I wouldn't do it for successive generations, but doing it one time doesn't seem to lose much, if anything. I think the genetic mutations occur from doing it over and over again, or doing it weakly or ineffectively. If it's done correctly, ie, a healthy thriving plant, and the seeds are allowed to fully mature, and the quality was there to begin with, you should have good results.
If I take a specimen from itself, by doing female to female, the next generation I do is a back-cross with itself (in this case it will be the male from this GG#4xGA) in a "male" form, picking 1 out of a half dozen or more of itself, then breeding it with 2 prime females. Bam! done! It will be stabilized from that point forward. (75% GG#4 x 25% GA) From there you can further isolate the GA genes, if you want.
All of the genetic codes are in the females, males only pass along a few traits that can be sorted out at a later date.
- All the traits of interest on the female selection can be seen or documented, including: growth and development rates; flower characteristics such as size, quantity, smell and color; as well as potential for accumulating THC or CBD, and terpenes. This cannot be said of male plants.
- Male plants can only express growth and development traits visually. All other bud traits are hidden in their genetic makeup and are not expressed for selection. You can select for pollen sac size and density, but the data so far is inconclusive on how these traits translate to female flower size and density.
Sorry Frank. I know you are trying to get solid into breeding, but my opinion is the same as
@Trustfall on this one. And though he hasn't done a lot of breeding, I sure have. I can tell you that traits from the male plant like branching, bud spacing, bud density, height, bad stuff like mold prone, etc also shows. F2's imo have the most varied traits of all of them no matter what you've put them with. You can grow out 50 plants in the identical enivornment from the same seed batch and get all kinds of crazy variances from physical traits though taste and smell. What I do at that point is selecting a type of plant out of that batch of seeds that I want to continue. Usually it's a pain in the ass, because you never know what's up until the end.
The formula I follow is simple...
Right before flowering I take 2 clones per plant and map them on a piece of paper so that I know what went where in my clone machine. Then they go to flower. The males mature first, so I let 'em go. Whatever looks good from a growth and bud "pollen sack density" perspective, I set that ONE aside. Everything else... culled. Then comes the females side. Once they express, I chart everything. Vertical and horizontal growth, bud spacing, cola formation, branching, popcorn or not, etc. Those clones for the fem plants are continued until after harvest and the test buds are smoked.
Then the best female out of the bunch is selected. Sometimes I'll bonsai the male. I always bonsai the fem. Regardless, I harvest and store pollen from the male. Once the bonsais are stable, then I flower out both male and female clones from those two top plants, make seeds and do it again. And I keep doing it until everything that comes out of those seeds is exactly the same as what came before. When they are identical plants in all areas, then and only then is the strain considered to be anything close to stable.
1 cross, then crossing back to 2 other plants as described above doesn't do shit for stability. The hybrid has to be stable on itself. That blending of strains doesn't happen for at least 3 generations in my experience.
The one thing I HATE about cannabis farming is this prevelant attitude that someone somehow has "missed" something. The only thing that hasn't been missed in cannabis is flavor profile and thc content. People will continue to jack with it until 1 hit makes us walking zombies. And that's fine. But this crap of half assed breeding and misconceptions has got to go. It's REALLY REALLY REALLY fucking up the market.
I won't touch 90% of the breeders out there or more. I just won't. Learned my lesson last season about fucking with off center genetics. It's bullshit. And all it leads to is ultra frustration. Pot isn't a Christmas Fruitcake. It doesn't get better with the addition of all the candied fruit in the world. Not even close. It gets better when something is produced is actually fantastic and is stable... like HSC beans. Like Mosca who has been working with the original Indiana Bubblegum and Sharon White Widow. Like Bodhi. Like BOG. These are the current classic players. My Mosca beans just started popping last night btw. I'm thinking about doing a grow diary that is exclusive to classic foundation based strains. Or I'll just shove it in with the rest of my shit. May as well. Organically it's going to all shift that way anyway... because in this round, that's all there is.
It starts with
Chemdog #4, GSC, and LA Confidential. Then there is Astro Kush, LA Pure Kush, and Killer Queen x Blowfish by Hazeman. Mosca's Dancing Queen and Bubblegum Boogie. BOG's Sour Bubble (yep got that stuff... FINALLY). There's some minor shit in between those that I'm not expecting much from.
And then there are three breeding projects I'm working.
Got a male in the Astro Kush run. So I'm making more Astro Kush seeds.
I crossed HSC's Pineapple Muffin with HSC's Purple Mountain Majesty. Seeds just popped from that one.
And today I pollinated a Blue Cookies with a Blue God.
This is just for personal stock. I don't care if someone wants to grow my beans or not lol :)