How to Select a Vigorous and Productive Genetic Line
Have you ever wondered why some types of cannabis plants grow better than others or are more productive in certain environments? Why do some plants grow puny, thin, weak, frail and get sick producing very little? Others, on the other hand, show great vigour and rapid growth with large quantities of flowers at the end of the grow.
The answer is to be found in the seed and its origins. The environment has a positive and negative influence on the growth of our plants, but much depends on the genetics of our seeds. We often find ourselves growing plants that come from seeds bought on the internet that come from seed banks where the selection that has been going on for decades, in order to stabilize certain characteristics, has meant that these seeds and the plants that will be born are “spoiled” in captivity, to the point of demanding the stable and controlled conditions of a monitored greenhouse or a super equipped grow room. In fact, if you have already tried to grow them out-door you will have realized that these plants tend to get sick more easily and react negatively to the environmental variables of the external environment.
A seed from plants grown in a protected environment has received an artificial selection for which the resulting plants will give their maximum respect to the conditions for which they were selected: constant temperature, uniform heat, continuous light and all this without receiving any type of variation; all unnatural conditions impossible to be replicated in outdoor despite all our efforts to take care and look after our plants.
The seeds that come from crops grown outdoor, however, will often give life to vigorous and resistant plants because they come from generations of plants that have adapted and proved successful in hostile situations, natural selection is often ruthless and the organisms that derive from it show a richer and more varied chromosome kit, always ready to react to even the most extreme environmental variants. Having more vigour also means being able to easily overcome environmental difficulties. And this is how the best victorious and successful plants will provide the seeds for future plants that, over time, will gain more and more vigour, efficiency in production and guarantees for outdoor cultivation.
In the next articles we will discuss the guidelines on:
- how to select your own outdoor strain by making crossings and selecting plants.
- The genetic characteristics that guarantee vigour and productivity.
- How to choose the winning parents and much more to generate your own strain suitable for the growing environment.