It's kind of funny seeing how 'triploid' is now the word of the day in the scene. To me, it's far from new. My dad had gout tablets (and I still have them somewhere) from the 80s which he got in the idea of mucking around with it and some seeds. The colchicine disrupts meiosis and increases ploidy.
This is common in many agricultural crops and has been for a long time. Now, breeders are starting to use it to create stable and or sterile seedstock. I'm skeptical of anytime I see drama online regarding a company and in particular this scene and everyone taking shots at each other. I'm still not sure who I trust given the continued bro science embedded in a lot of talk.
I've not watched the above vids, so take my comment with a grain of salt. But, I'm skeptical based on what I've read previously about this stuff and people being salty on that it may lock down genetics from the community due to sterility. Usually invoking Monsanto type business and such.
And regarding herms - well shit, we have a whole thread dedicated to that. I've got a triploid seedling on the go from GTR. I bought a bunch of their triploid strains - out of curiosity more than anything. Sterility isn't a concern, but hoping they are more uniform in phenotype. They also claim increased resin production etc.
It's fair to say though that applying colchicine to increase ploidy is a pretty brute force approach. It will take time to work out wtf they did to the genome and how it plays out. If it is proven that there is an increase in herming from these seeds, is it because of the original genetic mutation, or an artifact of the triploid nature of the cross. The fact of it being a triploid is probably not the issue, but how the mutation occurred and what effects it had.
