Edit Content

Follow us

Facebook Twitter Instagram

WE3D STRAINS AND DOG BREEDS

Girl Scout Cookies. Fire OG. Pineapple Express. Super Silver Haze. Amnesia Haze. Wedding Cake. Anyone who knows anything about cannabis knows that these are what we call strains. Some of us are very picky about which strain we choose to consume and which we don’t. The strains are clearly all different. However, they can all also be clearly described as marijuana. How does this work? What makes strains different from one another if they’re all the same type of plant? If you want to understand more about what strains actually are, you’re in the right place.

All dogs are dogs, but they’re not the same. All marijuana is marijuana, but they’re not the same. Now, if we want to get even a little bit more specific, where do we go from here?

We’ll get to Cannabis, but let’s start with dogs. 

Fig 1.:  An explanatory diagram of the relationship between wolves and dogs.

We all know about dogs and dog breeds. A dalmatian is a dog. A boxer is also a dog. A pug is also a dog. They are definitely not the same, but they’re all definitely dogs. What you may not know is that technically, all dogs are a subset of wolves. Thousands of years ago, some wolves were less aggressive and more timid than others – basically the weak b!tches of the wolf world. These ones cultivated a relationship with humans, one that was probably largely based on food. Humans tend to give scraps to these wolves, and they stick around humans knowing that food was in regular supply and easier to get than through hunting. Humans used this to their advantage, training the wolves to assist them with hunting, alerting the humans to danger, etc. Over thousands of years and generations, the great great great great great great (etc.) grandchildren of these relatively timid and tame wolves are what we call domesticated dogs. 1 Aggressive , feral wild wolves have always existed and  still exist in the wild, but the group of weak and fluffy less ferocious wolves branched off and eventually became what we call dogs today. They are still completely capable of mating with wolves (producing fertile wolfdog hybrids), and are genetically almost indistinguishable from wolves. Dogs are a subspecies of Canis lupus. 

Despite how different they look and behave in many ways, dogs and wolves are the same species. 

Likewise, Cannabis existed in the wild for millions of years, if not more. These grew all over the place, as they’re hardy plants. From the tip of Southern India to the Yunnan Valley in China, from the forests of Vietnam to the Afghani desert, Cannabis thrived. Historical record suggests that it only made its entry into Europe in the 16th century. When early scientists got around to doing a physical and ancestral analysis of the Cannabis sativa plant, the research suggested that there might be a species divide here. Just like how some wolves (Canis lupus lupus) had branched off and wound up becoming the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), scientists at the time believed that the same had taken place with Cannabis at some point in history. Modern science and research has shown us that at some point, Cannabis sativa branched off to individual subspecies that we have today – Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa, and Cannabis sativa subsp. indica. (We have another article where we go into this divide in depth and cover a lot of the common myths and misunderstandings regarding these two.)

The belief is that unlike sativa plants, which are well adapted to a tropical, humid, warm, semi-rainforest climate, the Indicas of the Himalayas, Hindu Kush region, and Afghanistan are well suited to tolerate the dry, cold weather that comes along in early to late autumn. Here, plants have no need to withstand humidity  and rain. Rain is scarce, and the air is dry. Plants here need to be suited to hold onto moisture, tolerate cold, and flower quickly so that they can reach maturity before the first frost comes in and kills the plant. To hold onto moisture, they have dense flower structure, reducing the amount of airflow between buds and moisture loss to evaporation. In contrast, Sativas have airy buds that are less dense, as they often have an excess of moisture in their environment, and need to encourage air to flow through them as much as possible to ensure that they do not start to mold or rot. These climatic differences likely resulted in the divergence and the development of Indicas and Sativas. 2 However, like with dogs and wolves, Indicas and Sativas are the same species. 

(Eventually, an additional subspecies was discovered, called Cannabis sativa ssp. ruderalis. This isn’t quite as relevant for this discussion so we’ll circle back to it some other time.)

Looking back at dogs, we have many dog breeds. Boxers, pugs, dalmatians, retrievers, American Pit Bull Terriers, and many more. Why aren’t these their own subspecies? 

