True stabilized strains. A lost art?

Hello everyone. I was just wondering how many breeders or seedbanks are really producing true stabilized strains? I am no expert but i have crossed several different strains but i have never created a new strain. I believe there is a difference.I think before you give the cross a new name it has to be stabilized first.Anyone agree or disagree? Not saying i dont like variation I love variation thats how we find the elite phenos but imo some of the newer "strains" show way to much variation.
I would love to know what your opinion is on this topic
Also im curious what strain you guys have found to be the most stable?
Thanks

Yes interesting question. How many offerings today are true F1 hybrids? Everything seems to be crossed with whatever 'elite' is flavor of the month.

So what would be the most common way to use a clone for breeding, do you self it and stabilize the desirable traits?

That's a good question i also was wondering this to. I was wondering the same thing , but in nirvanas master kush

@ flipmastermike

great thread i think alike... however.. there have always been folks doing things right while other folks rush things... and there will always be.. so at the end of the day we are all just doing the best we can with the resources that we have at hand ......

take a look at dog breeds for example ..

to create a Dachshund .. you have to mix a pointer ,a pinscher and a type of bloodhound .... but it took hundreds of years for the mix to actually become a distinct breed apart from all the rest ...


so ..in my opinion... you dont have to start with landraces to create something unique .. you just have to put the work into it and do the selective breeding necessary to ensure the desired traits are stable and always there ..however we are talking cultivars and not breeds so it gets way more fun pull out the punnet square lol

imo .. true breeding plants are everywhere these days , most are not landraces and not f1...

so theres a big difference between a hybrid .. and a f1 hybrid and im not saying one is better than the other ..imo they actually kind of complement each other... variety IS the spice of life

Im generalizing here, but this is my opinion. the op is asking about stabilized strains. Those are usually ibl's that have been worked so that after so many generations, a 10 pack will be pretty consistently similar phenos. The problem with inbreeding is that u lose some vigor the further u go down the f gen. So stabilized strains seem to have more value in passing on certain characteristics more consistently, for breeding. But most don't compare to the vigor of a f1. That's why f1's or at least poly hybrid f1's dominate the market.

Blueberry n flo from dj short are very stable. Very consistent plants out of a pack.

windycitysmoker said:

That's a good question i also was wondering this to. I was wondering the same thing , but in nirvanas master kush

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Nirvana Master Kush is NL x Skunk#1

Because the NL and SK#1 are both stable strains, it makes for a pretty stable F1. F2's would produce some variation.

There's no "Kush" in it, but it's a potent, easy strain to grow with good yields.

My two cents.

The canna market does not as a whole know the difference between just a hybrid and an F1 hybrid.

Anybody can put two known strain names together with an X in between and you're right up there at the top.

Really the difference is in the precursory work. The work that is done that is not ever released.

There are many ways to skin a cat, and this is very generalized:

Take your strain whether it be poly hybrid landrace or what not. The first step is to stabilize this strain. By stabilize this strain, I mean to get it to breed true. Your best bet is to take brother/sister/cousin plants (seeds of the same pack) and cross. Selfing and backcrossing will only inbreed too much, and vigor will be lost. Selfing and backcrossing are great tools to be used sparingly, locking down a hard to pass-on trait. After the inital cross of brothers/sisters/cousins, continue to cross seeds of the same generation (hopefully using multiple parents, but truly not necessary).

Once you have a plant you like (technically could even be a whole line, but this requires MANY more plants), and it passes the traits you want it to pass, you are ready to move to the next step.

Do this same process to another separate line.

Cross your two true breeding plants:

F1 hybrid. Stable traits. High vigor. Sell these seeds with no hurt on your conscious.

No one is producing proper strains because most if not all the so called breeders don't have the proper experience or studies on botany and plant breeding to do so. Breeding properly takes hundreds of plants, years of work and effort.

An average hemp strain takes 7-10 years of breeding in average and you have all this seed sellers releasing 1/2 dozen strains each season, shit it's actually impossible to create strains that fast lol. They are just pollen chuckers and growers making random crosses with elite clones they got. How many of this "breeders" actually work with a landrace stock to develop their own P1 plants and spend years testing the progeny and their parent plants? lol.

