Cannabis Strains - Breeding New Varieties

Breeding New Varieties

Breeding involves pollinating a female cannabis plant with male pollen. This will happen naturally. However, the intentional creation of new varieties typically involves selective breeding in a controlled environment.

Often male plants, once identified by their ball-like stamen, will be separated from female flowers. This prevents accidental fertilization of the female plants, either to facilitate sinsemilla flowering or to provide more control over which male is chosen. Pollen produced by the male is caught and stored until it is needed.

The seeds produced by a germinated female will be F1 hybrids of the male and female. These offspring will not be identical to their parents. Instead, they will have characteristics of both parents. Advanced techniques can stabilize certain characteristics.

A common technique to stabilize a cannabis variety is called "cubing", in which the breeder will seek specific traits in the hybrid offspring (e.g. greater resin production, tighter node spacing, etc.) and breed said offspring with a parent plant. The same traits are sought in the new inbred offspring, which are then again bred with the original parent plant. This process is called cubing because it usually repeated across three (or possibly more) generations before a variety can be considered at least somewhat stable.

Seed shops sell both pure varieties that have specific aspects stabilized as well as unstabilized hybrids that may be of questionable quality.

Most cannabis varieties used today in North America are asexually propagated Indica varieties that were bred hydroponically to produce large amounts of "bud."