Like baseball, bowling is all about averages. During league play they usually play three games. The average of the three games is your score. Usually leagues are based on a 220 average. The master's league is what is called scratch bowling. There is no handicap. In order to get into the local master's league an average of 170 or higher is required. It seems there are more than one type of bowler.
Outside of individual style it seems like no matter how many years a certain type of person bowls they will never get much better. They are content with just the fun of the game. Then there is what I would refer to as the sport bowler. They are focused on getting better. They are constantly working on their form and trying to achieve consistent averages.
A professional bowler might have an average of 220, but on any surface their average will be the same. On a regular lane prepped for recreational bowlers there are about 4 boards on either side that could lead to a strike. On a pro pattern it is basically 1 or 2 boards that need to be kept on to get a strike. The professionals hit an area about the width of a fifty cent coin over and over.
Alex could relate to this because growing weed has much the same principles. According to Alex in order for a grower to reach a master level they need to start from seeds. Most commercial farms start from clones. If you don't know much about cannabis it is similar to sweet corn in breeding methods. There are male and female plants. Corn was started from a grass seed initially. The Mayan people undertook a thousand years of forced breeding to get the grass to what we called maize. Cannabis has only been force bred since the 1960's. Force breeding means we decide which plants get bred together rather than leaving it up to nature. All mammals have 23,000 to 26,000 lines of DNA and RNA coding. Plants have well over 100,000. This means plants are more capable of adapting to an environment or acclimatization. It is not recommended that someone take on a task like breeding cannabis until they have a pretty good grasp on the fertilizer and pH matrix.
Coming up with new strains is also all about averages. Most cannabis seeds available are the result of several years of forced breeding. Here is where it may become tricky. As an example imagine crossing a male plant called Kush with a female plant called Bubblegum. The result of this is what is called an F1 hybrid. It is considered stable. Stable means it is not prone to being a hermaphrodite and the structure of the plants on average are about the same. This is very important especially for indoor growers. Keeping the canopy area or top of plants relatively the same height keeps the plants the same distance from the bulb and doesn't crowd out smaller plants. It is the same science that most Americans learn in about the 8th grade; at least in a rural farming community.
So if strain A is crossed with strain B there are 4 basic phenotypes: AA, BB, AB, and BA. Here is where a breeder decides where to go with the plants. If the F1 plants are crossed into themselves recessive genes might start to show up. Say a male Kush is crossed with a female Bubblegum. Kush is a short plant that originated from the Hindu Kush mountain regions of Eurasia. Kush is a smaller plant known for potency. There are a couple stories about the origins of Bubblegum cannabis. The most common story is that it was a result of a study from an Indiana University. Bubblegum is often a taller more stretchy plant.
(Just for reference, there are 3 basic categories of Cannabis. Indica is a plant often found in mountain and Northern regions, the plants are often small and have rigid leaves. Plants develop ridges on their leaves when bred in regions with a shorter and less rainy flowering season. Ruterrallis is from Russia and countries in that region. These plants have auto flowering properties meaning they flower out regardless of light change. Sativas are plants that originated in equatorial regions. They are often tall with narrow pointy leaves that lack ridges. A lot of plants in tropical regions do not have ridges because of abundant sunlight and rainfall. Indica and Sativa are both photo periodic or start to flower when light hours are below 14 hours. Sativas grow tall because of the 12 hours of sunlight and daylight in equatorial regions. They grow as they flower. Most modern strains are hybrids crossing Indica and Sativa together. Automatic flowering seeds are often bred with the Russian Ruterrallis.)
Kush is Indica dominant while Bubblegum is Sativa dominant. So once the male and female plants are selected and bred together the more seeds which are able to be cultivated will increase the odds of finding the phenotypes with desired attributes. So let's imagine that our goal is to create a plant with the Kush structure and the Bubblegum flavour. We would pick the AB phenotype or plant that had dominant Indica Kush structure with Bubblegum flavour. This hybrid of course is 75% Kush and 25% Bubblegum. In order to make a stable strain from here some inbreeding is required. We want to achieve a 50/50 cross.
The next step is to take the original parent male and cross it into F1 hybrid created. This becomes an F2 and often recessive genes start showing up. So basically whatever strains it took to make the Bubblegum or Kush in the first place may show up. The same process is repeated, the very best phenotypes are selected from F2. This process is repeated 2 more times until what is called an F4 is achieved. F4 plants are often stable. The F4 may be bred into itself by selecting a male and female from the F4 generation and breeding them together. Most breeders try to achieve an F6 to achieve a more stable product.
At this point seeds can be planted and uniforms results can be expected. Another note is feminized seeds can be achieved by interrupting flowering light cycle or letting female plants grow out long after their ideal harvest time. Interrupting the light cycle can cause Hermaphrodite plants meaning they have both male and female reproduction parts. These are considered unstable. The better method is to take a female and flower it out ahead of time and pollinate with female flowers. The flowers on a female plant start sticking out like a banana usually late in the flowering cycle. It can be confusing and it is likely the reason that most growers do not go to this extreme. The advantage of breeding is to get plants immune to problems and to acclimate them to conditions in area. Something that has been growing in a region for more than 30 years without introducing new genetics is called a heirloom.
Alex had repeated this process hundreds maybe thousands of times. Just like bowling what was important is increasing averages. People often asked him how he grew such a great product. Alex often told them it was the same as being a good mechanic or welder. Attention to detail, hard work, and constant improvement are the keys to being good at anything. How could he improve his bowling game? Alex would need to start from the beginning and develop a method for getting better.