Questions about breeding my own seeds.

Getting back into growing after a few years off. I used to grow an unknown strain that came from some good bagseeds. I bred seeds from this strain and grew it for quite some time. The seeds were good and grew good plants.

This time I've decided to grow some Nirvana Northern Lights and Nirvana AK48. I plan to breed seeds from these strains. I have a few questions though.

I plan to breed straght NL and straight AK seeds. I also want to cross the strains. My question is, which strain I should choose male pollen from when I cross them? Does it matter? If so, what difference does it make?

Secondly, when I bred seeds before I pretty much painted the whole plant with pollen and got hundreds of seeds. The smoke sucked, but that wasn't my goal with that plant. This time I just plan to pollinate a few buds. If I just pollinate a few buds, how will this effect resin production on the rest of the plant that isn't pollinated?

Thanks for any info.

Controlled pollination is used by a lot of people just use a fine paint brush to spread your pollen instead of just spreading it around on the plants. The whole plant wont get pollinated because you dont introduce enough pollen to impregnate all of the calyxes. It wont mess up the resin on the rest of the plant or anything as long as the calyxes arent getting pollinated they will continue to build and swell until the end of the plants life cycle. The plant puts off more calyxes because thats more hairs, more chances to produce seeds, and more resin, to protect the increased amount calyxes, because the resin is its natural defense. Thats what I believe to be true anyway. Hope that helps. good luck.

i can second the paintbrush method, just paint the side bud for a few seeds - choosing male is tougher, just pick out a healthy looking male to start with

When I pollinated before I used a paintbrush. I just put it ALL OVER the plant. This grow, my space is more confined so I'm not planning to trash a whole plant or two for seeds. I was just a little curious how this might effect the non pollinated parts of the plant. Are the non pollinated parts of the plant somehow able to sense the pollination elsewhere and slow down production? Does the non pollinated bud say "maybe I'm not pollinated, but part of us are and now that I know we'll survive, I don't have to work so hard anymore". That sort of thing.

The main thing I'm looking for an answer to is which strain to take male pollen from when I cross breed. It would make sense that male NL pollen placed on a female AK would yield different seeds (and plants) than the other way around. Maybe I'm wrong and it doesn't make a difference. Who knows. I've looked around and can't find any info about how to choose. Surely this is a topic that has been studied and discussed in detail before.

breeding is a topic with highly guarded secrets, there's big money in seeds
pollinating a side bud doesn't affect the rest of the plant, at least that's the consensus opinion
i have done it, and all other buds were excellent
on choosing the strains to cross, i will direct you to the breeder sub forum, there are others like it on other grow sites
if you find a plant that has desirable traits, that's what you choose, those traits can be potency, taste, quality of high, heavy yield, and the all the possible mixes