I’ll just sit here in the corner and take it all in 
so glad I didn’t just hit up Google 
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They know what they’re talking about. For some reason I always thought you wanted to cross with your second and third generation from your mother plant. And then come back with the male pollen from your T1 I think. I’m lost
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And I thought when you got your your next round of seeds you reuse that male plant back on your clones. Is this correct?
I’m sorry to get off topic
The only reason the S or selfing is a thing is to let people know it’s a “undiluted” line of a special cut. But it’s the same as f2 of that line. If you take a pair of twins and reversed one to pollinate the other, it’ll be f2 fem. If you take one cutting and reversed it to pollinate the same plant, they designate it self since there’s no other genetics being added. If you take S1 gen and breed two separate plants together it’ll be f3 of the original mother that made the S1. But most would prob label it s1 f2
Once you introduce an unrelated or outcrossed parent, then it resets the F numbers.
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Yes, exactly. In the end, the only value of using these terms at all is to communicate something about the seeds to the outside world. Conceptually, they are used to tell us things about what we can expect when we grow them – and mostly “how much variation can we expect from seed to seed?”
In part @Budderton hit the nail on the head though. People who are making crosses are not using stable parents. And to a degree, that adds a lot of uncertainty in the use of these labels, because they are significantly less accurate to quantify the amount of variation in the first generation… which causes them to lose some meaning.
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That is very true. It doesn’t matter what you use. If the mother and father plants are not good genes it doesn’t matter what you do. Will have total disaster. That is something I cannot stand is to waste my time. If the seeds are free then that is my choice to grow. But if I pay for them and they are bad I tend to get a little upset. @lefthandseeds i’m sorry I didn’t label more of your stuff. I had good results out of your seeds.
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The labels are used to communicate a degree of consistency more than goodness. The punnett square is sufficient to tell the story.
If you use two parents that have been significantly inbreed, then many of their genes will look like this: AA or aa (dominant-dominant or recessive-recessive). So when you cross them, then you will get a consistent result - AA x AA = AA for the whole punnett square and aa x aa = aa for the whole punnett square. And even AA x aa gives you Aa for the whole square, which will all express the dominant trait.
If you use two parents that have been crossed many times and never inbred, you will have a lot of heterozygousness – Aa. Now cross Aa to aa and you find 50% dominant and 50% recessive. Or cross it to Aa and you find 75% dominant and 25% recessive. So there are many more expressions that occur.
In cannabis seeds, people will call things “F1”, but what is the real meaning if it is being used for both cases? It no longer can communicate something to the grower, because in the 2nd case, they will see a lot more variations than they would expect as compared to the 1st case.
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For those that like to geek out on the science side of this topic. I found this to be an interesting study Frontiers | Hermaphroditism in Marijuana (Cannabis sativa L.) Inflorescences – Impact on Floral Morphology, Seed Formation, Progeny Sex Ratios, and Genetic Variation
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It’s pretty straight forward guys…
S1 = reversing a plant onto itself
You can S1 a male, you can S1 a female, doesn’t matter.
S1 = reversing an S1 plant onto itself.
Etc…
F1 = (as a generality) crossing two non-related/different-name-strain plants together.
F2 = crossing two related (same strain) plants together.
Etc…
As an example:
reverse (f)dosidos and cross to (f)purple punch = Fem F1 Slurricane.
Grow those fem Slurricane seeds, find two more girls, say (f)Slurricane #1 and (f)Slurricane #33 and reverse #33 and hit the #1 = Fem F2 Slurricane.
Etc.
If you reverse Slurricane #33 in my example and hit itself instead, you’ve made S1 Slurricane.
If you reverse Slurricane #33 and take it back to the (f)purple punch, you’ve now made a Fem Purple Punch BX1(backcross 1).
If you take a girl from those Fem Slurricane F2s and reversed it and hit Slurricane #1(F1) you’ve now made Fem Slurricane IX(Inline cross).
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This sounds like the tech to sabotage your line. Also according to breeder Steve in his Potcast interview, the first gen or two will be stable and then you’ll see herms after that. He says he won’t breed with fems these days.
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Good topic. I’m just cloning off everything. We will see.
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This is how I look at it.
S= selfed = breed to itself
F= foundational= each cross consists of new set of genes
For example f1 = blue dream x white widow.
F2 = (blue dream x ww) x gsc.
This can be continued as long as the breeder chooses to add new genetics to the cross. That why we call it foundational… it’s the groundwork of the strain.
G= generational= Generational breeding is taking the foundation work and no longer adding any outside genetics.
