I’ve compiled few basic facts about breeding of cannabis.
Breeding is not as hard as it can seem for a first sight… It is about finding right “worthy” strain and improve it further with some effort. Professional breeders do same steps as I’ll describe in following paragraphs, they are just more carefull to have sterile and controllable environment and hermetically sealed and separated chambers to control pollination of selected females with selected male pollen.
Many seed breeders will tell you not to make your own seeds but this is your choice. It is not for everyone because it takes a patience and experience. Patience because the process of finding right phenotype can take years and experience because selection is very subjective matter and you should know what to look for when selecting potencial keepers.
Everything starts with seeds, so get right pack and plant some seeds. Growers usually select potential females for breeding from at least 30 seeds (remember that ~50% will be males). It is recommended only to use regular seeds for breeding. What factors are making a phenotype true keeper? Well this depends on taste of each breeder and differs according to their experience. You can select for speed and hardiness in the veg stage and you can select for structure of the phenotype initially. Sometimes you might select based on smell or amount of resin but until you try the buds you can’t really select for taste and potency. That is why it is good idea to select 2-3 nicest females and 2 nicest males for another round of pollination.
Usual way is to duplicate all plants during vegetation time as clones and then keep one part in vegetation for future mothers and other part us to flowering to check for traits you are after (and to test potency). Then after you found plants with traits you are after, you can use your backup clones to make mothers (for cloning) and flower them (or their clones) to selectively pollinate them. You can discard clones of plants you didn’t choose for futher development.
Always having backup mother that you can clone and use clones to flower and pollinate again is wise choice. Exactly what are professional breeders doing. When they need to produce batch of seeds from their favourite cross, they just carefully use same clones everytime and it produces consistent and stable results. By isolating the best clone mothers, they do the same thing you can do.
Breeders take the genetics of the others and cross a likely prospect in hopes of creating a New Line or they isolate particularly good phenotype of one strain. By always selecting the best specimens for breeding you can improve each generation.
Whatever line you have, the real task is finding the ideal specimen. It may take time but cloning allows the grower to keep the same phenotype for future breeding if the plant is worthy. Breeding is fun and anyone can possibly isolate a super new strain and become world famous pot seed breeder…
Read more about cloning in following threads: here, here and here
Some breeders prefer to replace clone mothers after 3 sets of clones have been taken. Of course mothers can survive for many years if you care about them. Clones can be taken from clones without deterioration without deterioration, contrary to a popular myth.
What factors to look for?
- Yield
- Plant Structure (branching, vs single cola)
- Flowering speed
- Hardiness of growth
- Mold and disease resistance
- Taste, smell, potency, etc.