very complex to penalty it's like a lime syrupy fizzy kind of smell and the effects are really nice and it's actually quite potent which is surprising or comparable to the average potency so yeah, with CSI I'm curious to see what his next move is I know he's just an F2 that grew out an F2 of the Girl Scout Cookie and that looked pretty nice and he tested on the Purple Pro and you could see that it bumped up the potency to a 15% by memory and I'll be curious to see if he digs deeper into which direction he takes it I think we've been talking and feminized breeding is probably the key to stabilizing different terpene profiles within the ABC so that's going to be probably my next move and I've recently pollinated a very popular clone in Australia which is the Jelly Breath 3 clone that's from Heavy Days so I've got my JB3 BX1 Tynus Dooliga F2 back across to the Jelly Breath 3 so that's kind of a double outcross to the Jelly Breath types and then I'm going to inbreed that and as fully you'll breed that and I'm just going to use feminizing practices from here as advice from CSI because I think he's right by saying you don't really know what your males are offering as terms of if they're carrying the terpenaline so it'd be good to just eliminate that entirely but yeah, that's all I can say there thanks man, any thoughts on that? yeah, the feminized breeding part of ABC we kind of stumbled on on accident I had been doing my creamy punch project outdoors and I had pollinated a subterfuge plant and it ended up herming and pollinating one of the other creamy punch plants and I remember I hadn't tested them and some other people were running through them and these ABC types were popping up and I was like, wait a minute the ABC cross one and if it was, it wouldn't be showing any of the mutations, what's going on here and I remember taking it to Benchik and I was like what the hell is going on? and that's when we kind of because we had been advised by other people that had done subterfuge breeding that it wasn't possible in reversals for it to show up so fast so when it showed up, I showed it to CSI I was like, I think we know exactly like what's going on here and it looks like it shows up the generations real fast so not only did we kind of figure that out with ABC but we can apply it then further to autoflowering and everything else so that's kind of like this weird little twist of fate again as we were talking about doing some other weird projects together with CSI that the ABC projects lended itself to like that kind of trait also carries over to other traits in reversals and Benchik can help me figure it out and make sure that I wasn't losing my fucking mind either that was really weird and unexpected that's about all I can add to that super interesting you did mention their auto ABC or one of you did at some point and I'd like to hear a bit more about that so I've grown Hypertex auto bastard one and to be honest I could immediately tell and I might be wrong but I think he worked the auto bastard a lot more than he worked the sub-diffuse one the auto bastard is the closest thing I can compare to the JB hybrids and the pintard du lagarde that I've been working on you could tell that they're kind of more separated from ABC the resin production and the flour density has been significantly improved and even the growth habits have been drastically improved from the sub-diffuse one with the auto ABC I did come across some issues that occur just by combining because in the sense it's two mutations combined into one and because ABC is inherently slower growing these plants don't get very large because the auto flowering kind of just makes them go into flower as soon as they're actually mature as a sense and I'm not trying to explain that very well but a traditional plant will grow faster and reach a decent height before it starts flowering where the ABC has a slower growth exactly but overall I could definitely shout out hybrid tech on that one there were some really good ABC hybrids and I would say they're much better than sub-diffuse one and obviously pure ABC really cool Matt, did you have any thoughts on auto bastard or like I think I think it's probably the future is reversals like you were saying speeding through generations to make auto bastards would probably be the quickest way to do it and like what we were talking about even with auto flowers in general we realized that because you cannot re-vege these things or clone them a lot of the pollinations done in auto flowering is just it's really shotgun style you've got to hope that you hit something right and most people just take it a few generations whether they hit something they wanted or not and just release it I like the idea of femme breeding in that sense for auto flowers too and auto ABC seems to be quite the ticket with two few different traits of breed similar good point yeah yeah I don't really know what else do you guys think we could cover here yeah so one thing I was thinking about was we've kind of covered a little bit but techniques in breeding with ABC yeah there you go when I first started breeding with ABC it was very hard to get a grasp on what I'm actually working with here how does it inherit and while to me at this point it kind of seems like general knowledge for a lot of people they don't actually understand how ABC traits pass on through generation to generation so I'll firstly start by just saying if you have a pure ABC plant and you cross that with a non ABC type 0% of your F1 population will be ABC from what I've seen and I've grown a lot of F1s from the F2 you'll pull out 25% ABC types and you'll find that this number is actually a little bit close to the 20 to 22% and that's just because ABC seeds are inherently harder to germinate so you will have a few seeds that won't germinate and those ones will