Founding stock guide
Everything you need to know about adding new genetics to Ohtli.
What is founding stock?
Founding stock is how new genetics enter the Ohtli system. These are organisms that weren't bred from existing Ohtli parents — they come from outside the system and become the root of a new lineage tree. Every bred organism in Ohtli traces back to at least one founding stock ancestor.
What qualifies as founding stock?
Any real plant or organism you own can be founding stock. It doesn't matter if it's a named variety, a seedling, or something you bought at a nursery — what matters is that it's a real, individual organism that you're giving its own identity in the Ohtli system.
Great founding stock
- +Your backyard Honeycrisp apple tree
- +Seedlings you grew from seed
- +Heirloom varieties from your garden
- +Plants from a nursery or seed swap
- +Wild-collected plants you're growing
Please don't add
- ×Patented varieties (e.g. Cosmic Crisp™, SweeTango™)
- ×Trademarked cultivars with active licensing restrictions
- ×Plants from an existing Ohtli entity (register those as bred instead)
Not sure if a variety is patented? Most varieties older than 20 years are in the public domain.
How to register founding stock
Registering founding stock is free and open to all Ohtli users. From your dashboard, click “Register New” and select “Founding Stock” as the origin type. You'll be asked to select the species and provide details about the organism.
Once registered, your organism gets a unique OHT-ID and its own page. From there, you can breed it with other Ohtli organisms and register the offspring — building your own lineage tree.