Breeding Cannabis from F1 to IBL with Dirty Bird Genetics
By: Beth Mathieu
First and foremost, I want to send a heartfelt Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers here at NASC + Dirty Bird Genetics, to our own mothers, grandmothers, and maternal figures, and to all of the beautiful mothers out there who have been a part of this community with us for the past 10+ years. We see you, we appreciate you, and we LOVE you.
Last year for Mother’s Day, I sat down to write a blog about a plant-mother that is near and dear to me personally, and to our NASC/Dirty Bird family: The Brunch. As someone whose career was built upon plant mothers, it seemed fitting on Mother’s Day. The article detailed the filial evolution of this flagship strain that the Dirty Bird Genetics team had created. It was the very first cultivar we bred that really shined, and it really propelled us into this new venture breeding. Looking back now, it’s fascinating to consider how much those first creations (like the Brunch) influenced the genetics to come, much like the generational connections that run through families. The Brunch now sits atop many Dirty Bird Genetics family trees; she’s a mother, a grandmother, and even a great grandmother to many.
This Mother’s Day 2026, I want to pick up where I left off one year ago today, filling in another year of progress as we work our way to the end goal of creating a Brunch IBL (In-Bred Line).
The Brunch F1
The original Brunch F1–a regular, male/female iteration of the F1 strain still found on our menu today–will unfortunately never be recreated because we lost the Peanut Butter Breath mother that was used in the original project back in the early 2020’s. It was a mother I had preserved for almost a decade prior, selected from a revered pack of seeds made by Thug Pug Genetics. These seeds were gold back in the day, and this cut was a favorite of many clone customers I worked with. She created incredibly dense, striking flowers with vibrant greens, dark purples, and bold oranges. Her bud was as top shelf as it comes–easy to manicure, high test, colorful and dense–but her morphology left a few things to be desired. While she wasn’t prohibitively tall, she did have very long internodal spacing, and she was definitely a plant that wanted to grow vertically. Her floral sites were spread out across long stems, meaning she wasn’t the best yielder. Her terpenes were self-referential: Nutty and earthy. We knew there was likely more to draw out here.
The Mimosa father, selected from a pack of Mimosa by Symbiotic, had beautiful morphology and strong, tangy terps that came through even on a stem rub of the vegetative male plant. He was vigorous, sturdy, and a well-suited, well-proportioned match to compensate for the Peanut Butter Breath’s shortcomings.
In our first test run of the Brunch (PBB x Mimosa) progeny, we selected two keeper phenotypes: the Brunch F1 #5 and the Brunch F1 #8. They weren’t perfect, but they stood out as special to us for several reasons. They were dripping in trichomes, testing between 25-30% THC / 1-3% CBG, they had insane, dark purple coloring with a gorgeous yellow fade, and to our surprise and delight, a unique apple terpene profile was seeming to emerge. We knew there was still work to do–we needed to bulk her flower up, and we needed to tighten her internodal spacing–but this was now a much stronger palette to work from than what we’d had previously.
The Brunch S1 (Feminized Iteration)
In order to create our first release, we knew it’d be beneficial to feminize our work, and that would also give us the opportunity to take the first step toward locking in some of the features we loved in the male/female test stock. To do this, we took the Brunch F1 #5 and the Brunch F1 #8 and we crossed them and selfed them across several different breeding projects, testing the progeny of each to determine who was the strongest, and which genetics we would move forward with. When all was said and done, and all of the seed lots were tested, we selected two cuts to mother in order to breed the Brunch lineage further. These cuts were named the Brunch – Dark Horse Cut (#8 x #8 – #3) and the Brunch – Lover’s Cut (#5 x #8 – #5) (aka the Arugula Cut).