most likely or more likely than not be the ABC types so that will kind of throw up your ratios but 25% of your ABC seeds will be the doubling up of the ABC trait in your F3 population if you cross an ABC type with an ABC type you'll get 100% ABC type within that F3 and obviously F4 and onwards if you cross another situation which a lot of people have been doing I've seen is you'll have an ABC F1 and you'll cross it back to an ABC and that will result in 50% ABC types in that following generation so I'm not too sure how to label that it's like an F1 back cross to ABC and something that I've been doing with and I've actually spoken to CSI about it a little bit is doing an F1 hybrid so let's just say an ABC hybrid times a non ABC type like a clone only something that you want desirable traits from getting that F1 population which is carrying one set of the ABC gene and then crossing that back to that clone only so that will produce 50% of your plants will have no ABC trait and then the other 50% will have one set so none of them will look like ABC and half of them will carry the trait so then you do an open pollination of those and you segregate your males separate them into each so you do different lots and then from those when you pull out it will be a very small percentage maybe about 5% ABC types depending on that next generation depending on where your males lie you'll do a double out cross attempting to speed up the process of locking down some traits so I'm going to experiment with that so that will be quite interesting to see how that goes because that's all just theoretical and that could also be applied to other sets of breeding such as auto flowers if you're trying to speed up out crossing but the good thing about ABC is that your ABC types or your non ABC types in the seedling stage unlike auto flowers where you don't actually know if it's an auto so you can have 1000 seedlings and you can automatically pull out the 50 that ABC types within a week so that's quite handy so you can really speed up that selection process and another thing I'd like to say with the techniques I think it's very important to choose your out cross non ABC type carefully and think about what does ABC need and what can this out cross give to ABC that will improve those traits that you're after whether you're trying to increase the flower density like I was saying with the cookies hybrid I typically don't work with cookies but I do notice that it has very good flower density and if let's say you're a big fan of the paneling something like train wreck might be a perfect out cross and it might just enhance what you've already got so it really depends on what your goal is and then once you've done this out crossing you really need to fill your breed it and you really want to do careful selections through your F2 F3 and because you'll find that your F3 will still be extremely variable and you'll still be getting those pure ABC types popping up and the last point would be you're going to need numbers that's the reality with working with ABC you can't obviously you can get a lottery ticket and win but you'll be a lot more likely to find a good plan if you're running good numbers and you see that with CSIs kind of work he's got reasonable numbers to dig through and I think that's pretty essential and that's definitely what I found especially when you're trying to find out lies within the population I like the idea of tumbling down on the topinelline I find that really funny but it also makes sense a lot of our guys love topinelline so I guess you can like you said earlier try to make it more multi-dimensional topinelline exactly and that's what that plantar duela gauze done it's definitely topinelline but it's I don't know how to put it but it's three-dimensional it's got a fizziness to it and it's got this syrupyness to it and it's almost sweet and it's a little bit gross but in a good way it's just in comparison to pure ABC which is just in the other words like it's flat and it's quite boring so you're kind of just working with it you're going to pump it up and that's another way instead of just going I'm going to completely scrap topinelline and I think you could probably say maybe that's what hypertex done maybe not but his plants are definitely still topinelline I know he's on a lot of outcrossing not much outcrossing so much exactly but they're still topinelline so it goes to show how stubborn topinelline is so if you just wanted to just work with what you got is another option if you do like topinelline I'm a fan of topinelline I'll probably admit that but I'd like to create variations within the ABC I don't want just one ABC that's topinelline and that's all you're going to get it would be good to have some variety and create different strains if you would call it of ABC which I've started doing hashtag team topinelline that's right I think there's a lot of value in it especially like I noticed with sweet things or fruity it's easy to find things that are fruity and sweet that don't carry that to the flavor whereas if you cross these things to topinelline a lot of times the flavor will then carry with the topinelline it's hard to explain like a mentholy version of that flavor yeah it clearly is a very nice counterpoint to other flavors and it makes amazing extracts insane extracts for those who like extracts yeah it's like with that find hard to look at for example which is topinelline dominant I ran out it was 80 plants and it was around 40 females give or take and I narrowed it down to 4 females and they've all got different characteristics like you were saying one of them has a mentho flavor to it which I think is like it was one outlier and it's quite interesting it's almost fresh breath kind of a feel to it and then another one is just extreme resin classic resin bomb it's just this