Quote Originally Posted by GrowRebel
Let's pretend I'm a four year old and explain to me what f2 seeds are and how will they be different from f1 .... will the quality be effected. Will all the plants from that strain have the same charcaterists or will each plant vary?:
Sure,
Say you have AK47 and WW.
Breed them together.
You get a F1 hybrid that you will call (AK47 x WW).
You may also note a phenomenon called 'hybrid vigor' in this generation ONLY.
You will usually be able to see 3 distinct phenotypes among the F1 plants, because of dominance/recessivity among the original gene pool you were working with.

You have a choice now to take your F1 generation and either do what is called a 'backcross' to either of the parents, and you would get either (AK47 X (AK47 X WW)) BX1, or (WW X (AK47 X WW)) BX1. The 'BX 1' means it's a back-cross to one of the parents.

Your other choice is to breed the F1's only amongst themselves.
This gives you the F2 generation.
You will very likely lose your hybrid vigor in this breeding.
You will see in the offspring even MORE variation, because of the increased possiblity of recessive genes 'finding' each other in the population and giving you double-recessive plants that display traits that would have been masked in earlier generations.

Quote Originally Posted by GrowRebel
I've been doing some searching else where and if I understand it correctly there isn't too much difference. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You're misguided by seed vendors who want you to think F2's are just great, but the truth is I wouldn't waste space on them unless I had the original parent plants to work with and could make a bunch of BX seeds from them.
But a lazy 'breeder' can crank out zillions of F2 seeds with very little effort.