Breeding and feminizing our favorite phenotypes of the Brunch F1 created some drop dead gorgeous feminized Brunch S1 genetics. The coloration had darkened from purple to almost black, and the yield and morphology was beginning to trend in the right direction: Less stretch and more flower. It was very hard to choose our keeper cuts from these seed lots, but we realized that was a good problem to have. It was at that time that we decided that the Brunch S1 would become our first Dirty Bird Genetics – Volume 1 release. Exciting! You’ll still find these seeds on the Dirty Bird Genetics Volume 1 menu today (although I’ll warn you guys, when they sell out, they will almost certainly be gone for good). You’ll also find this s1/f1 iteration of the Brunch in many of our genetic family trees, including staff favorites:
- Dirty Mimosa: A Brunch backcross and outdoor champion that clocks in with a lightening fast 43-47 day flowering time
- Bad Apple: Probably my personal favorite Brunch-related strain, and a cultivar that has only continued to impress me more as we’ve bred with it. The Bad Apple has pungent terpenes that range from rotten Apple to gym sock funk, and our keeper “Sugar Mill” cut is the single most trichome-laden plant I’ve grown in my 15 year career. In 2026, this Brunch-child created two of my favorite strains we’ve bred to-date: Apple Peelz and Candy Apple Kush.
The Brunch F2
We knew early on that the Brunch was a project that we wanted to fully realize the potential of by creating a stabilized Brunch IBL (in-bred line). Now that we’d created and tested several iterations of the Brunch genetics, we were able to formulate a set of goals for the project:
- Preserve Apple Terpene Profile: It’s unique to the Brunch and we love it.
- Morphology: Shorten internodal spacing, select for lateral growth, preserve high calyx-to-leaf ratio, and retain a foliage volume that is ideal for air flow, light penetration, and outdoor cultivation.
- Yield: Improve yield by selecting cuts that stack well, have dense flower, and yield respectably.
- Flowering Time: Ideally, under 56 days.
- Color: Preserve the dark purples and maroons that are signature to the Brunch.
- Effect: Retain the social, happy effect that is signature to the Brunch.
Using the Brunch F1 #5 and a Brunch F1 male that we labeled #12, we made the Brunch F2. In cannabis breeding, the F2 filial generation is known to contain the largest number of phenotypes and the most genetic diversity of any other generation. We found this to be true with the Brunch F2. We saw divergence in color (purple/green), terpenes (apple/earthy meh), and in both flower and plant morphology. Speaking generally though, these plants grew much more laterally than their F1 counterparts thanks to our parental selections. We were also able to eliminate the “scraggly” phenotype that appeared in about 10% of our F1 seed population. These F2 plants had stronger, more bushy structure as a whole, accompanied by a higher volume of foliage, more compact, golf ball shaped flowers, and tighter internodal spacing.
After carefully watching our F2s grow, we whittled our selection down to two winning cuts that we would use for our F3 breed: The Brunch F2 #7 and #13. They each had something we loved, but neither had everything. The #7 had the most incredible, vibrant, apple terpene profile; there was something that smelled distinctly more “appley” about this plant than any we’d smelled previously, and we were confident this was the direction we wanted to go with the terpene profile. The #7 plant wasn’t perfect though: it stayed vividly green way longer than we would have liked, purpling in the final week of flower, long after we’d written it off as a green pheno. This was something we felt cautious about because color was one of the goals we’d set for the project. The #13, on the other hand, took on a beautiful, deep purple color early in flower–something we loved–but it lacked an exciting terpene profile, leaning more towards the subdued, nutty, earthy profile of the Peanutbutter Breath.
The Brunch F3
Brunch F3
V79 have better floral mass . Long intermodal spacing and classic brunch nugs, small leaves
139 #1 – Apple terps.
**V79 #1 – stacking the most – best floral mass. Striped maroon and purple and yellow leaves.
V79 _#2 – shorter but similar burgundy and purple and sugar/ apple terps
V79 #5- Apple gas Peanut butter – very purple but not a great yield
Brunch 139
Biggest nugs yet. long and skinny and tie together up the stem
*3- Apple cheese. Tall. Long stacked buds. Very impressive stacking and yield – double floral mass of what we normally see, and very high calyx to leaf ratio
4- more arugula look. Apple smell.
When it came time to make our Brunch F3 seeds, we had a choice to make: We had to decide whether to breed our F2 #9 male with the wonderfully appley #7, or the spectacularly purple #13. This choice proved to be an impossible one, so we decided we would take the more intensive path and breed in both directions. Over the course of the next year, two Brunch F3 seed lots were created: The Brunch F3 v79 (made with our #9 male and our purple F2 #7 cut) and the Brunch F3 v139 (made with our #9 male the wonderfully appley F2 #13 mom).