gluey sticky thing and then I've got one which is which is named the club lime and it says baseball bat ABC not very dense but just the same yielding plant also very lime scented and then there's the all rounder which I'm using the next round of breeding and that's just the binge which has been getting around Australia so it's pretty funny to actually have an ABC clone that's starting to we'll be circulating Australia soon it should it's a heritage strain you know the baton I remember when Caleb brought these out there was a person from Australia that we knew and he was raging one because it was called Australian bastard he did not like that name and two because he said it was totally fake he'd never seen it therefore it wasn't from Australia and to that point like it's an Australian heritage strain I think it's awesome that it's circulating there more yeah and I'm obviously going to try and work more Australian varieties into Australian bastard that's cool yeah because Australia has I've also come more into the scene recently but we've got some seriously good cuts getting around Australia now like it's just this system that's starting to circulate and no it's obviously nothing in comparison to the US it's almost like a baby version but it's just beginning and I think it's only going to get better from here so I've got to shout out a couple cuts I've got just out of curiosity you guys might be interested in what's getting around there's this one it's called Hudu and it's a crossroad chem time skunk plant I'm not 100% sure on its lineage but it's basically just a chem plant and it is, it reeks so I imagine that's something that you guys would be pretty familiar with in the States and then there's another one which is just a crazy rump cut which is a lemon tree dominant hybrid so it's just a lemon tree time's rumps and it is obviously it's just it's interesting to get these standards like I think that's something that Australians don't have that people in the US might have you can grow these cuts that you receive and you can have this kind of a standard that this is TK and that's a great cut and you can kind of assess qualities of other plants from having these high standards so it's really good to see the benchmark plant exactly that's the perfect word benchmark so I got this red wine ash plant with a few interesting cuts that are getting around that's a deep chunk hybrid and Rasmu Mubble Queen from Heavy Days that's another one that's really interesting yeah and also I'll go on I was just going to say obviously on the show we definitely are proponents of difference and diversity and so it's great it's great to hear that there are new and interesting things happening over there yeah and I'll push in even further to say some of the interesting stuff I've grown because I do love diversity and I've been growing 1979 Xmas bud from CSIs reproduction and they're really interesting and I think maybe even I find it more interesting than most because I've been brought up on these long flowering tie type plants and this is the opposite end of the spectrum so that's really cool to see and obviously it would make a great partner as well for what's over there exactly and the OG Qush purple oracle hybrids I've recently done some of those and I've been doing a decent search through the pinks and perps population like lot one lot two, lot three just gone through them and they're being actually it's the first plant I've grown where I've never been like this is like this or this is like this it's something that obviously doesn't circulate in Australia whatever I know it's the killer queen Hawaiian combination but whatever is in that pinks and perps this is not something you see in getting around Australia so that's quite interesting you know the killer queens mostly C99 Romulan the Hawaiian maybe but I tend to think it's probably what you're seeing in the variation in Mendo perps that's coming through the Blackberry widow it's in that I'm getting a lot of unique as fuck even over here the Blackberry widow okay yeah I'm getting a lot of like dark red wine nose to that one so that's quite interesting I wanted to kind of make sorry I kind of wanted to pose a more speculative question to both of you just for fun you know if you could if you could do ABC work with any other line or cut you know what would you speculate to be fun to try out beyond the ones that we've already tried I'm predictable I'm too predictable so I've actually got a buddy who's doing a project which I'm really invested in I'll be growing out his F2 population so he's gotten a dual agar hybrid from me and he's crossed it to a Indonesian land race so it's this extremely long flowering sativa type and I think in there so the F2 mail that is used is the ABC and it's a really resinous mail early resin and it's been outcrossed that's one of the jelly breath hybrids so it's been heavily outcrossed and so that potency should carry along so this should reintroduce the sativa trait that dual ABC has but this time without a lot of those negatively associated traits hopefully and in theory you could create something that will grow really well in Australian outdoors and grow really big and also be potent and like highly resinous which it's kind of has the potential to be a really good outdoor crop so I'll be digging through those F2 populations shortly I'm really looking forward to that so that's something that my pattern lies with these land race sativas so I'll be doing some Burmese work soon I've gotten those and some Panama red that's having a look at those I've never actually dug into those seed stocks before and if I find something good I'll be maybe incorporating that into this sativa ABC hybrid which will hopefully be a sativa hybrid like pure ABC is a South East Asian hybrid I'll assume but this will be a refined ABC sativa