Breeding terms and concepts
There are many terms which get used (and abused) by both breeders and growers talking about cannabis strains and breeding; in truth the very nature and definition of strains is often very loose within the marijuana world largely due to its unregulated and historically clandestine nature. What we’ll try to do here is give you the common meaning of the terms as you will most often see them, which may not be the same as the strict biological definition used in other agriculture.
IBL
Firstly, we have an IBL or Inbred Line. This refers to a variety which has been selectively inbred to stabilize certain traits in the strain. Inbred lines are largely uniform when grown from seed, and although there will still be variations between seedlings they should all share a distinct series of traits with no phenotype variation. For example, Sensi Seeds Afghani #1 is an IBL which will always be a quick flowering indica and produce large amounts of resin, but you may still see a reasonable amount of height variation and slightly differing leaf shapes between seedlings.
Even an IBL will not produce quite the uniformity that you get when growing multiple clones from one mother plant, but they are the most homogeneous lines which can be grown from seed. Other famous strains considered IBLs include Northern Lights, although there is often much argument in the marijuana world about what constitutes an IBL and which strains can and cannot be considered to be IBLs.
F1 hybrid
An F1 hybrid is the result of crossing two separate IBLs. F1 hybrids are usually more vigorous (faster growing, higher yielding) than either of their parents, but are likely to have a greater degree of variation between seedlings. If you crossed Afghani#1 with Blueberry to create a new F1 ‘Blue Afghan’ then you may well see some seedlings of that F1 strain lean towards each parent; the F1 strain will not always produce the same true breeding characteristics as either of its parents but you are unlikely to see characteristics which neither parent displayed. There should be minimal phenotype variation between seedlings as the dominant genes from each parent are likely to dictate most of the plant characteristics.
F2, F3, F4 hybrids
An F2 hybrid is the offspring of two F1 hybrids, and higher numbers simply mean even further crossings of subsequent generations. The degree of phenotype and trait variation of F2s is likely to be much higher than in either F1s or IBLs as there is a greater chance that dominant genes will not be passed on to the offspring and so plants may have unexpected characteristics.
To use a totally fictional and simplified example: Neither Super Lemon Haze nor Bubblegum are known as strains that produce purple leaves, but if you crossed them together, grew out those seeds and crossed them again there is a chance that you could end up with purple plants. If Super Lemon Haze has a recessive gene for purple and a dominant gene for green, it grows green. Same for Bubblegum. But, if you cross them enough times, there is a greater chance that both parents pass on the recessive and not the dominant gene, resulting in a hybrid offspring that displays the previously hidden genetic characteristic of its parents.
Complications
As we said at the start the terms IBL, F1 and F2 have shifting meanings in the marijuana world and different breeders mean different things when they use them.
This is where things get complicated. The above fictional ‘Super Lemon Bubblegum’ example presumes making random crosses, with multiple fathers and mothers. However, if at each stage you deliberately selected fathers and mothers with the traits you were interested in and carried this on until at least the F4 generation you would actually be on your way to creating an IBL rather than a varied hybrid. So at what stage can you call it an IBL rather an F4, F5 or F6? There is no standard answer to this.
Similarly, if you crossed an IBL with an F1, does that make the offspring a new F1, or an F2? Again different breeders would give you different answers.
Backcrossing
Quite simply backcrossing is breeding a plant with one of its parents, often then also using the offspring of that backcrossing to backcross again to the original parent plant. The aim of backcrossing is to produce a seed line which is as similar to the original parent and as uniform as possible. This method can be used to try to preserve strains which otherwise only exist as clones. For example Cheese was once only available as clones all of which originated from one mother plant. There are now seed varieties of cheese available such as Big Buddha’s available at Herbies or those for sale at Marijuana-seeds.nl.
The only two ways these seeds can have been created is either through selfing (see below) or through backcrossing. In the case of the Big Buddha Cheese it appears that they used an Afghani male to pollinate a Cheese clone then repeatedly backcrossed this offspring with the original Cheese mother.
Selfing
Selfing is the process of forcing a female plant to produce male flowers and so pollinate itself and create new seeds without the need for a genuine male parent. This is used both as a means of preserving strains and of producing feminized seeds; because the mother plant is actually both the father and mother of the new generation, none of that generation should be genetically male. It is still possible that hermaphrodite plants can be produced using seeds from selfed mothers, which is why breeders of feminized seeds select mothers which have no natural tendency to hermaphroditism and force them to produce male flowers through harsh chemical procedures such as the application of colloidal silver.
Synthetic varieties
Synthetic varieties are one of the least used methods of breeding marijuana strains, but widely used in other sectors of agriculture. A synthetic variety such as Cream Caramel by Sweet Seeds is created by interbreeding three or more IBLs in all possible combinations, and using a mix of all the seeds produced from those crosses. In some senses you could consider a synthetic variety to not actually be a single strain at all, and depending on the similarity of the parents used phenotype variations can be massive.
Landrace
A landrace strain is one which has developed in isolation from other strains. In practice a landrace strain is likely to share the same true breeding characteristic as an IBL, the difference being that an IBL has been deliberately inbred to produce homogenous plants where a landrace has been geographically isolated from others resulting in inbreeding. World of Seeds offer many landrace strains from as far afield as Thailand and Colombia.
In practice the terms IBL and landrace are often used somewhat interchangeably; you can find Afghani#1 discussed earlier referred to as an IBL and as a landrace in different places, again showing that all of these terms are somewhat vague when it comes to marijuana (as far as we are aware, Afghani#1 is actually an IBL selectively bred from several different Afghani landraces, but either way it’s not really worth arguing over, the bottom line is it’s quality Afghani marijuana)