In testing these two Brunch F3 lines we’d created, we saw the genetics take the most marked strides forward to-date. Most notably, the plants were stacking better than ever before, yields were improving, colors were popping (though continuing to diverge a bit between green, maroon and purple), and we were really starting to hone in on a consistent terpene profile. While the apple terpenes were predictably more dominant in the v79 seed population, we ultimately chose a cut from the v139 population to move the line forward to F4 (see pictured below). The Brunch F3 v139 #3 boasted the biggest colas we’d seen in a Brunch to-date. They were long, dense, and they tied together beautifully up the central stalk creating a long, beautiful arm of purple, funky, apple Brunch. The #3 cut had close to double the floral mass of any Brunch we’d seen before. It had an incredibly high calyx-to-leaf ratio, purple flowers, and its terpene profile was pungent and unmistakably apple. It checked all of the boxes, so the choice was a remarkably straight forward one.
The Brunch F4
In early 2026, we were able to test the Brunch F4s that we had made the year prior using only the F3 v139 #3 cut. This was the first time we had chosen to advance the Brunch line through a process called selfing (crossing a plant with itself through reversal). The v139 mother cut had so much to offer, and we wanted to see how this choice to self would evolve and stabilize the line, so we created and tested our first population of feminized F4 seeds (aka F3 S1).
It has only been a couple of months since we harvested our Brunch F4 plants, and the project is still top of mind as we get lab results back to analyze, confirm our winning selections, and plan our strategy for the F5 breed ahead. The F4s were easily the most exciting breed yet. The diversity we saw in the F4 generation was markedly different from what we’d seen previously. For analogy, imagine crossing a black lab with a poodle. The Brunch F2 + F3s were what I’ll call Bloodles; they were mutts. Their traits were messy and indistinguishable, resembling their parents in some ways while also blending together to form strange iterations of Bloodle soup. The F4 population was different. The traits we were selecting for were finally segregated in an easily observable way, in large part due to our decision to self. Phenotypes were so much more identifiable. To circle back to our analogy: our Golden Doodle was born, alongside pups that looked remarkably like a black lab, and pups that looked remarkably like a Poodle.
While we did observe a little bit of inbreeding depression in our F4s–which is to be expected–overall the plants had several consistent qualities: They had an extremely short 50-day flowering time, a remarkably high calyx-to-leaf ratio, very compact, long, conical flowers, medium internodal spacing, 1.5x stretch, ideal foliage volume for air flow and light penetration, high trichome density, balanced vertical and lateral growth, and overall they were healthy and easy-to-grow plants.
One of the most interesting things about the Brunch F4 was that we finally saw a purely green phenotype emerge in 20% of the population. The 80% majority were purple: 50% solid, dark purple in both foliage and flower, and 30% predominantly purple with a little green fade or vibrant green bracts. The terpenes were consistently apple-dominant–exactly what we wanted–and we were so excited to find that the apple smells were only deepening, evolving into more of a complex, warm-yet-tart apple. For the first time, we noted some sour/gas smells coming through on a minority of the purple plants, specifically late in flower.
The biggest obstacle we face now in choosing our winning cut(s) of the Brunch F4 has been deciding what to do with the visual feast that is the green phenotype. We’ve been very intentional about selecting cuts with purple coloring from the outset of this multi-year project, yet these green plants have proven themselves hard to turn a blind eye to. There is something special about how vibrantly lime green and neon orange they are, how dense and sparkly they appear, how minimal the leaf is on the flowers, and the pure apple terpene profile that comes through loudest and clearest here. In our deliberations we’ve decided we will breed in three directions for the F5: We will breed the green plants in order to lock in the apple; we will breed the purple plants in order to lock in the purple; and we will breed green x apple so we are able to see what potential lies there as well.
I have to say, I am really looking forward to the year ahead. I’m looking forward to 2027 when I get to update this Mother’s Day blog again with the progress we’ve made on the F5. That’s the beauty of breeding: You always have something to look forward to, something to feel energized by, and something to feel excited about.
Thank you so much for reading about the journey we’ve taken over the last four years to create the Brunch and all of its iterations. It’ll always be a mother that matters a great deal to our NASC and Dirty Bird teams. I’d like to wish all the mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day. Know that you are seen, loved, and celebrated every day!
Beth