What's an F2 form/strain

VirginHarvester

Well-Known Member
Here's a nice article on it where the author is attempting to set a standardization for seed banks to use so that we all can understand exactly what we are getting- or at least can expect from our seeds.

- For the purpose of seedbanks, a hybrid is in general, a cross between any two unrelated seedlines.
ANY HYBRID IS heterozygous and NOT TRUE BREEDING.

F1 hybrid - is the first generation of a cross between any two unrelated seedlines in the creation of a
hybrid. F1 hybrids can be uniform or variable depending on the P1 parent stock used.

F2 hybrid - is the offspring of a cross between two F1 plants (Clarke). What Clarke and other sources
don't make clear is do the two F1's need to be from the same parents? By convention they don't. As
well, german geneticists often describe a backcross of an F1 back to a P1 parent as a F2 cross.

- OK lets say we take blueberry and cross it with romulan (both relatively true breeding of their unique
traits) to create the F1 hybrid romberry. Now lets cross the F1 romberry with a NL/Haze F1 hybrid.
Some could say this is a F1 cross of romberry and NL/Haze. Others could argue that it is a F2 cross
of two F1 hybrids. Gets confusing doesn't it? Now lets cross this Romberry/NL/Haze(RNH) with a
Skunk#1/NL#5 F1 hybrid to create RNHSN. Now some would argue that RNHSN is an F1 hybrid
between RNH and SK/NL seedlines. Others would call it an F2.

- So what does this mean to the consumer? It means that a seed bank can call a cross whatever it wants
until the industry adopts some standards. This is what this article will attempt to initiate. Clarke eludes to
standardising these definitions but never really gets around to it. Fortunately other plant breeding
communities have (Colangelli, Grossnickle&Russell, Watts, &Wright) and adopting their standards
makes the most sense and offers the best protection to the seedbank consumer.

Watts defines an F1 as the heterozygous offspring between two homozygous but unrelated seedlines.
This makes sense and gives the F1 generation a unique combination of traits; uniform phenotype but not
true breeding. This is important in the plant breeding world. This means that when a customer buys F1
seeds that they should expect uniform results. It also means that the breeder's work is protected from
being duplicated by any other means than using the original P1 (true breeding parents). [There are
exceptions to this by using techniques such as repeated backcrosses (cubing the clone)]
F2 crosses are the offspring of crossing two F1 hybrids. This means that they will not be uniform nor
will they breed true. However, F3, F4, F5, etc will also share these characteristics, so to simplify
terminology for the seedbanks and seedbank merchants, they can all be classified as F2 seeds in general.
Describes the diffrences between F1 & F2 Hybred Marijuana Plant Strains,

At this point though is any seed bank or seed company offering true F1 or P1? A lot of seed companies don't say their current offering is an F2 but by now wouldn't most of them likely be? Unless the seed company tells us we are getting P1 or F1 then it's probably an F2 imho. It really seems like all strains would be constantly evolving and something that's been around for 5 years or more could be quite different from when it was introduce. If that's not the case I am a little surprised we don't see seed companies offering more F1s.
 
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