A cross is the result of pollinating a plant of one genotype with pollen from another, and also the act itself. By convention it is written female first: "A x B" means A was the mother and B supplied the pollen.
In practice
Crossing two unrelated, fairly uniform parents gives an F1 that can be vigorous and fairly even. Crossing two polyhybrid clone-only cuts, which is what most modern crosses are, gives an F1 that segregates a lot, so packs of the same "strain" can look like several different plants. That is why one cross with a new name is not a stable cultivar.
Record the cross properly: which plant, which male or pollen batch, the date, how many seeds, and the identity of both parents. A cross registered with its parents on GenetixBay starts life with a traceable lineage claim instead of a name alone.
Don't confuse with
- Line: a population carried over generations; a cross is one generation.
- Backcross: crossing offspring back to a parent.
- Hybrid: any cross between distinct parents; nearly all modern cannabis is hybrid.
Pollination is the transfer of pollen onto a female flower's stigmas; in cannabis it is usually by wind, or by hand when breeders pollinate chosen branches to make seed.The genotype is the set of alleles a plant actually carries, either at one locus or across its whole genome, as opposed to the traits you can see.F1 is the first generation of offspring from crossing two parents; if the parents are inbred and different, F1 plants are uniform and often show hybrid vigour.A polyhybrid is a cultivar whose recent ancestry mixes many different lines, so its seed segregates widely and rarely breeds true.A clone-only is a cultivar that exists only as cuttings from one original plant, with no seed line that reliably reproduces it.Segregation is the separation of a plant's two alleles at each locus into different gametes, so offspring of a heterozygous parent vary in which allele they get.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.A line is a population of plants descended from chosen parents and maintained over generations under one name, with recorded lineage.A pollen chucker is someone who crosses two popular plants, skips selection and testing, and sells or spreads the seed as a new line.A breeder develops lines over generations with clear goals, large grow-outs, selection of both sexes, stability and herm testing, and honest lineage records.