Plus the plant illegality makes it hard to have proper infraestructures for breeding thousands of plants. The good thing is that most growers don't have such high demands for those seed sellers so they continue filling in their pockets with our money with a work that anybody could do at home for free.

Peace.

Mustafunk said:

No one is producing proper strains because most if not all the so called breeders don't have the proper experience or studies on botany and plant breeding to do so. Breeding properly takes hundreds of plants, years of work and effort.

An average hemp strain takes 7-10 years of breeding in average and you have all this seed sellers releasing 1/2 dozen strains each season, shit it's actually impossible to create strains that fast lol. They are just pollen chuckers and growers making random crosses with elite clones they got. How many of this "breeders" actually work with a landrace stock to develop their own P1 plants and spend years testing the progeny and their parent plants? lol.

Plus the plant illegality makes it hard to have proper infraestructures for breeding thousands of plants. The good thing is that most growers don't have such high demands for those seed sellers so they continue filling in their pockets with our money with a work that anybody could do at home for free.

Peace.

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I agree, when I see a company which sells 20 plus varieties....of the usual Sour/OG/CHem/HAZe blah blah blah...I quickly move on to the next bank/breeder.

Makes me think of Tom Hill and Sam Skunkman who only offer about 3 strains, which they've worked on for decades.....those are the breeding seeds I would prefer outside of Landraces/heirlooms.

To answer your question, dutch breeders/seed banks offer the most stable lines. Sensi, Serious, Paradise, Ace/Cannabiogen from Spain, and others like that. They add a new strain once in a blue moon. These are f1 hybrids that produce stable clone like plants with little variation. Which is highly desirable to most growers.

Here on icmag, we are a little more of enthusiasts, we like variation, pheno hunting, the search for fire etc.

Most folks I know feel if you buy a pack of seeds the females should all closely represent the strain description. No searching required. This is a stable line and worth paying the money for. 15 years ago if they bought seeds and the resulting plants looked nothing alike, one would be furious. These were unstable genetics, and would be cheaper by far than properly worked lines.

Also in order to keep producing f1 hybrids you need to keep original parental stock. You can not just keep the seeds and grow more out, then you are starting over. You need the same mom and dad plants to make new f1 hybrids each time. That takes time, money, and resources.

So big difference between real breeders and properly stabilized lines vs. Pollen chuckers or seedmakers.

Respect to them all though, otherwise we would not have anything to grow and bitch about lol

One problem with Cannabis is that it's an outbreeding genus, meaning that the more stable or in other words inbred a 'variety' becomes, the weaker it gets. The only way of producing 'stable' seeds from which all plants will be very similar, are F1 hybrids of two 'stable' lines (obviously, such a 'stability' is completely lost in subsequent generations). Due heterosis, the two parental lines may be heavily inbred and weak without negative effects on the offspring (but that's going to be a marketing problem; who would buy seeds if advertised 'the sickest runts were chosen as parents'?).
One such 'stable' line, the only commercial one which IMHO really might deserve the term IBL (inbred line) is Deep Chunk. One point supporting this claim is that DC seems to suffer increasingly from inbreeding depression and I haven't heard (though I miss quite a bit) of any other old commercial line with such a drawback. From what I've seen so far, DC offspring is healthy and vigorous again.
Hence, I dare saying that there are no truly stable cannabis varieties available to date unless as clones/cuttings. Even stabilised hemp varieties are only stable regarding certain key characteristics and phenotypical expressions (hight, maturity, climate preferences, fibre and THC content). A healthy cannabis/hemp line obtained from hundreds or even thousands of progenitor plants is never really stable! Just grow a few Finolas . They have been highly selected and worked for years and are regarded as one of the most stable hemp lines to date. Still, with just a dozen seeds you'll see that they aren't as stable as you would see with a stabilised tomato variety (tomatoes are inbreeders).

To get back at your original question:

flipmastermike said:

True stabilized strains. A lost art?

