we will start off with a preselected male and female. i have been working with a few strains for several years and made my choice. to determine which plants to breed i look for several traits. some are personal preferences others are for the benefit of growth.
one of the first things i look at is the thickness of the side branches at the stalk. the plant will form a "ring" at the base of the side branch where it meets the stalk. this will be re-enforcement for the branches once they get heavy with bud growth. a nice fat ring at early stages of veg growth can show a lot.
this is a plant that has dropped the fan leaf but left the "ring" it has grow to be nice and supportive.
i also look at node spacing.
this plant has very poor node spacing. i would not use this for breeding purposes. it is tall and leggy.
this branch exhibits traits that i desire.
i also look for early resin production. i've seen resin start on seedlings that only had it's first 3 sets of nodes.
then we can go into all the other traits. overall appearance, leaf patter, strain, flavor, high, color.............