"Strain" is the everyday word for a named type of cannabis. It has no formal botanical meaning; in microbiology a strain is a genetic variant of a microbe. In cannabis it can mean a clone, a seed line, a cross, or just a brand name on a jar.
In practice
Use the word, but don't trust it. A name is a claim. Genetic studies of retail cannabis found that samples sold under the same name often differ genetically, and samples with different names can be near-identical (Sawler et al. 2015). Large chemical datasets show labels and names map poorly onto actual chemical profiles (Smith et al. 2022). Renaming a cut costs nothing and changes nothing in the plant.
What counts as evidence is documented lineage, a DNA comparison, a lab profile and grow reports. GenetixBay prefers "cultivar" for that reason, and records each plant with an ID rather than relying on a name.
Don't confuse with
- Cultivar: the formal term, with defined standards of distinctness, uniformity and stability.
- Chemovar: a type defined by its chemistry.
- Phenotype: one plant's expression; a strain name often covers many phenotypes.
Myth check
"A strain name tells you what genetics you're getting" is busted; see why strain names are unreliable and Mythbusters.
