That really depends on the starting point. I typed a long reply and deleted it. Improving genetics is a complicated topic.
You cannot patent genetic material, and efforts to map the genome have been kinda ugly. Once you sell your seeds, the horse is out of the barn.
What conventional plant breeders do (across agronomics) is they breed several homogenous inbred cultivars. These lines have no value as crops, but they can be crossed to make F1 hybrids. Through trial and error, breeders occasionally find strong performers that are released as seed. Buyers can try to seed-save an F1, but the F2 seeds are so varied that most buyers just go back to get a new pack of F1 seeds.
GG4 is technically a cut or clone only plant. People have made S1’s of it but true GG4 is a plant and to have true GG4 you would need to get a clone of it.
I should qualify this. You would need to modify the gene using splicing or insertion. You can’t take a conventionally bred plant and patent it; however, you can trademark a name. I’m not aware of any cannabis breeders/brands successfully protecting their trademark on THC products. I am aware of brands successfully suing cannabis breeders/brands for trademark infringement (Gorilla Glue v. Josey Wales).
There is some pretty crazy stuff happening with genetic mapping and cannabis right now actually.
It’s expensive and a deep dive though… It won’t be long before the patterns are made.
They are looking at splicing in mold resistance into strains. That seems to be one of the first main projects.
The only strain that I know has been given a patent is Charlotte’s Web. The Stanley brothers got that strain patented in 2019.
The strain is called CW2A, according to documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which issued the patent in the first week of July. Patent approval was first reported on cannabis platform Leafly.
Landrace strains or first crossed hybrids were a major component of my seed collection. Made sure I had good representation from all the continents, well except Antarctica and ruderalis genetics. Variation in hybrid to hybrid breeding can be exponential.
The problem with growing in Antarctica is the unavailability of nutes. Nobody ships there so nutes cost twenty times what it does here.
I had to be creative and sneaky when I lived there.
Gathering Polar bear scat for nutes can be tricky!
You might be able to lock in one trait by F4, but it’s not guaranteed. The sure fire way to get uniform performance from seed is to develop an F1 hybrid using the method I described above.