The answer is twofold. First of all, domesticated dogs are already their own subspecies (Canis lupus familiaris). Secondly, it has to do with the extent of the differences. These are not always visually distinguishable but can be identified genetically. When a geneticist looks at the DNA of a wolf, a labrador, and a pug, the labrador and the pug are nearly indistinguishably identical, while that of the wolf is ever so slightly different. Wolves and dogs share about 99% of genetic material. All dogs share about 99.7 – 99.9% of genetic material. If you analysed the DNA of a pug, a boxer, and a husky, they would be 99.7% identical. All the variation that different dog breeds have is expressed in that tiny little 0.3% sliver of DNA. 3

However, there is no hard and fast rule that a certain amount of genetic difference warrants the creation of a subspecies. 

In the early days of humanity, possibly as early as 30,000 years ago, we started domesticating dogs. We took male and female wolves with traits that we liked (whether it was an agreeable temperament, alertness to intruders, docility, or just an unusually small and more manageable size) and started the first instances of breeding. From the offspring, we selected the ones that had the best of the traits we were looking for, mated them, and continued this process. Fast forward 30,000 years, and through this selection and breeding process, we have hundreds of breeds, all genetically almost identical, but completely different in appearance, temperament, colour, coat, size, etc., with specific skill sets. Bloodhounds have an uncanny sense of smell, huskies have an incredible amount of stamina and tolerance to a cold climate, and pugs are just…adorably harmless. (Not sure what they were thinking when they bred pugs and chihuahuas but I digress.) The process of breeding with dogs takes years, as the dogs need to grow up to adulthood and only then can we see if they have inherited the desired traits from their parents, and ensure that they haven’t inherited genetics that significantly predispose them to hereditary medical conditions. These breeds and breeding projects have been documented rigorously for the last few centuries, and now we have associations and boards that have stringent physical and even developmental markers to determine whether or not a dog meets the requirements for a particular breed. Take a dog to them, and they will tell you whether the dog is an original American Pit Bull Terrier or just a knock-off cross. 4 The last 50-60 years have been eye opening as we have been able to do genetic analyses that we couldn’t do in the early 1900s. 

However, when it comes to Cannabis, there are some major factors that make breeding very different than it is with dogs.

  • First of all, due to the legal nature of this plant for most of the 20th century (which has basically been like drawing the ‘go to jail’ card in monopoly), this process has been loosely documented (often anecdotally) at best, and has only really accelerated over the last fifty years or so. 
  • With Cannabis, unlike dogs, the process of breeding and analysing the offspring does not take decades. One generation of thousands of seeds can be cultivated, the plants analysed, and the results of the breeding project assessed in the life cycle of the plant – a few months instead of years with dogs. 
  • When pollinated, each plant can give you hundreds of seeds. Each dog parent can only give you a handful of offspring per litter. This means that with cannabis you have a higher chance per ‘litter’ of finding an offspring with the traits that you want to carry forward. 
  • Cannabis plants, unlike dogs, do not have to be expensive to grow or care for. Sure, if you’re running a commercial operation, trying to put out the highest quality or a high quantity of marijuana, it’s definitely capital intensive. But if your aim is to just breed, you can do that outdoors (in legal countries and environments). Pre-legalisation, people used to (and still continue to) keep plants in the middle of isolated forests or wilderness to keep from being caught. 
  • Dogs are more complex beings. It would be unethical and financially unfeasible to breed a number of female dogs in a factory for the purpose of finding the one best offspring to father the next generation and then kill all the other dogs that you don’t want to breed with. This is not an issue with Cannabis, or with any plant for that matter. 

For all of these reasons, and possibly more, the process of Cannabis breeding started after but progressed exponentially faster than that of dogs. Over the last fifty years, original Cannabis sativa sativa seeds and Cannabis sativa indica seeds were collected from their endogenous environments across the world and traded between cannabis growers. They were crossed, back-crossed, selected, and more – all mostly illegally and underground. Documentation was sporadic, rarely of any scientific standards, and largely hearsay. Today, like is the case with dogs, we have hundreds if not thousands of varieties of Cannabis. Like with dogs, they have a plethora of different qualities – tastes, smells, sizes, hardiness, density, resilience to pests, potency, cannabinoid content, and more. With dogs, we called them breeds. With Cannabis, we call them strains. 

Strains of cannabis are basically the same concept as breeds of dogs. Over the years, the original Indicas and Sativas have been crossed with one another and backcrossed so many times that we have all kinds of strains that have different cannabinoid contents, effects, appearance, smells and flavours, plant structure, and more.

However, what people often overlook or fail to understand is the science behind different strains and how much variability exists within an individual strain, much like how it does in dogs.

In a litter of pups, even though they’re all ‘twins’ and came from the same parents, there will be differences between pups in terms of temperament and appearance. Just because the dad is brown, doesn’t mean the kids will be. Just because the mom has blue eyes, doesn’t mean the kids will by default. 

