I have been trying to read as much as I can about breeding and the accompanying literature/charts by people like Mendel, and am about my third time through of Marijuana Botany. It seems the hardest part is identifying the traits you are looking to isolate, there are so many desirable characteristics.

So far my plan is to pop a pack of 10 seeds.. (These would be F1's correct?).. clone them all before flowering, labeling accurately with notes on growth/times/food/leaf sets/etc.. Then flower them out (taking notes also), saving the strongest/most vigorous/stinkiest/healthiest.. lets just say desirable male (eww did I say that?)

Once flowered and cured, try them all and see which has what I am looking for. Then breed the "best" male and female from that batch (cloning again, to save the parents)...

With the resulting seeds (F2's?), germinate dozens of them and by referring back to my notes, try and identify the ones that resemble the best female from the first batch (of 10) by using growth rate,leaf size/shape, color, aroma, etc...

Identify, say 10 (or 20) or so candidates and clone and flower them. After harvest, sample them and again try to find what I am looking for. Lets say I find one that is almost perfect. This one I keep as the mommy I was looking for..

Now, to create seed with more chance to be this similar, would I breed it with the original male plant (the "grandfather"), and go through the same process of elimination with the resulting seeds? Or are these seeds, ones I would consider "stabilized".

I believe this is called backcrossing (right?), and should further stabilize the offspring, resulting in a line with fewer variations (for both good and bad characteristics), but not neccessarily a true breeding (IBL) strain. This is where it gets confusing to me.... Seems to me to get a true breeding strain, many many generations must be manipulated in this way..