For example taking 2) f1 siblings and breeding them together. This breeding will create A f2 that’s in fact, a gen 1. To create a gen 2 just breed 2 gen 1 together. And so on and so on as long as no other genetics are added.
At any point something else is added, it becomes a f1 again.
Breed that new f1 to the origina gen 2 creates a back cross that’s dominant to the original cross.
The possibilities are endless.
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the thing with cannabis ‘breeders’ is that 99% of them are full of themselves and got their education on how to breed by other laymen on the internet. started making up terms (ie: strains) and techniques (don’t breed with ‘feminized’ seeds) out of thin air. most of the people who were pushing these ideas were not challenged and these ideas became gospel. now we are repeating lies as though we have first hand knowledge, just because some cool guy with a pretty plant picture said it to be so.
now we have people in this thread debating whether an f2 can be feminized or not. which is good, because both sides think they are right, and while @GDabyaKush may not sway @lefthandseeds (or vice versa) what will happen is that @bobillykushlover comes along in 3 years and reads up on this and is able to make a more informed decision on the subject instead of, “oh thats just what i heard, but idk for myself”
we, as a community, need to stop deifying people who make cannabis seeds. just because someone made seeds in the 1990s and sold them doesn’t mean they had a clue what they were doing. they were taking a huge legal risk growing cannabis, yes, but they were not plant breeders.
botany is an established science whose principles and terms absolutely apply to cannabis. the term S1 is only used by cannabis breeders. breeding is a numbers game. period. full stop. that isn’t to say that there aren’t good seed makers now, but let’s not act like it couldn’t be better.
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The meaning of S1 might be up for debate, given that it has no meaning. 
If it simply means self-pollination, that doesn’t necessarily mean feminized, that’s all. I suppose we can make up nomenclature to mean whatever we want, though.
The meaning of F1, F2, etc. is well established in biology and botany. Unless we’re intending to make up entirely new nomenclature for cannabis botany now that the rest of the world is legalizing it and taking an interest, which I predict will fail miserably because the rest of the world doesn’t care what our definitions are, it’s pissing in the wind to argue about it.
"F2 generation.” Merriam-Webster.com Medical Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, F2 generation Definition & Meaning | Merriam-Webster Medical.
Medical Definition of F2 generation
: the generation produced by interbreeding individuals of an F1 generation and consisting of individuals that exhibit the result of recombination and segregation of genes controlling traits for which stocks of the P1 generation differ
— called also second filial generation
Notice this says nothing about male or female, and certainly nothing about “foundational” breeding through pollen-chucking and pheno hunting. Just interbreeding between F1s. Nice and simple.
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Just because the one sentence definition of F2 generation doesn’t explicitly say male and female, doesn’t mean that its not implied by the word “individuals”.
I’ll take the breeders that have the experience, acute senses and the organizational skills to make good selections (ie pheno hunt) and chuck that pollen over the breeders that run punnett squares and get caught up in technicalities of scientific nomenclature any day.
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^^^ what he said, because nothing beats experience.
I have read it all and tried all that I read. I eventually found that working it out for myself was the best route.
Every strain, cultivar, cross, chuck … whatever you want to call it it different.
So a breeder must determine what breeding method works best for his particular gear. Other breeders work can give you something to build on, but it doesn’t mean that his technique will work for you and your particular strain.
It just doesn’t work like that, or everyone would have it.
My gear is my tools. I learn to use my tools to the best of my ability. Even when I think I have achieved my best, I also realize that someone can take use of my tools and build something even better than what I had. to me, that is what breeding is all about.
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This whole thread makes me realize how important preserving landraces is because once we breed ourselves into a corner (and we will, Murphy’s Law) we have a chance to start over. Me i prefer scientific method over experience and instinct simply because it can be tested reproduced and built upon by others, its what made our species totally explode last couple hundred of years.
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No one truly understands the laws of nature and physics.
Nature is as random as every organism on this planet.
There is no exact science known to man that can predict nature with 100% accuracy.
Science will always include a minimum of a 1% variable.
That 1% inaccuracy may not sound like much, but multiply 1% by 1 billion and it becomes
10,000,000 which is a lot.
That’s why many tools include a ± 10% margin of error.
I love nature. What I love most about it, is the fact that it is unpredictable. I never get bored.
Can someone show me a landrace that only has one pheno? I guarantee that in 5 seeds, I’ll find at least 3 different phenos. One that leans to mom, one that leans to the dad, and one that forms a combination of the 2.
The average person may not be able to spot the difference, but someone who is very familiar with the strain, can easily tell the difference. And they don’t have to be a scientist to do it.
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I don’t think the reason we can feed the planet now is because of caring and observant farmers
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