Is potency regulated by a single allele? I'm trying to figure out how many phenos I would expect to have to test to verify an increase of potency over either parent strain on a hypothetical IBL cross. Also, is trichome development or size always correlate to potency?
Honestly, to add to my only things to look for are early flowering and size of male flowers to my earlier list.
The most potent plant might not pass on this trait, and the healthiest plant might not have favorable combining ability. Judging a male by visual appearance and also smoke testing, or using bio-assay, should not be discounted, but test crossing the male is the only way to determine it’s breeding potential.
Your
VERY BEST bet is to follow those general guidelines that are listed above to pick the males. Then breed your plants - you will probably get a lot of different pheno's.
FROM THOSE start to pick your REAL desirable traits. That is the way you will weed out the stuff that may just not want to pass on easily. Or if you get lucky you will find what your looking for from the strain and pass it on. So your goal should be to look at the two different strains and find decide your goals with them. (Example: One strain is bushy and heavy yielder and one is lanky but some dank smoke. Breed them and find the female that meets those qualities). You can from this point use the same old male if he produced offspring you wanted consistantly or you can start looking at your newly produced males. ... breed and breed some more.
Then start again start breeding > take seeds > grow >select > breed again.
Rinse and repeat until you have squared/cubed so many times the thing is an tetrahexoctohedron plant. (There isn't such a thing but you get the idea)
Sorry for the rambling but there are so many routes you can take when it comes to this, have fun with it and experiment. Just understand you will sometimes not get what you were after. Just have a goal in mind and shoot for it. You may not end up with what you were after in the end but usually it is all worth it.