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With cannabis/hemp, this is not an art but a flaw and it's good if it's lost. At least, until molecular breeding becomes routine and doubled haploid lines feasible.

i agree and disagree with your statement. i just crossed a chemdog cut with an og male and am curently running the seeds from this cross, and what i am seeing is very little variation. out of the five females i have three look almost identical and two have slight differences. however once i determine the favored pheno, i will search for the male plant that most closely resembles the chosen female. by breedin these plants together i should have stable chemdog og. so what i am saying is if you are making crosses and just running them without going any futher, this could be the reason you are seeing variation. once selected parents of a cross are brought together then in theory you should have a more stable strain. also you could take a male or female of the seeds you made and breed it back to the original parent plant for stability

BigA1991 said:

i agree and disagree with your statement. i just crossed a chemdog cut with an og male and am curently running the seeds from this cross, and what i am seeing is very little variation. out of the five females i have three look almost identical and two have slight differences. however once i determine the favored pheno, i will search for the male plant that most closely resembles the chosen female. by breedin these plants together i should have stable chemdog og. so what i am saying is if you are making crosses and just running them without going any futher, this could be the reason you are seeing variation. once selected parents of a cross are brought together then in theory you should have a more stable strain. also you could take a male or female of the seeds you made and breed it back to the original parent plant for stability

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Breeding is all about selection, to select effectively you need as large a population as possible. I don't think 5 females is an adequate test population to base your statement on!

Lesnah said:

I agree, when I see a company which sells 20 plus varieties....of the usual Sour/OG/CHem/HAZe blah blah blah...I quickly move on to the next bank/breeder.

Makes me think of Tom Hill and Sam Skunkman who only offer about 3 strains, which they've worked on for decades.....those are the breeding seeds I would prefer outside of Landraces/heirlooms.

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yeh man,,,couldn't have said it better myself!

i wish there was a list of strains that meet the following criteria:

- must be on the market for at least 10 yrs
- reliable performance/little variation (no pheno hunt necessary)
- good yield and interesting high

there are so many different crosses out there, i can't believe they are all an improvement over older, more established strains. seems like 9 out of 10 new strains are just hype with a fancy name.

Max Headroom said:

i wish there was a list of strains that meet the following criteria:

- must be on the market for at least 10 yrs
- reliable performance/little variation (no pheno hunt necessary)
- good yield and interesting high

there are so many different crosses out there, i can't believe they are all an improvement over older, more established strains. seems like 9 out of 10 new strains are just hype with a fancy name.

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Agreed... Nobody seems to care if the seed stock has been tested, which obviously takes time... Everybody rushes to snatch up the latest release of OG Thunderfuck 2000 x whatever is flavor of the month!... The most hype and marketing wins!!!

True stabilized strains. A lost art?

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crossing recessive parents will usually not result in a "true stabilized hybrid seed strain".

the entire industry is dominated (plagued) by high yielding, bag appeal recessive genetics.

for seed stock it's time to go back to the origin; true breeding landraces. work some hybrids with sports ( parents that transfer their desired attributes into their progeny). some adam danks have great legs (sports); chem, og kush, cherry pie for example. i'm not knocking adam dank. I am knocking excessive reliance on recessive genetics in current fem pollen chunking offerings unless the grower wants to run #'s for selected mother cuts.

it's not our fault that the market is ravenous for recessive dank attributes. try selling dog butt ugly grail puff to the ignorant masses. until the public wises up we will not survive competing "puff" against "fire".

As a breeder I will share my view on this topic. There are a few reasons making True Stabilized.. (True Breeding) Lines isnt practiced so much today, as in the past.

The general market for genetics has been shifted to "The Grass is Greener on the Other Side" so to speak... meaning people are constantly looking for then next unique plant which in turn usually pop up in unstable lines and people feel lucky when they find them. This is also why so many new crosses are made ( pollen chucking ) with the most up to date Elite unique plant on the market hoping for an even better offspring. So stability isnt really on the minds of people as much as it used to be. Mostly because these unique plants dont need to be stable as Cloning and sharing cuts has become a lot more common with laws changing around the world.

Stability is much more of a concern when dealing with seed production... It still holds true.. who wants to grow out a pack of seeds and not get a single plant that represents the description of a strain the breeder has given.. it happens a lot these days and Im still baffled why people continue to purchase such seed as they are taking such a large gamble on actually getting what they paid for. Just another move in the mentality of the market and whats acceptable these days.

