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S1 vs F1 vs R1 vs Bx... and Other Fun Breeder Terms

budelight

Discovery Requires Experimentation
Veteran
Hey everyone,

This is something i have been very confused about since I started to try and understand the terminology.
My hope is that by bubbling this info to the top, others will also understand it clearer and use the appropriate terms when breeding (or in my case, pollen tossin)

Image from: Breeding for Beginners
2841generations3.JPG


Found this on another site:
Ethylene: One of the 5 plant hormones. The levels and ratios of these 5 hormones has a huge impact on the shape, strucutre, aroma, flavor, flowering time, and disease resistance of the plant. Hormones are the chemical messengers that allow DNA to 'talk' to plant tissues and determine the phenotype. Ethylene is primarily involved in flowering, sex determination, fruit ripening, and sensescence (rot). Ethylene is a simple organic molecule, C2 H4, which can also be represented as H2C=CH2.

In cannabis, female plants will produce male flowers if not enough ethylene is present, or if too much gibberellic acid is present. The intersex condition is due to a combination of genetic and environemental factors. Some plants will not turn male under the most extreme stress, and some plants, especially stretchy tropical sativas, will turn with no stress at all. It is my belief that the stress of severe inbreeding, compounded over several generations, is responsible for the majority of hermaphrodites in the drug cannabis gene pool (DCG) today.

Reversal: Treating a female plant with STS in order to collect viable female pollen.

Selfing: Applying female pollen to the female from which it was collected. Example : selecting a particular Willie Nelson cutting, reversing it, and putting the pollen back on another clone of the same plant. Applying that pollen to a different Willie cutting, or to another strain altogether, is not selfing.

F0 or P: The parents selected to start a breeding program. Often referred to as P1 and P2, but this is incorrect.

F1: the first cross between two unrelated parents. The F stands for filial, and refers to the fact that all F1 progeny of the same cross are full brothers and sisters to one another.

S1: The first selfed generation. Selfing an S1 produces an S2, etc. Anecdotal evidence from Sam_Skunkman indicates that continued selfing to the S3 and S4 produces plants so weak that they must be handled very carefully, “like kittens” in his words.

R1's (aka Reversed F1's): When feminized pollen is used to pollinate a different female than the pollen donor. R1's will tend to act like a tradional male x female cross, only all female, while S1's appear to have some different properties that are not yet fully understood. Early reports indicatee that S1's are more consistent than R1's on average, but there are many exceptions, and more research is needed.

BC1 or Bx1: The first backcross generation, ie when an F1 or R1 progeny is crossed back to an F0 parent. Backcrossing can increase the influence of either parent, but continued backcrossing is too much inbreeding, according to both DJ Short and Rezdog, and should be used rarely if at all. One or two backcrosses followed by full-sib mating has beena successful strategy for many breeders, including the creator of Northern Lights.

These terms can be combined for shortand pedigrees. A second backross, followed by three generations of sib-mating, may be represented as a BC2-F3 generation.

Intersex: A condition in which a plant (or animal) displays functional sex organs of both genders. Easier to type than hermaphroditic. My belief is that almost all hermies are genetic females that have weaknesses in their ethylene signaling pathway, which makes them very susceptible to environmental stress.

Stress: Any environmental factor that causes a response by the plant. Stresses can be biotic or abiotic. Biotic stresses include insects, fungi, viruses, predators, and CAMP. Abiotic stresses include drought, poor soil conditions, extreme wind or humidity, or hurricanes or flooding. Both types of stresses can have large effects on phenotype, including induction of intersex phenos.

Hybrid Fertility: The degree to which any two unrelated plants can set seed. For example, crossing an Afghani to a Turk may produce 95% viable seed, whild crossing Durban to Mongolian Indica might only produce 40% viable seed. This is usually a measure of the genetic distance between the parents. The fertility of self-pollinations is unknown but could give the breeder alot of information about the breeding value of the plant in question. A plant that has a desirable phentoype, but is not very self-fertile, is likely very homozygous and will tend to produce consistent offspring.

