A breeder, in the sense GenetixBay uses, is someone who develops a line over several generations toward a stated goal, rather than releasing a single cross. The work is mostly numbers and patience: grow many plants, select hard, keep and evaluate males, test for stability and intersex tendency, and record everything.
In practice
A breeder working a line might grow 100-300 plants per generation, keep the top 2-5% of females and a few carefully chosen males, cross or backcross them, and repeat until the offspring are uniform enough to describe honestly. Before release, tester grows report germination, sex ratio, herm rate and spread of types. A breeder publishes what the line is and is not, including the faults.
Good breeders value males as much as females, because half the genetics of every seed comes from the father.
Don't confuse with
- Pollen chucker: crosses and sells without the selection and testing.
- Seed bank: a vendor that sells seed, often from many breeders. Selling is not breeding.
- Grower: growing well and breeding well are different skills; many great growers never breed.
Myth check
"Herms are just cannabis being cannabis." GenetixBay position: herm-prone lines mostly come from breeding shortcuts (repeated selfing, careless feminising, untested crosses). A breeder culls for it. See breeders vs pollen chuckers and Mythbusters.
In cannabis growing, a plant (usually female) that develops both pistillate and staminate flowers or anthers; botanists call it intersex or monoecious expression.A backcross is a cross of a hybrid back to one of its parents (or that parent's line), repeated to recover the parent's traits while keeping one introduced trait.Germination is the stage where a viable seed absorbs water, splits its shell and pushes out a root (radicle), usually within 1-7 days at 20-30 °C.The herm threshold is GenetixBay's two-tier herm standard: a 10-plant screening grow with zero herms to be featured, then about 150 or more community-grown plants before a line can be Verified under 2% herm rate.A pollen chucker is someone who crosses two popular plants, skips selection and testing, and sells or spreads the seed as a new line.In cannabis slang, a seed bank is a vendor that sells seed from one or many breeders; it is not the same as a conservation genebank.Herm-prone describes a line whose plants often produce intersex flowers; GenetixBay treats this as a breeding fault and a reason not to breed from it.Selfing is pollinating a plant with its own pollen, in cannabis usually by reversing part of a female to make pollen; it is the most intense form of inbreeding.An IBL (inbred line) is a seed line that has been inbred and selected over many generations until it breeds true for its main traits, giving uniform offspring.Selection in breeding is choosing which plants become parents, so that alleles behind the chosen traits become more common in the next generation.The Stud Book is GenetixBay's showcase of documented male plants, with selection journals, keeper details and sire credits; males are encouraged and rewarded.A test grow (tester grow) is growing out a sample of a new seed line, often by several independent growers, to measure uniformity, vigour, chemistry and herm rate before release.
