How are new strains created?

There are a whole lot of original strains that are pure and found growing wild all over the globe. Breeders take these strains and cross them with other pure strains and rename them. The most famous strains you know of are basically the most stable cross of original strains that breeders were able to obtain.

There are many strains that are the same genes with different names as well.

 

I have spent many an evening pondering that same question (along with the thought that I could create my own). It sounds simple enough, but in reality is very detailed and technical. It takes many many cross-breedings and generations to develop a stable strain. Some are made from scratch, and some are the good old standbys that we all know and love, that are re-named.

 

the best place to start IMHO on the breeding of cannabis is with this book

http://forum.grasscity.com/books-growing-cannabis/341218-marijuana-botany-propagation-breeding-distintive-cannabis.html

you can prolly find free versions online ( I know parts of it are available all over like this one)

peace

 

you have then created a cross, a stabilaztion is needed before it is a strain. most would preferr that the stabilazation be inbred.

 

I can add some insight here as I worked in this business in Europe (wholesaler hydro shops, we sold seeds also so I add B2B contact with some big seeds bank and I had a chance to talk to them).

Actually the people making new strains are very few. A lot of strains you find are sold by one company to another and re-labeled, this does not make them a lesser quality but give you the idea how much hype is there around all those thousand of different strains.

The reason why there are very few people making new strains is that it is illegal, no matter what in order to select the best phenotype you need to grow thousand of seedlings and in doing so you own an illegal cultivation, if they caught you having thousand of plants, even if it is for production of LEGAL seeds (In EU mj seeds are legal) you'll go to jail for a long time. oddly enough when thousand of seeds reach the warehouse of the company selling them as they own only the seeds it's a perfectly legal business.

basically you grow many many many many select mummy, you flower their colens and select the best phenotype (how the plants looks, how it taste and so on), at the same time you keep the male and start harvesting the pollen of the best ones.

when you have selected the best mum and daddy you can start with mendelian genetics technique to isolate and propagate the characteristic you want to pass on to the seeds you sell.
Gregor Mendel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gene pool which they work with comes from various adaptations of the plants around the world, (there are some strain hunter, even fewer than the seeds grower) as for any other plant the same species found in different area of the world produce different phenotypes so you select those.
It's important to understand all the strains are just different phenotypes, they all are the same species (same genotypes: cannabis sativa l., indica is not part of the real taxonomy, only growers need that definition because some plants are so different that there's the need to call them with another name)

it's a process painstakingly long, hard and anything can go wrong.
But a plant can produce hundreds of viable seeds and the final customer is going to pay 10 euros each at least, make your math.