Micropropagation: Taking very small clones and rooting them in test tubes containing a heat-sterilized nutrient mixture in a agar (gelatin) base. This allows for aseptic (almost sterile) conditioins and precise application of phytochemicals such as STS, auxin, or cytokinin.

Flower parts:

Male:

Petal: the 5 yellow petals surrounding the generative organs
Anther: the banana-shaped pod on a thin stalk that produces and drops pollen
Filament: the thin stalk that supports the anther.
Pollen grain: A tiny, round, hard shell that floats on the wind until it lands on a female stigma.
Sperm: A half-copy of the genetic information of the father. Each grain contains two sperm. One sperm fertilizes the egg and forms the embryon, while the other sperm fertilizes another cell and forms the endosperm, the fatty, protein-rich substance that surrounds the embryon and provides nutrients for the first ~2 weeks of growth. This process is called 'double fertilization' and is pretty cool if you want to read more about it.

Female:

Sepal: the small green leaves subtending (underneath) the petals. The sepals are the strucutres that have two white hairs protruding and are covered in resinous trichomes. They are a leafy jacket for the developing seed. I believe that the evolutionary purpose of THCis to confuse animals, such as mice and voles, that eat cannabis seeds after they fall to the ground. Differences in cannabinoid content probably are due to differences in the brains of the seed predators.

Stigma: The two white hairs that stick out of each flower. Each stigma is capable of accepting pollen and directing it to the ovary, which is located at the base of the seed. The stigma is capable of performing a chemical analysis of the pollen that lands on it, and can decide whether ornot to allow that pollen to germinate and fertilize the embryo.

Ovary: the structure that contains a half-copy of the maternal DNA, which fuses with a sperm to form an embryo that contains 50% DNA from each parent.

Seeds:

Achene: a technical term for the particular type of seed that Cannabis produces. Similar to a nut, but simpler in structure.

Aleurone: the hard, tiger-striped outer shell of a seed that protects the delicate embryo and endosperm.

Vernalization: Any environmental or chemical treatment that induces seeds to sprout. This can be heat, in the case of wild tomato or avocado seeds, or cold, as in the case of poppies and many members of the cabbage family. Some seeds require a bath in acid, as in tomato seeds, which tend to to sprout well when they are incubated in the hot, acidic bath known as the 'stomach' and then deposited in a matrix of rich organic matter, known as 'poop'.

General Breeding Terms:

Compensatory mating: Choosing hybrid parents based on a weakness in one parent. For example, we often choose G13 as a parent when we have a sativa that is quite nice to smoke, but stretchy and long flowering. G13 brings down flowering time and height, without having much impact on the smell or high, except that it tends to boost potency. Another example might be choosing Grapefruit to cross to an indica that is potent, but lacks flavor or 'bag appeal'. Fem breeding makes it easier to choose parents for compensatory mating as both parents can be evaluated for the trait of interest.

Stabilizing Selection: Growing a large number of a a segregating population and selecting the average phenotypes, culling the extreme phenos, in order to lessen the variability in the line. Usually a later step after a line produces some, but not all, exceptional plants. Not used often enough in Cannabis breeding. An example of this would be growing a thousand Love Potions and culling everything that showed a single male flower, so that the genetics of the line would be essentially unchaged, but interesex plants will eventually be completely eliminated.

Directional Selection: Choosing breeding parents based on a desire to boost a trait that is present in both. For example, if you grew out 100 F2's and selected the most purple ones for future breeding, youwould be breeding in the direction of more purpleness without any regard for other phenotypes. When working with very small populations, I believe it is best to focus on one trait a time, rather than trying to find your grail in a population of 30 or 50 beans.