Another issue of why breeders dont make true breeding strains is the fact that they are SOOO easy to rip off by other seed producers and be sold as their own work. Blatantly taking all the hard work that the original breeder put in and reaping the rewards for themselves... this was a big issue for a long time and people began to frown upon people for doing so ( HACKS! ). So in response most larger breeders just started releasing F1s and keeping all True Stabilized Breeding stock for themselves.. this helps protect the work they have put in as no one can really recreate the exact same F1 offspring even if they use the same True Breeding Parent strains as they will be making different selection of P1 plants for the F1 offspring. Another method for protecting True Breeding strains has been releasing them only in FEM seed lines.. generally eliminating all males from the population to keep others from reproducing seeds.

Mustafunk said:

No one is producing proper strains because most if not all the so called breeders don't have the proper experience or studies on botany and plant breeding to do so. Breeding properly takes hundreds of plants ( Why does it take so many plants? if you grow out a group of seeds and find plants with matching traits breed them and the traits breed true.. why do you need 100s of plants to choose from if you find what you are looking for in a smaller group? Growing out hundreds of plants of the same line is really only needed when trying to lock down a recessive trait that is rare.. hense the reason needing so many plants to find it in both parents you choose to make the next generation. ) , years of work and effort.

An average hemp strain takes 7-10 years of breeding in average ( This statement just isnt true. Unless you are only growing outside being forced to produce 1 generation each yr. Indoors many generations can be produced in a single yr.. I have bred and made stable True Breeding lines in far less time then 7-10 yrs... that number only applies to single generation production each year. ) and you have all this seed sellers releasing 1/2 dozen strains each season, shit it's actually impossible to create strains that fast lol. They are just pollen chuckers and growers making random crosses with elite clones they got. How many of this "breeders" actually work with a landrace stock to develop their own P1 plants (There are a few of them around just need to research and you will find the ones that do good work. ) and spend years testing the progeny and their parent plants? lol.

Plus the plant illegality makes it hard to have proper infraestructures for breeding thousands of plants. The good thing is that most growers don't have such high demands for those seed sellers so they continue filling in their pockets with our money with a work that anybody could do at home for free. ( well I like to think it takes a little bit of skill to make a successful "pollen chuck" sometimes the offspring are not a winner.. Ive made crosses of plants that where amazing by themselves but when put together turned out bad, yes this is even true for making F1s with True Breeding P1 stock.. sometimes the cross is worse then both the parents... Just like 2 beautiful people sometimes have ugly babies LOL things dont always go well together.

Peace.

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Anyway thats my view on the market and what has changed over the yrs.

SGS

When a breeder makes a cross, each parent is called P1. When those two parents are bred, the progeny is called F1. The more the parents varied from each other (indica/sativa vs indica/indica), the more pheno variation you will see expressed in the F1s.
Once you pick the F1 phenos you like and cross them together, the offspring is referred to as F2. F2 x F2 = F3, etc. F1s have the most vigor and each generation loses a bit. F2s have the most pheno variance - even more than F1s.
Personally, I have no problem with pheno variance because I am looking for 1 mother. If the parents are rockstars, you are probably going to get some great offspring in the F1s. Since I am really looking for just one mother, one great plant with tons of vigor that I chose out of other awesome phenos is more important to me than a dozen plants of the same pheno with less vigor.

If one wanted to throw down 50 seeds and needed all the plants to look the same, stabilization is more important. BTW, stabilization is simply inbreeding to isolate selected pheno expression at the expense of vigor. Many breeders don't consider a hybrid to "breed true" to be stable until F5+.

Most of the best clone only strains are F1s and would not be what they are today if they were stabilized first (Blue Dream, Sour D, Bruce Banner, etc).

No one has even defined what it is they want stabilized. Smell, taste, high, tall,, short, potency…. I don't believe anyone has stabilized any seed line for even smell, let alone all of the characteristics that I would want.

If they had then I would plant one seed of blueberry and it would have the DJ Shorts blueberry smell. Pipe dream...