So tell me, when's the last time you toured a seed breeder, and learned how they source their genetics?
Toured the physical facilities, no (they're mostly in Europe), but I've spoken to multiple breeders privately and on the internet, and can't remember one with an issue telling me about their parent stock. Hell, I even got Swerve to do it. Plenty of breeders list the parent genetics in their ad copy, and I even believe that some of them might be telling the truth. IIRC for some of Sannie's strains you can see pictures of the entire breeding process on his website.
Are you confident enough that you know how every single one of the major breeders sources and breeds stock???
Never said I did. Where did this come from?
It's again funny to think you can just as easily replicate major strains like it's no problem whatsoever. More power to you if you believe this, but you're wrong.
Never said that either; thanks for putting words in my mouth. I think, actually, that you're the one acting under a misconception about replicating commercial strains at home, but I'll address that below.
You're absolutely right that ACTUAL strains of quality (and here I use the formal definition of same) aren't easily be created nor replicated from scratch. But the reality is that many of the so called "strains" that "breeders" release aren't really strains, but just polyhybrids. Very few breeders are doing serial sections from hundreds of plants and working their lines out through 5-6-7 generations of selection. Instead, they're just finding nice "elite" clones, crossing them, then releasing the ensuing F1s as "name" strains. If you don't mind pheno variation in your beans and/or doing a bit of selection, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with this approach, but this kind of thing CAN be done at home. The only real limiting factor there is sourcing the elite cuts. In some cases that won't be possible, but in some it will. . .depends what they are, where you are, and whom you know.
If anyone could just take clones from STABLE STRAIN A and cross them with STABLE STRAIN B and just re-create many of today's top strains, then everyone would be doing it, but they're not.
If you had access to good individual cuts from IBLs A and B, there is absolutely no reason you couldn't cross them to create great F1s at home, if you wanted to.
But as you're implying, very few of the new hot "strains" are true F1s from inbred lines, and even fewer are true NEW inbred lines. Most new strains are polyhybrids. Some are worked, but some are created with minimal actual selection on the part of the breeder. As to "everyone doing it". . .take a look at the massive explosion in the number of breeders over the last five years, and you get the impression that everyone IS doing it!
This thread is about the lack of regular seeds from major breeders (for those many who prefer them), not trying to recreate strains by spending years breeding and hoping I've created something that's of similar if not same quality to the name-brand strain.
Excuse me,
you were the one who said you wanted to recreate "name" strains at home so you wouldn't have to buy more beans. Isn't
that the point of this thread?
If you just want regs for breeding, plenty of excellent and well known regular breeders DO put out regs (eg Rare Dankness, Mr. Nice, TGA, Bodhi, etc, etc) and that "problem" could be solved just by rewarding them with your business. But even if if you bought these (or even bought them from DNA) I don't think you'd get what you are after.
The problem here is that few of these lines are inbred/stable. So if you were to take males and females from a pack and cross them, in most cases you would NOT exactly replicate the beans in the pack, but instead throw off a variety of phenos. How many phenos, and what quality they were would depend on the nature of the strain in question. Maybe they'd still be within your acceptable range, but the fact is, paraphrasing what you said above,
if it were so easy to replicate name strains just by crossing two beans out of a regular pack, everyone would be doing it. Whether or not you want to so it is a different question, but its actually easier to replicate F1s from "clone onlys" because so long as you can source the parents what you create at home will be exactly what's in the breeder pack.
I know you're gonna keep banging that "you could just make it yourself if you wanted to" drum forever, so AGAIN, this thread is lost on you and not relevant, because you obviously prefer the feminized seeds.
Again, putting words into my mouth. I always prefer regs over fems, all else being equal, and you're the one who wants to replicate name strains at home. What I'm saying is the following:
-Whatever crosses you think you want to do at home with regs, you could still do with fems with qualitatively similar results. You don't "need" regs to make crosses from a commercial pack, you only need them if you want to make MALE se-eds.
-DNA is leaning towards putting out more regs. So if you ask them, they may (eventually) deliver. But even if DNA won't give you the regs you want, there are plenty of others who will.
-Regardless of whose regs you start with, most of these are only partially stabilized hybrids. If you're starting with hybrids (rather than IBLs), you're probably NOT going to replicate what's in a pack just by crossing two individuals from the pack. You run into all the issue of pheno selection that you mentioned yourself above.
Best of luck with your quest.
hahahaha, I smoked some johnny wonder that was amazing.
im gonna sit back and watch the 
