Inbred Line / Pure Line

Marijuana Horticulture

by Jorge Cervantes

Some refer to these as IBLs. An inbred line is a seed lot that has been bred for generations while selecting repeatedly for specific traits, to the point where the population reliably produces the traits under selection in each successive generation of breeding. These plants are said to breed true for these characteristics. There is little or no variation for these traits, which are thus considered pure.

Pure lines make the best breeding stock as the progeny of crosses using breeding stock as the progeny f crosses using known pure parental lines have a predictable outcome in subsequent generations. Inbred lines are uniform in growth patterns and traits and are stable genetically – each generation of inbred seed results in plants similar in most ways to the previous generation. Pure lines are homozygous at most alleles.