Originally Posted by catbuds
Yes & no. Let compare it to dog breeding. Inbreeding is mother to son, father to daughter, brother to sister. Line breeding is cousins, aunt to nephew, uncle to niece. (Lets just say the breed is chihuahuas). Lets say there's a genetic marker on # 14 of a dna strand for 'rage' (a loosley used term for k-nine insanity leaning toward viscousness). It may be dormant, just hanging out there on marker 14 till something comes along & triggers it. In breed, or even closely line breed for a few generations, & BANG! there it is, fully activated & you now have bred a viscous line. Line breeding to more distant relatives (2nd cousins, great aunt etc etc), dilutes this chance of 'doubling up' on bad genes while maintaining the stability of the breed. Even more distantly removed relatives decreases this chance of doubling up even more untill the chance is null. Not saying some day we'll see a man eating pot plant, ha! But what we DO see are pop up mutations, strains loosing their vigor, some strains become more susceptible to pests & disease. You can greatly reduce the chances of this by getting seeds of the same strain from else where, growing them out & using one of those males to pollenate your girls, a male from your line to pollenate a female from the new seeds, & back to business for a few more generations. In animal husbandry, this is called an out cross. Not crossing to a different breed (strain), but a different line of the same breed (strain). While I don't know of any pot breeders who practice this, I used to. I'd stabilize my line, pass out seeds & in 3-4 generation, swap pollen. While this wasn't outcrossing, it was line breeding. A bit closer than I would have liked (since I hadn't 'commercialized' my line, limited me somewhat) but it served the purpose. This is why I've been looking for a pollen resource. Pollen swapping should be more common than it is. Sorry this became so long. Don't think I could have condensed farther without making it incomprehensible. :) :) :)