Sorry I don’t want go OFF TOPIC.
I am in love with Luther Burbank and other plant breeders like Carol Deppe, and John Jeavons work ( not cannabis) and I consider a base of real breeding large specimen selection.
This text I have highlighted in my books and I share to better explain my point of view.
Also I consider breeding a matter of statistic and small population ( we should define how small) doesn’t allow for effective statistic data.
Marijuana Botany by Robert Clark - Chapter 3
"The most important part of Burbank’s message on selection tells breeders to choose the plants “which are approaching
nearest the ideal,” and REJECT ALL OTHERS! Random pollinations do not allow the control needed to reject the
undesirable parents. Any staminate plant that survives detection and roguing (removal from the population), or any stray
staminate branch on a pistillate hermaphrodite may become a pollen parent for the next generation. Pollination must be
controlled so that only the pollen- and seed-parents that have been carefully selected for favorable traits will give rise to
the next generation.
Selection is greatly improved if one has a large sample to choose from! The best plant picked from a group of 10 has far
less chance of being significantly different from its fellow seedlings than the best plant selected from a sample of
100,000. Burbank often made his initial selections of parents from samples of up to 500,000 seedlings. Difficulties arise
for many breeders because they lack the space to keep enough examples of each strain to allow a significant selection. A
Cannabis breeder’s goals are restricted by the amount of space a to keep enough examples of each strain to allow a significant selection. A Cannabis breeder’s goals are restricted by the amount of space available. Formulating a well defined goal lowers the number of individuals needed to perform effective crosses.
Another technique used by breeders since the time of Burbank is to make early selections. Seedling plants take up much less space than adults. Thousands of seeds can be germinated in a flat. A flat takes up the same space as a hundred 10-centimeter (4-inch) sprouts or six-teen 30-centimeter (12-inch) seedlings or one 60-centimeter (24-inch) juvenile. An adult plant can easily take up as much space as a hundred flats. Simple arithmetic shows that as many as 10,000 sprouts can be screened in the space required by each mature plant, provided enough seeds are available. Seeds of rare strains are quite valuable and exotic; however, careful selection applied to thousands of individuals, even of such common strains as those from Colombia or Mexico, may produce better offspring than plants from a rare strain where there is little or no opportunity for selection after germination"