Yes DN hasn't been proven to be the best or better with their different strains that being said since a lot of people are restricted or don't wanna chance of ordering seeds from out side the country buying those 3 strains to make your own version is the only option people have and I am one of them that I am not gonna order seeds from out side the country and hope I get my seeds intact or at all if customs didn't take them.
Well, either you have the ability to get seeds from abroad or you don't.
If you do, you could order this strain directly from DN, or Pukka's version the same as any other seeds ordered abroad.
If you feel limited to what you have locally available, that's different, though I'd suggest its still probably cheaper and a lot less work getting the seeds you want than trying to recreate established hybridized lines from scratch!
As a significant related issue, bluntly, I don't see why this particular cross of GHx(NLxBB) is so spectacular. Again, I'd hope given its parentage that its at least pretty good, but there are enough really good strains out there that enjoy excellent reputations, from top notch breeders, that I don't see a lot of need to either go with something unproven, or even worse, try to recreate something like that from scratch! If you handed me a pack of these seeds, I wouldn't say "no", but given what's out there, these aren't anywhere near the top of my list of what I'd pick.
Yes "TRUE" stable real strains should all look the same or almost the same. The odd plant or few out of a pack that doesn't look the same should always be expected since some won't always grow right and such as we all have experienced in your time of growing.
Well, now you get into what exactly constitutes a "strain". Many people use the term loosely to refer to any specific named "type" of cannabis, but that's really not correct.
By definition a "strain" refers to any group of plants that share common ancestors and characteristics. So if you have a pack of seeds where every seed in the pack produces a different looking plant, then that is NOT a "strain", even if the plants are all siblings. The plant might even be amazing, but its not a "strain". Put more simply, a "mutt" can be a great dog, but its not a breed of dog!
In terms of differences, my understanding is that the phenotypic mutation rate in cannabis strains is about 1 in 1000. So assuming you're growing a whole bunch of genetically similar IBL plants, about 1 in 1000 of them might be noticeably different than the others. If you're growing multiple plants of a true strain in the same soil under the same lights, or outdoors in the same fields, with only rare and unusual exceptions, all the plants should look similar.
Very true. But a person can make top notch strains with few plants but they would have to make true strains of each female to have a stock aka feminized seeds. If they make Feminized seeds of a single mom that looks exactly like her then that can help make breeding a little easer but you would have to do all the breeding by growing your plants in hydro to make sure you get the fastest growth, fastest rooting times and such to do it with little amount of plants but as you said you need 30+ plants going at once to get the right ones.
No.
First of all, the offspring of feminized seeds will only be genetically identical to the parents if both parents are themselves of the same inbred line. If either (or both) parents are hybrids then the offspring can vary. Feminized seeds are neither necessary nor sufficient for breeding, and some would argue that they're actually a hindrance. Many of the big "name" breeders deliberately shun feminized seeds altogether.
Next, having true breeding lines as a starting point for breeding is also neither necessary nor sufficient to create a good new strain, though it can be helpful.
Hydro, also, has nothing to do with this, and in fact, historically speaking, most selective cannabis breeding was done outdoors, the "old fashioned" way. Hydro might let you grow bigger plants in the same length of time, but it doesn't really help plants mature faster, not is it necessary for breeding. In fact, I think most breeders do their indoor breeding in soil, since it makes managing individual plants with different traits for selection easier.
Ultimately, all breeding is about doing crosses, making selections for the traits you want, eliminating the ones you don't want, and then repeatedly crossing or backcrossing the offspring to the point where those traits stabilize. Note that in some cases you simply many NOT be able to stabilize certain traits, because they may require heterozygosity (eg "hybrid vigor") to be expressed. That's probably the case with the GHx(NLxBB). . . you might not even be able to create a stable line that looks like the F1 hybrid. If you're *lucky* you might be able to discover great crosses with small numbers of plants, but that's basically gambling. . .if you want to do the best work, you have to comb though a lot of plants.
If there was a killer strain I might be willing to spend $50 on a single seed but that is only if it roots fast, flowers fast, produces a lot of THC and other things.
You can already buy any number of top quality seeds with all those characteristics for far less than that.
IMO, the reason to pay $50 for a seed is because it does something for you that other less-expensive strains won't. . .whatever that may be. (EG mold resistance; a particular flavor or color, or even potentially simple availability, etc).
I do think its possible to make a good strain for under $500 if you already have the stuff setup for breeding. Now if you had to start from nothing yes its pretty much impossible.
Well, if you're growing outside in fields, you could theoretically do it at negligible cost, except for the cost of your time/labor and opportunity cost of giving up the land that you could be using to grow something else better.
But those last two things are real considerations. Maintaining a meticulous medium-sized grow operation for two years (which is what you need for breeding) isn't "cost free", even if you aren't paying a lot of cash out of your pocket to do the maintenance.
I think if you add it up, to plant the parent seeds, cross them, raise an F1, cross THOSE, cull through 100 offspring to find the "interesting" ones, keep records, cross/backcross THOSE, and repeat x 3 more generations, your talking at LEAST many dozens of hours of work, if not hundreds of hours, After two years of that, well, if you started with good parents and did your job well, you MIGHT end up with a bunch of seeds of a new award-winning strain.
Or you can pay $150 (or even quite a bit less) and have seeds of an already established award winning strain mailed to you, ready to be planted in seven days.
This is why serious breeding doesn't make sense for anyone other than pro breeders. With literally hundreds of cannabis strains commercially available already, most people are going to find it far easier to just buy something that suits them and get going instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.
hahaha
and has lower than normal yield, then it takes that much more work and energy just to create each seed. Some of the potent Sativa-heavy strains are like this. For example, I believe this is one reason, why the "Jack Herer" strain-type seeds almost always cost more. Its not *just* that the product is so good, but also that it really does cost more to make the seeds themselves.