"Half-Sibling Selection": The other thing that jumps out is that once you make any selection at all (in regards to open pollination) it should really be refered to as half-sib selection, for it is not really open pollination anymore. "Open Pollinate", then remove seeds from the 5% of outstanding females, those 5 plants have now given rise to 5 families. These families are to be grown out and the process repeated in 5 seperate plots. Families will be culled rapidly, and over a few generations you'll have your winner, and perhaps save the runner-up as well. Anyway this is a much utilized and well proven selection method - half-sib family selection.
-Tom Hill, https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=5669253&postcount=17

Diversifying Selection: this is a concept more often used in nature, where one populations splits into two and then diverges due to different selective pressures. For example, early humans mated with chimpanzees for many centuries before the different selective pressures caused the two populations to diverge and become reproductively isolated from one another. For Cannabis breeders, this technique could be used to tease out the parent lines from an F1 hybrid. If you bought Thunderfuck Haze, and you had a good eye for both parental phenos, you could eventually have a truebreeding Thunderfuck line and a Haze line that would be more like the parents than like the original F1.

Robustness: A strain that produces similar phenotypes in a wide range of enviroments is said to be robust.

Variability: A measure of the differences in phenotypes within a strain. Some variability is good, for example if you want to harvest over a period of a week or 10 days instead of all at once. Much variablity is bad, for example if your closet has to contain plants that range from 2'-5' tall, or if your harvest window is 2 months instead of 2 weeks and you have other stuff to grow.

Stability: Another way to measure differences in phenotypes. The opposite of Variability.

Diversity: A measure of the genetic diversity within a population. The trick of the breeder is to maximize diversity while minizming variability. Diversity is necessary to allow plants to resist fungi and other pathogens, and to have genetic reserves that will allow the to slowly adapt to a changing climate in the years to come.

Stable Generation: A true F1 made between inbred parents, or a cross between two individuals of the same IBL, will produce seeds that are consistent from plant to plant. F1 plants will grow alike, but will not breed true. IBL's grow alike and will produce offspring that grow alike, both to each other and to the parents. Crossing an IBL to an F1 will produce intermediate results and is a good technique if you have the capacity to evaluate the offspring, or if you are looking for more than one keeper pheno in the progeny.

Segregating Generations: A cros between two hybrids will produce a wide range of phenotypes, especially if the hybrid grandparents are widely unrelated. Segregating generations are where the breeder goes to work, sorting through hundreds of plants to find the ones that meet the goal of the program. Most seeds on the market today are segregating generations.

Definition of POLYHYBRID
: a hybrid whose parents differ in a number of characters
: an individual or group heterozygous for more than one pair of genes

An IX would be like an F1 mother x an F2 male of the same strain. Like multi generational breeding, taking parents from different filial generations.

An F1 is a cross of 2 dissimilar lines eg: thai x afghan

And F2 would be like eg: thai/afghan x thai/afghan

An IBL would be a continuation of Thai/Afghan x Thai/afghan taken past f4

BX is chosen female x male of different strain then backcrosses back to the original mother or father eg: og kush x afghan, then og kush female x og/afghan male

The first cross between any two separate individuals is the F1 / first generation.

F1 generation can be poly-hybrid in lineage,, i.e from two separate hybrid parents.

F1 hybrids always come from individual homogeneous parents / ibls.

In short..
What exactly is a polyhybrid in simple words?
a poly-hybrid is a hybrid made from hybrids

Hope this helps

the term Mendel used was monohybrid,, which is the first generation,, filial in horses,, aka F1

Much is also related to the visual vigor exhibited in different hybird lines (F1 Hybrid, Di-hybrid, Tri-Hybrid, Poly-Hybrid) IMO.

F1 Hybrids show their character as 25% dom. female parent, 50% mix genetics and 25% dom. male parent in lineage.

Poly-hybrids usually show an unstable mix of dominant and recessive traits in lineage, usually related to grandparents rather than direct parents.

IBL's while homogeneous and stable show variation between specimens.

This polyhybrid example is closest to home we can think of:

Saxon Axe is an F1 Hybrid between Northern Lights (which is an IBL) and Sensi Star which is a F1 Hybrid or Tri-Hybrid.