With marijuana, there’s no concept of a litter, but there is the concept of seeds. Just like with dogs and their litter, each seed in a batch of seeds from a plant is different. That means that the seed you got from a Girl Scout Cookies plant does not have to have the same effect, appearance, structure, etc. of the parent.

Consider this.

With dogs, if some random person gets a legitimate male and female American Pit Bull Terrier from a legitimate and skilled breeder, he can just cross both of them and get puppies. Some puppies will be smaller, some larger, some more aggressive, some more timid, some with medical conditions, and some with hereditary illnesses. He can probably keep on doing this for a while and sell the puppies as American Pit Bull Terriers. But if a puppy/dog is taken to the American Kennel Club, a quick assessment will determine whether or not the dog does indeed meet the criteria for an American Pit Bull Terrier. Invariably, some will and some won’t. Just like how two brown eyed parents can have a blue eyed child, two parents with straight hair can have a child with curly hair, two very short parents can have a very tall child, and so on, breeding two American Pit Bull Terriers at random is not guaranteed to give you an identical American Pit Bull Terrier offspring.

With Cannabis, you can get seeds of Girl Scout Cookies from the original breeder (if you know who the original breeder is, otherwise  finding this is another rabbit hole that we are not ready to go down). What people don’t think about though, is that like with dogs, each of the offspring is not the same. Every seed of Girl Scout Cookies is not the same – just like how every American Pit Bull Terrier puppy from the same parent and same litter is not the same. 

There will be differences. One plant could be nothing like Girl Scout Cookies – it could be very different from the original parents, as offspring often are. Technically, as that isn’t much like the original ‘Girl Scout Cookies’, it shouldn’t pass as Girl Scout Cookies. However, there is nobody to determine this, and there is no list of criteria that determines what is officially girl scout cookies. It’s subjective and ambiguous. Someone with experience and expertise (not just as an average consumer, but as someone who tests varieties for a living, much like a sommelier) would need to assess the flower and the plant to be somewhat reasonably certain that it is indeed Girl Scout Cookies. 

This is a major problem in the transparency of the Cannabis industry. You can get Girl Scout Cookies from 10 different dispensaries who source their seeds from 10 different growers, and wind up with 10 different types of bud that are probably not really identical enough to be called the ‘same strain’. Unless you’re one of the Cannabis sommeliers or an extremely aware customer, you wouldn’t know any better than what you’re told, naturally. You might be able to distinguish the Girl Scout Cookies from different dispensaries, but wouldn’t necessarily know which one is actually the original without experience.

The other large difference between canines and Cannabis is that, most of the time with dogs, you are getting purebred dogs if you’re buying from a certified and accredited breeder. A purebred Boxer mates with a purebred Boxer to give you purebred Boxer puppies with some variation. The hurried nature of Cannabis breeding means that this is not the case when it comes to Cannabis.

With Cannabis seeds, there are two ways breeding could go:

One (the more common and ubiquitous one, sadly) is what we call the ‘scrambled eggs’ method.

If we did this with dogs, it would look like this: 

Let’s say you want to develop a breed that has the physicality of an American Pit Bull Terrier and the coat of a Husky. After choosing the parents, you’d first cross an American Pit Bull Terrier with a Husky. One or more of the offspring (we call the offspring from the first two parents in a new genetic breeding project the F1 generation) may have the combination of traits you’re looking for. You have not created a new breed just yet. If you show everyone your selected dog from the F1 generation and call it a Pit Husky, and then sell more offspring from that F1 generation as Pit Huskies, many if not most of the buyers will be disappointed to find that the dogs they receive may be nothing like the Pit Husky you selected and more like either parent, or a completely different cross of traits. Many who end up owning a Pit Husky from this breeding project of yours will have a different looking dog, and nobody will really be clear or have an idea of what the Pit Husky is actually supposed to be or supposed to represent.

Fig 2: These pups are from the same litter, and are the offspring of two purebred parents. The amount of variation in the puppy stage itself is huge, and the amount of variation as they grow older will likely be even more.

