Cannabis Genetics Terminology
Cannabis breeders have become genetic scientists in recent years. Through pioneering, and a whole lot of horticulture study, breeders have established several terms that are ubiquitous in the industry. If you have ever wondered why a strain labeled S1 is more expensive than its notation-less counterpart (think Slurricane vs Slurican #7 S1), you are about to find out why!
Stabilizing genetics serves many purposes, but the main ones are to weed out all the traits you don't like, and to ensure you are getting consistent phenotypes from one generation to the next.
Let’s learn some terms!
Genotype: The genetic code of a specific strain. The genotype includes the different alleles for each gene. Every strain of cannabis has its own individual genotype.
Phenotype: The variations within a genotype that are expressed as different visual traits.
In the case of slurricane, there are 3 popular phenotypes, even though the genotype/strain is the same for all of them. Slurricane #7 S1 visually looks very different from Slurricane or Slurricane IX. They vary in color, plant size, bud development, and frostiness. These are all qualities that you can visually observe, even though the genetics of the plants are exactly the same. These varying visual traits are what we call different phenotypes.
In order, we see Slurricane, Slurricane #9, and Slurricane IV (9)
Allele: The two or more versions of the same gene. Traits are determined by the dominant allele in a gene. For simplicity's sake, we will assume that every trait has 2 alleles. When you breed 2 strains together, you are working with 4 possible alleles.
This is an example of the alleles you could have if you crossed two strains together. With this cross, you can see you have 4 distinct phenotype possibilities. The capital letters indicate that there is a dominant allele that the genes will always read and express first. In the case of the bd phenotype, there is no dominant allele, so you may have a strain that expresses both traits! The same may be true of the co-dominant AC phenotype, where you may have a strain that again expresses both traits.
The previous example represents 2 plants of 2 different dtrain.genotypes. When you cross a plant with another of the same strain (same genotype), you are working with 2 possible alleles instead of 4.
When you self a plant, you are limiting the number of alleles even further. Several generations of selfing the plant and not seeing any trait variance means that you have likely eliminated all but the allele that has the trait you are looking for. The plant still has that allele in duplicate because it has to have 2 (one from each parent), but as both are the same, you won't see any other phenotype in future generations of the strain unless you cross it with something else.
Hybrid: This term refers to any strain that has more than one strain (genotype) as its parents.
“True” or IBL strains: IBL stands for In-bred line. In the people world, this means bad beans. But in the cannabis world, an in-bred or “true” strain is one that has been bred with a plant of the same genotype as itself. This is done to create stabilized genetics, as these true bred strains have very few variances from one generation to the next.
This is an example of inbreeding. You can see from this example that 75% of the offspring would show the dominant A phenotype. Breeding the second generation plants that show the A phenotype together again would dial that trait in even further so that future generations would see less and less of the less desirable b phenotype.
F1: This term stands for “Filal 1”. This term is used for the first generation offspring of two true bred cannabis plants. Because both of the parent plants are true bred, the resulting offspring will also have consistent, stabilized genetics.
S1: This term stands for “Self 1” and is used for the first generation of offspring from a plant that has been crossed with itself. Most often, this is done by forcing a female plant to produce pollen, and then pollinate herself. The resulting seeds are S1 seeds. This process results in seeds with less genetic variance than their parent as roughly half the genes will get two doses of the same allele.
Slurricane #7 S1 is one such strain. When In House Genetics discovered the #7 phenotype they decided that they wanted to keep its light colored, crazy frosty, dense bud traits. So, they presumably forced the female plant to produce some pollen, and the resulting seeds are what we sell today. Without this extra work, #7 would not consistently produce seeds that have those good traits.
BX1: This term stands for “Backcross 1”. This term is used for the first generation of offspring resulting from taking a hybrid plant and crossing it with a clone of one of its parents. This process is used when a breeder wants to dial in on a specific trait that exists in one of the parents, while also further stabilizing the genetics by eliminating outlier alleles.
REVERSAL???
The genetics of cannabis is an ever growing field of study. There are a lot of different ways to cross a plant with another, and we have found through a lot of trial and error what results in desirable traits.
Whenever you see a notation next to a stain name, you now know that it is an indication of just how much work went into producing that strain, and why Slurricane #7 is worth $50 more per pack than her notation-less siblings.
Ready for a crossword?
Click here to see the answer key when you're ready!
Comments