Pay attention that growing marijuana may be subject to special restrictions and regulation in your country or state. Please contact your attorney to obtain advice before cultivating cannabis.
Disclaimer
Pay attention that growing marijuana may be subject to special restrictions and regulation in your country or state. Please contact your attorney to obtain advice before cultivating cannabis.
While consuming marijuana, you can often come across unique tastes and effects of the herb. Even the same strain can feel differently. It's all about genetics. Together with the environment, genetics significantly affects the final properties of the bud. Everything can change critically depending on the climate and conditions of detention, even if the heredity remains the same.
Cannabis varieties have evolved over the years. Their history goes far back to China, 3000 years BC. However, it is believed that the earliest varieties were produced in Pakistan. The point is that Indica and Sativa grew up in different conditions. This is what led to their diversity.
What can affect genetics?
You might think that genetics is something stable that cannot change. However, this factor is so fragile and changeable! It is influenced by such factors as:
- The soil
- Harvest time
- Amount and angle of light
- Photoperiod length
- Marijuana strain
Even though cultivation has been popular for many years, plant hybridization has been invented recently. Thus, growers experiment with weed intending to give buds certain Indica and Sativa properties. This results in completely different strains, each of them having unique characteristics and terpene profiles.
So, there are only 3 pure varieties of marijuana:
- Indica
- Sativa
- Ruderalis
The third type is the rarest one, so usually, a hybrid is a mixture of Indica and Sativa in different proportions.
Ruderalis
Although there is a lot of information about Indica and Sativa, this cultivar is rarely mentioned. It is an auto-flowering plant variety that can bloom even under harsh conditions. Most often it is found in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia. Ruderalis was considered wild cannabis for many years, but more recently it has begun to be studied in more detail.
Hybridity
Many types of hybrid varieties are classified in different ways.
An inbred line or IBL is a variety of hybrids achieved through selective inbreeding to maintain certain characteristics of marijuana. This means several similarities without differences in phenotype.
F1 Hybrid is when two inbred lines cross. Their plus is that they grow better and give a larger yield than the previous generation; however, there may be great variability, this is a clear disadvantage.
F2 A hybrid is the result of crossing two F1s. The principle is similar for F3, F4. However, the higher the F level, the greater the chance of getting unexpected results.
Synthetic strains are a rather chaotic way of breeding new strains. It is achieved by crossing three or more IBLs in all variations. This method is the least common.