that is actually practical to grow so that's I'm interested in that's unique I like that answer I just go blue bonnet because that's I was going to say blue bastard yeah I mean I did the creamy punch one so I'm going to see how well that turns out close enough is the creamy punch is that a blue bonnet dominant crop yeah it's a banana punch blue bonnet and silver pearl blue bonnet combined so I just reinforced the bonnet which is already dominant in both and just a little slight drapey version of it nice yeah we'll see how it goes yeah we have people growing those out already right yeah you've seen some hell yeah that's awesome I was going to say a reflect on bins you know I thought that was like you really are working with so many different fringe you know or like peripheral like you know threshold types it's really cool it's actually really amazing to hear about yeah and I'll also say the amount of work and time yeah I'll say that I've never sold flour that's something that I'll admit so I'm always just growing for me and my friends so I've no desire yield is not an issue I'm just all about varieties and this is for fun for me and hence the breeding with ABC because I think you'd have to be like Matt was saying earlier you really got to be a certain type of person to commit to breeding with ABC like I'll be pushing on five years with working with it and only in the last year and a half have I felt like I've really gotten somewhere and finally created something that I'm proud of yeah yeah it's hard to sell it's hard to work lines truly work them unless you have a lot of satellite spaces and be focused on flour sales it's almost impossible and at some point you have to make that decision unless you're wealthy enough to have tons of different flour sites I appreciate it a lot absolutely immense amounts of work for sure alright Ben do you have anything else you want to get in or talk about or plug anything good question I think I think we've covered covered everything yeah unless you guys have got anything else you want to ask I had some random question was has anyone on the discord taken you up on some of those beans maybe this show will prompt more of them to have a go at it yeah and I would actually offer some advice that would be one thing I would say and I don't want to be self advertising but if you're trying to make an ABC hybrid you're much better off starting at a point that is already sorry I'll reword that you're best starting off at the point that's the highest work stage of the hybrid it would almost be like if you compare it to autoflowers and if I'm going to make an autoflower hybrid of wedding cake you wouldn't want to grab something from 20 years ago you would want to grab the most recent work and I would highly recommend if anyone was really wanting to make an ABC hybrid start with a dual go hybrid because that outliers already been found these plants already grow three times faster than normal ABC they produce potent flowers they smell a lot stronger they have really nice effects but I think they'll be easier to push into different directions because that two-penalign trait has been broken to an extent and it pops up at quite a frequent rate you'll find plants that smell nothing like two-penalign so I think it's a much a very good shortcut and I wouldn't even say a shortcut but I'll just say it's kind of a collaboration with the community to push this plant further would be just to the team because this plant is very stubborn where can people find your seeds if they want them yeah so in Australia I do stock them through a little seed bank pop shelf seed bank otherwise you can hit me up on the discord chat like in the breeder syndicate discord which I really like that community and I'm in a few other discords I've actually got my own discord going tell us about that it's just a mutant discord people who are breeding mutants because it is a funny little it's a wormhole in a wormhole yeah it's a wormhole in a wormhole so you've got your weed nerds and then you've got these weed nerds who love mutants so it's a certain high person but I'd like to share that discord with people maybe you can even post that in the breeder syndicate but people who really want to deep dive into it and they can grab some dual-gar seeds and there's people with duck's foot and Fredjo hybrids and all other hybrids that people might find interesting sure without flooding your breeder syndicate with ABC hybrids I've loved seeing your pictures and any of the exchanges you've had on there I think it's fascinating and it's such a nice change from the usual suspects and topics yeah I'd love to hear about and I'll be a shout out to CSI for obviously doing the initial release but I'm very keen to see where he takes his ABC work and I would even challenge him to say you should grow a dual-gar hybrid next to one so he can see how much better it grows I'm sure he will I think you'd really like it I was going to make a point relative to what you were saying about if you want to make a hybrid don't take the long route pick something a bit further downstream I guess the counterpoint to that is unless you were super passionate and you wanted to have a good revolutionary go at it in the way that someone might with autoflowers at some point because there's an argument to be made that okay I don't want to say ABC here but with autoflowers that some of that ground work potentially could be redone and it would be interesting and I'll even touch on if it's not too light to go back to the topic pure ABC like in saying going back I really recommend people grow it if you don't expect to get any decent flyer off it but if you wanted to see the weirdest within cannabis pure ABC is amazing and I'm keen to I've actually acquired some really old ABC stock from that fella up north so it's just ones that have been in