Sorry for the slow reply, I was up on the mountain busy with harvest all day yesterday and am literally heading out the door right now to get on it... going to be a long week.
Let me pass on a couple of tips now to keep your project moving, then I will try and address the rest of the questions when I have a bit more time...
I should say right off the bat this this method for producing pistills was not my discovery; it came from our good friend and research colleague hyb/eXe.... gotta give credit where it's due.
Ethephon @ 750 ppm sprayed once/week for three weeks. The effect was such as to produce pistills enough for making seeds, which was my only goal- to create male selfs and male:male seeds for use in breeding/research- ie towards the development of pure XY lines. The above mentionned regimen is sufficient to that end.
I have not used the technique for testing males via their 'pistillate characteristics' in the purest sense, although the plants clearly showed 'pistillate characterists' in the appearance of their resin profiles/smell etc.
I imagine continual application up to 6 weeks for most WLD indica individuals would be sufficient to produce femlae 'buds' on the male plant but further research is clearly in order. The plants I was working with never recieved enough light/space/energy to produce buds and thus truly evaluate the females by smoking.
Once the plants were were fertilized I stopped the applications of ethephon (ethylene as a primary of the 7 plant hormones has many many functions in the plant and I didn't want to interfere with seed development). Of course the fertilization dramatically slowed further floral development as the plants directed their energy into the devellopment of seed. I suspect continued applications combined with more light and space would produce larger floral clusters than shown in the included pic (below).
The 'booseted' regimen would surely produce enough floral mass for use in GC/MS applications for Cannabinoid and Terpinoid analysis quantification/analysis, as you can see even the seeded pistillate clusters produced enough mass for GC testing.
I'll be back to address the rest of the questions post-harvy.
-Chimera