Bubble Axe is an F1 hybrid between Saxon Axe (F1 hybrid/tri-hybrid) and Bubble Dust (F1 Hybrid). The resulting progeny are poly-hybrid in lineage,, they show much variation and are heterogeneous in character.

In short hybrids are the result of crossing ANY two separate cultivar together, whilst poly-hybrids are the result of marriages between these differing hybrids, the depth of which is unknown until observed.

The characteristics exhibited and observable in the lines are the result of genetic inheritance,, this is what makes them individuals within the same kin :wink:

S2s vs S2s in terms of inbreeding depression: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=272898

Four crosses were made between inbred Cannabis sativa plants with pure cannabidiol (CBD) and pure
-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) chemotypes. All the plants belonging to the F1’s were analyzed by gas
chromatography for cannabinoid composition and constantly found to have a mixed CBD-THC chemotype.
Ten individual F1 plants were self-fertilized, and 10 inbred F2 offspring were collected and analyzed. In
all cases, a segregation of the three chemotypes (pure CBD, mixed CBD-THC, and pure THC) fitting a
1:2:1 proportion was observed. The CBD/THC ratio was found to be significantly progeny specific and
transmitted from each F1 to the F2’s derived from it. A model involving one locus, B, with two alleles, BD
and BT, is proposed, with the two alleles being codominant. The mixed chemotypes are interpreted as
due to the genotype BD/BT at the B locus, while the pure-chemotype plants are due to homozygosity at
the B locus (either BD/BD or BT/BT). It is suggested that such codominance is due to the codification by
the two alleles for different isoforms of the same synthase, having different specificity for the conversion
of the common precursor cannabigerol into CBD or THC, respectively. The F2 segregating groups were
used in a bulk segregant analysis of the pooled DNAs for screening RAPD primers; three chemotypeassociated
markers are described, one of which has been transformed in a sequence-characterized amplified
region (SCAR) marker and shows tight linkage to the chemotype and codominance.

http://www.genetics.org/content/163/1/335.full.pdf

If someone can provide links/sources used regarding the Sam, DJ Short, & Rezdog references that would be great.

Best!
Budelight

P.S. Any corrections needed, just let me know :tiphat:
 
Last edited:
L

Luther Burbank

Bude go dig through Tom Hill's posts in the locked "everybody a breeder" thread. He dropped a lot of wisdom in a last hurrah attempting to educate on that topic. Most people here misuse the terms.
 
Interesting collection of terms and info, budelight, thanks for putting it together here.

There are some terms which might not be technically incorrect, but as far as I know have not seen much actual use in plant breeding outside of Cannabis and 1970s-era textbooks. For instance, F0 and P0 don't actually confer any information other than that you are using that individual as a parent, while those parents (which are usually referred to generally as P1 and P2, just not as a generation notation) are already of a certain generation which would be valuable to know (or record that they are "unknown").

Just be aware when trying to find more information using web searches that generally the only generation notations widely used are F# and BC#. Breeders of species which reproduce easily by selfing (and even species which reproduce primarily by selfing) generally refer to their successive generations of single seed descent or pedigree breeding pools as F#s.

can you really have a BX1 F2?

no IX for in cross?

Yes, BC1F2 is a commonly-used generational notation.Similar to not generally finding utility in differentiating S1 vs F1 vs R1, breeders outside of Cannabis might cross an F5 with an F8, or a BC2F4 with an F11 and the resulting generation would be labeled an F1.

Bude go dig through Tom Hill's posts in the locked "everybody a breeder" thread. He dropped a lot of wisdom in a last hurrah attempting to educate on that topic. Most people here misuse the terms.

There is some good info mixed into that thread, but it's really difficult to filter it out of all the drama, even when you actually understand the concepts that TomHill was alluding to. He was so exasperated for most of it that there isn't much explained for the layperson at all.
 
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