this cupboard I've managed to get a couple of them to germ and I'll be doing a little open pollination with just what I can manage to germ from this old bag of seeds that were sitting in his drawer and that'll be interesting just to have a little dig through and obviously just for a preservationist kind of approach because I do think it is important to preserve it in its pure form just because it is so unique and like you say sometimes you want to backtrack and maybe we'll lose some of these traits that we could be advantageous like the drought tolerance could be lost if we keep hybridizing it and it might be something we want to reintroduce or just something just for a heritage borderline kind of approach to cannabis it's definitely an interesting plant but obviously taking into account all the various questions and learnings that you've already mentioned like you said it would not be an easy or short journey Exactly. You'd be growing it for fun and you'd be doing it for passion and even if you're just growing a pure ABC just to grow it not to breed with it because you might want to say I've seen and I'll point out one crazy thing I've seen in pure ABC I've seen a plant with what you'd call thorns on pure ABC so little nubs on the base of the stems and almost they're not quite spiky but like they're rounded thorns growing all the way up the woody parts of the plant and this plant was crawling like it was maybe three times wider than it was tall the leaves were I'm going to say a centimeter across at the widest point for very small leaves it produced almost no flower you could not say it it flowered for about 20 weeks and maybe produced enough for half a joint but just out of fun it's fun to grow and you don't have to worry about anyone recognizing it because no one is going to look at that thing and think it's kind of I just had a thought that like kind of zooming out all the way and kind of reflecting on this whole topic conversation I think it's such a nice contrast because this is cannabis at the fringe this is what you get to see at its outer limits of its genetic potential and diversity and so far away from all the modern stuff that we obviously had to keep talking about that are kind of exploited to shit you could say like we're at the kind of center of the world pool I guess of genetics cookies and all that this is kind of like the vast this is like going extreme out all the way to the edge and it's really nice it's really nice to just like hear about think about and be like that's right even though we all know there are chems and ogs and cookies it's good to be reminded that the potential is still vast out there if you want to go for it you know I appreciate you coming on the show I'm sure we're going to have plenty more people interested in mutant talks and like you said you have a discord and we're going to try to make that available in the show I just got to remember to put it in the description but it will definitely get there at some point if not right when it gets uploaded I hope and we're going to offer the link in our discord as well for the people who want to check it out you can get your seeds in Australia directly from you for an Instagram username I'm actually not using kind of saying to fade away from Instagram and I actually want to push more towards the discord approach so I'd recommend people jump on the discord and in Australia top shelf seed bank would be the way to go yeah I know that's a little bit different to the way most people approach it but I think discord is especially being such a small niche I think the people who are looking for that stuff will find it and I think it will keep it more focused on the topic and I feel like you can actually talk more about things it's quite a complex plan and I don't like the way Instagram works with you show a picture and you can't really explain what you're looking at to the effect that you want to yeah that's for sure we got to keep it short sweet everybody likes what it looks like and understands the complexities of cannabis which most people on Instagram don't tend to got to deal with the idiots who just want us to do that's fucking ugly you know Alex they just don't get it yeah I was going to say basically the same thing like discord is like a good filter for idiots it is it is but yeah thank you so much it was such a I think I was quite I think I know you and Matt have talked a bit already so I think Matt already knew the extent of your work but I don't think I really did understand the scale of work that you've been doing so yeah really really appreciate you unpacking so much of that for us thank you Alex he's legit and yeah I guess with that go check out our Patreon through discord breeder syndicate patreon I guess you could just go to patreon.com forward slash breeder syndicate you can go to right seeds.com where we have seeds from the different members in our discord too but yeah I think that's mostly it you can find our seeds at group by seeds um right seed co Europe and lifted there you go and with that I just want to thank Ben chicken again and hopefully we'll be having him back soon thanks for having me guys I appreciate it cheers brothers want to sit at the table with the syndicate check out our Patreon and our link in the description below our merch site is officially live we have all sorts of shirts hoodies and goodies to sort you out and shipping is super fast and most importantly the quality is top notch I've been saving old designs for years for this purpose so please check it out syndicate here dot com we also have an underground syndicate discord where we get together and solve old strain history together daily it's an amazing community of learning away from IG and it's an amazing resource catalogs and knowledge we hope you join our union of breeders and growers come check it out