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Regular Seeds
These seeds can grow into male or female plants.
- You don’t know which until they grow up!
- Males make pollen.
- Females make the flowers (the buds).
Regular seed line available here
Feminized Seeds
- These seeds grow into all females.
- This is good because most people want the flowers (buds) from the females.
- Breeders make them by tricking a female plant to make pollen instead of using a male.
Feminized seed line available here
F1 Generation (First Filial)
F2 Generation (Second Filial)
- When related F1 plants make seeds together, those seeds are F2. These can also be regular seeds or feminized seeds.
- F2 seeds are like a big messy family — some carry more traits from the mom, some carry more traits from the dad (or female pollen donor), some will even carry traits from grandma!
- Lots of surprises!
Regular F2 seed line available here
F3 Generation (Third Filial)
- When related F2 plants make seeds together, that’s F3.
- Now the family is getting more steady and you start to see more plants that look the same.
- Less surprises, more predictability.
Backcross (BX1, BX2)
Backcrossing is when a selected plant is bred back to one of its parent plants to reinforce specific traits (like flavor, yield, potency, or structure).
- You make seeds using an unrelated male (or female pollen donor) creating an F1 cross, and then you breed one of those seeds back to the Mother plant or Father plant.
- That’s a backcross = BX1.
- If you do it again, that’s BX2.
- Backcrossing is like going home to the Mother or Father plant again and again to keep special traits.
Regular BX1 available here
Feminized BX1 will be available soon!
S1 (1st Selved Generation)
- This is achieved when a selected female plant makes seeds with herself using reverse pollination methods.
- It’s like making a copy of the Mother plant, though it is not a perfect copy.
- She makes seeds that look a lot like her.
- These are called S1 seeds.
- These seeds are like F1s, where they can carry traits from the Mother and even grandparents.
S1 seed line available here
S2 (2nd Selved Generation)
- Now you take a seed from the S1 seed stock and she makes seeds with herself too!
- That’s S2.
- Each time, the plants will ideally start looking more and more like the original Mother plant, if the correct traits were achieved during the S1 selection.
Plant Breeding Basics
This quick-reference table breaks down key breeding generations—like F1s, F2s, S1s, and backcrosses—explaining how each is made, what type of seeds they produce, and the genetic variation you can expect. Whether you’re growing with regular or feminized seeds, this guide helps you make sense of the breeding process.
Wanna Know How Seeds Really Work?
Dive into the science behind regular and feminized seeds, backcrossing, F1s, F2s, S1s, and more.
It’s plant breeding made simple, fun, and worth the click.