of course if its ibl it better be stable
but most arent IBL's
so your gonna have to do some selection on your own which is why i start with a large seed stock
Well, the discussion was about herijuana in particular. Sannie claims that one is an IBL, and I believe him, especially given the history of the strain, and that he explicitly claims elsewhere that some of his other strains will yield multiple phenotypes. If Sannie has no problem saying when his strains are NOT stable, I don't see why he shouldn't be taken at his word when he claims one IS stable.
On the KO Kush, he specifically describes that one as an F4; that may be "semi stable" in the sense that by the 4th selected generation, you may no longer get a wide range of phenotypes. I don't know, but Sannie has his own forum, and if he doesn't personally answer the question, I'm sure someone there would.
If he ever develops it down to an F7 or F8, it probably would be stabilized, but I don't know if he's willing or able to do that. Some "strains" simply
cannot be stabilized, because the particular traits that characterize the strain (ie color, flavor, whatever) REQUIRE hybrid genes to express.
i still dont think 2 seeds is even good enoujgh for a ibl though tbh i mean your not gonna get something that diff but it will have a slight variation
Ultimately, no two plants are going to be
exactly the same. Even two clones off the same mother plant can vary a *little* bit because the growing conditions can be a little different in terms of light, water, and nutrient exposure.
Again, if its a true IBL, then
by definition you should be able to take a sack of 500 seeds, pick any 2 at random, and if they're the same gender, they should be nearly identical in every way that matters (height, growth rate, shape, yield, potency, etc). Yes, cannabis has some low spontaneous mutation rate, but that's only about 1-in-1000 plants, basically too low to be significant unless you're selectively breeding using hundreds of plants and specifically looking for new traits to exploit. If you pick 2 seeds, grow them side by side, and they look significantly different, then by definition you are NOT dealing with an IBL.
The big problem I see with starting with only 2 seeds, isn't that you won't get a good representation of the strain, its that you might not get any representation at all!
Assuming a 50-50 gender ratio from non-feminized seeds, right off the bat you're looking at a 1 in 4 chance that you won't have any female plants, and 50-50 chance that you'll only have one female one. On top of that, not every planted seed makes it all the way to harvest. Some seeds won't germinate, and some (hopefully small) proportion of the seeds that do germinate may not make it all the way through flowering due to pests, problems, bad luck, etc.
If you assume (for the sake of argument) that 90% of your planted seeds will germinate successfully, half will be female, and that you can take 97% of the germinated females through harvest, then starting with only two seeds would mean that there is a fully 33% (1 in 3) chance that you won't end up with any harvestable female plants.
Now, if you add on top of that a NON-stable strain, that might have 2 or 4 or even MORE phenotypes, then the number of seeds you'd have to plant to ensure at least one "keeper" plant makes it to harvest increases exponentially. So yeah, in that case, starting with 20 seeds isn't at all unreasonable.
