Cannabis market often strikes us with complicated terminologies, like pure breed, true breed or others alike. Let’s see if we can sort our way from this unending conceptual conundrum of labels, and decide how to pick our hybrid Cannabis seeds online. 

What Is Pure Breed?

Happily, we have historical accounts tracing Cannabis back to the 2900 BC in Central Asia. By that time, people learned about the benefits of Cannabis and would use it for medical purposes, rituals or to have a good time. Later civilizations traveled for economic and trade purposes and took Cannabis seeds with them.

In this trade context, Cannabis started to be bred outside their original habitat. We call these “feral” or “escapees”, which are original plants bred elsewhere, and adapting to their new environment. This development led to landrace stains, which kept some features of their ancestors and grew to new ones thanks to the new conditions. 

Landrace strains usually take their names after their original birthplace (like Afghani, Thai etcetera). They usually develop similar appearances, features, and generate similar effects thanks to their genetic heritage, with few alterations due to environmental factors. But they kept an astonishing consistency. 

Generally, they are either 100% Indica or Sativa. What makes them unique is their distinct features; they are quite one of a kind, maintain a strong sense of identity, and can be easily distinguished one from the other. Pure breed or landrace strains stand for genetic purity – or close to genetic purity. 

As of today, we see less and less of these landrace strains, as market conditions led to the rise of hybrids. 

What Are Hybrid Cannabis Seeds Online?

The Cannabis demand is on the rise and the demands for it quite high. So more and more varieties seem to be developed by breeders, and what you can usually find on the market today are hybrid strains. These hybrids which are cross-bred, are either Indica, Sativa, Ruderalis strains, and were originally plants extracted from their soil, planted and bred in the US and Europe. 

Thus, these are plants which adapted and evolved to their new environment to different features and characteristics. But quite often, far from the original prototype. It is hard to come across some pure breed from the old days, as one should expect. 

So, What Is True Breeding?

True breeding or IBL Cannabis is the process which aims to develop stable and consistent offspring off one dominant phenotype. Normally, true breed results can be found among traditional landrace strains. 

True breed tries to grow strains which will produce single specific strains – with unique features, to create stable genetic baggage which can last in time. This is done by picking strong selective parents and grows it through generations until the dominant features are stable. 

True breeding is the manipulation of genes, which uses selective breeding. It aims to perpetuate the desirable genes, to achieve predictability. True breeding tries to remove the unforeseeable, play God, forget about the weak, and produce wonderful predictable offspring.

What Are The Differences Between True Breed And Pure Breed?

Well, there are differences and there aren’t. And this is what is happening:

• Both concepts usually operate with landrace strains; usually, pure breed refers to something that is 100% pure of the same provenance; and true breed usually uses selective breeding to develop the most stable most efficient phenotype, in order to cultivate an expected superior behavior from the plants.
• Now, scopes of the two will differ. Pure breeds aim to keep the tradition, and perpetuate old traditional landrace strains, without keeping any interest for any alterations of any sorts; they want consistent behavior from traditional breeds, as true breed also aims for consistent, they are determined to break with tradition and create something new.
• Thus, the interest in quality is different. Pure breed or landrace strains are not necessarily quality-superior to impure or hybrids; but true breed, which is sometimes pure (but not necessarily), aims for superior breeding, selective breeding, improvement of certain features, perfecting and keeping the most efficient and fittest.
• Therefore, the objective of pure breeding and true breeding are different.
• The outcomes are different as pure breed wants to keep and true breed wants to perfect, so as to produce either pure or hybrid strains which have superior effects, more stable, more suitable to survive.
• But at the end of it all, they are both market-oriented. The pure breed has its market of nostalgic conservative attached to traditional values, while the true breed is for the more high-tech oriented marketers, for the ones aiming for perfection and for the experiment, and for the ones who approve with technological and scientific intervention in developing new species.

The Bottom Line

In the true breeding versus pure breeding battle, both concepts are winners; either aiming to develop a perfect superior phenotype which will be stable and probably excel at all chapters – psychoactive effect, physical high, clear mind outcome, good taste, exquisite fragrance, and probably smoke itself at one point; or aiming for traditional unique but not necessarily perfect or superior in quality strains. 

These two separate worlds complete each other well, and sometimes even connect – as often, true breeding or IBL focuses on perfecting pure breeding and add to nature what it wasn’t able to do herself.