With marijuana, it looks like this:

For example, let’s say we want the taste of Girl Scout Cookies and the bud structure and appearance of AK-47. We select our parent plants, and the Girl Scout Cookies parent is crossed with the AK-47 parent. Just like with the dogs, the F1 generation of seeds will be a spread of various combinations between traits of Girl Scout Cookies and AK-47. Now, we can find one plant that meets our requirements, show this plant and the flowers from this plant to everyone, and sell the seeds from this F1 generation as Armed Girl Scouts or whatever name we please, but the variation between the outcome of individual seeds will be all over the place. Some will get plants that smell like Girl Scout Cookies and grow like AK-47. Some will get plants that smell and grow like AK-47 and have almost no trace of Girl Scout Cookies whatsoever. As a result, we have not really created a strain, because there’s no standard for what the strain is supposed to be. Everybody who owns seeds/plants/flowers of Armed Girl Scouts has a huge variety of different results, so who is to say which one is the actual Armed Girl Scouts?

This is why we mentioned earlier that this is a problem with the legitimacy of genetics in the Cannabis industry. We both may have bought seeds from a breeder for Girl Scout Cookies, but if the breeder used the breeding method described above, we could both wind up with completely different plants, and both of us would show up in the marketplace selling our completely different looking and tasting buds as Girl Scout Cookies. Who’s right and who’s wrong?

Mandatory asterisk: This is not to say that this breeding process is bad. It is actually an intrinsic part of the breeding process, with ‘part’ being the keyword. Hybrid vigour is great, but when one is selling seeds branded as a certain strain, it is important to sell the seeds as an R&D cross and not as a strain. Even in a homogenous strain, no two seeds are exactly the same. They can be incredibly similar, but not the same. This is part of the beauty of growing a batch of seeds, as well as the challenging part of trying to find the right parents that are able to faithfully and/or stably reproduce a specific set of traits. True breeders distinguish between their R&D lines and their stabilised strains.

The other breeding method is one with much more documentation and looks something like this for dogs.

Let’s take the same example as before: a breed that is a cross between an American Pit Bull Terrier and a Husky, with the build of an American Pit Bull Terrier and the coat of a Husky. You take a chosen American Pit Bull Terrier and Husky and mate them. This first offspring (F1 generation) is a range of dogs that have various different combinations of traits from both parents. You find two offspring that have the traits you’re looking for – in this case, the Husky coat and the American Pit Bull Terrier build. You mate these two offspring to produce the next generation (the F2 generation), but because of how genetics works, there is little to no guarantee that the F2 generation will look like their parents. To the contrary, due to the nature of genetics (beyond the scope of this already very nerdy article), it’s very likely that there is as much or even more variation in this generation than there was in the first one. A lot of people who get a puppy of this F2 generation from you and expect it to look like its parents will be disappointed. To stabilise this generation and ensure that the offspring are eventually homogenous, you have to take a member of the offspring from the F2 generation that has the traits that you like, and cross it with one of its siblings/parents/grandparents that has the traits that you like. For example, you might select a member of the F2 generation that has all the traits that you like but needs a bit fluffier of a coat. You can either cross it with another member of the F2 generation, or go all the way back to the original Husky parent and cross it with them to try and add some more Husky influence. There are a number of routes you could take with this depending on what gets you to your end breeding goal. It involves a lot of trial and error. If you do this for a few generations, and you’re very strict about the selection process and documenting it, you will wind up with an F5 or F6 generation that has little variation amidst the offspring. At this point, we have a stabilised breed. Anyone who comes to ask us about the lineage can be shown the history of the breeding project and the parents that were used, and can see the evolution of the line over time.

This is the same concept with Cannabis. 

If you want to make a strain that has the taste of Girl Scout Cookies and the physical bud structure of AK-47, it’s not enough to just cross the two and then sell the seeds. You need to find members of the F1 generation that meet your requirements, cross them together,  do the same with the F2 generation, and so on, until the offspring generation has limited variability. This process of identifying which parents will be good at passing on the right genetics to the next generation is an intuitive skill, developed and honed by experience and analysing data from previous breeding outcomes. The true legendary breeders have this skill, and create homogenous strains where you can grow a batch of multiple seeds, and all the resulting plants will be very similar – physically and genetically.

In a nutshell, this is why strains are the way they are. This is why when you buy the same strain from different growers/dispensaries/breeders, there are bound to be variations, some with more variations than others. It’s important for legal markets to cultivate the awareness of this concept and start tagging buds in dispensaries with the farm and the breeder they came from, and perhaps even graduate to tagging strains by chemical composition as opposed to a random strain name. This will give the aware individuals and clients more certainty and transparency when deciding a strain and will help educate the general local public on the breeders/buds/strains that they truly like and gravitate towards. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to Magazine Home