Extinction by Hybridization: The Cannabis Biodiversity Crisis

Hybridization is the main cause of extinction and biodiversity loss in Cannabis.

The Cannabis biodiversity crisis isn't yet being seriously discussed by the community

Indigenous Asian populations hold the vast majority of biodiversity in drug-type Cannabis

That means domesticates ("landraces") but above all it means the wild-types var. himalayensis and var. asperrima.

Here's an important freely available ecological study by Judith Rhymer and Daniel Simberloff, Extinction by Hybridization and Introgression.

A key focus of the paper is loss of biodiversity by hybridization within a single species, as now threatens the future of Cannabis.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.27.1.83

It doesn't help when people like StrainHunters give people seeds from their company after they got Landraces from them.

I suspect they did that to forever ruin the genetics.

...or they just didn’t think about the ramifications (most charitable interpretation)

I can’t shake the feeling that wholesale destruction of male plants for 60 years has damaged the available genetic heritage as well. I know Sam has a thread going about whether males are necessary, but maybe I just have a bad reaction to the idea that we’re smarter than genetics.... still, the deterioration/loss of genetic material strikes me as a bad plan, no matter what, and I agree that our current ways of ‘hybridizing’ make no accommodations for maintaining genetic heritage.

Ngapka, thanks for bringing this up and helping to champion the case. Your efforts are appreciated!
I like patronizing your company in part because I know it helps you to keep working hard on issues like this, and of course I trust your word and the integrity of the product you provide.

Yea I bought some freeze from Kwik seeds I hope it's not hemp like what I got with beanhoarder and he mp depot I'm thinking it's the real thing I will find out in a few months

Ngapka as long as plant limits in most states stay as they are, preservation projects remain problematic for most of us.
For instance i have over fifty Rasoli seeds from rsc and khalifa, if i were to do open pollination of twelve plants per year, label the seeds by plant and year then do open pollinatiins of different years, lets say seeds from 2021, 2022, 2023 in one garden in 2024 would that be a safe strategy?
Of course this will almost require legalization

Hey, thanks for the positive feedback

I'm hoping to collaborate with various people and institutions on projects that will make a significant difference to all this

Keeping pure lines of any type is always good on whatever scale

Anything is better than the current norm of haphazard hybridization

Right now, Cannabis in the West is on a one-way street toward ever narrower homogeneity

That's not good news for anyone

I've written a bit more about this at www.landrace.blog

ngakpa i know for a fact goverment science agency's and University's here have large collections of cannabis genetics.I would be surprised to not see a large collection of cannabis genetics in the dooms day Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.

ngakpa People like you are showing the way all seed company's should of been offering land race / heirloom lines from the start along side hybrids and continued it till now.

The cannabis industry has as much blame in this as the US government.

The problem we face now is the corporate cannabis industry and how they want to patent and control and own every thing.


I watched a video months ago it had 6 or more breeders talking and all of them apart from Dj were talking patents and ownership of cannabis.

hi Hempy,

Thanks, appreciated

According to Genesys, there are only five accessions of "drug-type" Cannabis
https://www.genesys-pgr.org/a/v2ABq7dyJ08

Genesys probably covers about half the world's accessions, so it's an indicator of just how bad the situation is

Most accessions of worthwhile Cannabis germplasm are of hemp

There are very few of "marijuana", and most are either in private hands or inaccessible because they're held by the US gov't or similar

For an indicator of how bad it is, the Millennium Seedbank has just one accession of Cannabis

In the cannabis cafe forum I opened a thread that has almost 40 pages talking about the conservation preservation of varieties. It’s called like that.

I opened it worried about the loss of diversity, lack of conservation and hybridization of local varieties. Although cannabis has been hybridizing for thousands of years, some people do not want everything to be Widow and hybrid trade.

I contacted the svalbard genebank to find out if they accepted private donations and they told me that they only accepted seeds from other institutions.

In my opinion it is good that certain institutions or gene banks preserve them but I think it is still better that everyone does it to avoid patents and bad things. The more people have the seeds the better.

I have about 30 pure frozen and hybrid varieties that I consider valuable.

By the way the svalbard bank 1 or 2 years ago suffered from global warming and permafrost began to melt. They had to make some changes to it. It is not as safe as it seems ...

I am Spanish sorry for my English.

Your English is fine, bro...

That’s some serious issues ! What strategy can we work after ngapka ? Breed your landrace Stock with as many males as possible?
Bless

Maybe we also all can buy packs of landrace seeds. This makes it commercial interesting for people/groups to reproduce them.

In my opinion and I have done it myself.

Be well informed before buying a variety. There is a lot of deception on the internet. Buy the seeds that you think are most valuable, interesting, and rare from reliable vendors. There is a lot of seller on instagram wanting to make money. Run away from high prices, just looking for money.

Freeze, make seeds, share, or sell them for a good price so everyone has access and doesn't get lost.

There are many varieties available and the more seeds you have of each the better. But not everyone can spend that much money. Normally I buy about 30 seeds and if I am very interested I have bought up to 80 seeds.

It is better to have 20-30 seeds and few varieties than to have many varieties and few seeds.

I have been collecting for years, little by little, many are no longer available.

Do not be overwhelmed.

Rome was not built in a day.

I am really tired to see the same happening not only to Cannabis. It also happens with cattle, pigs, fruit and vegetable landraces (or heirlooms, call them as you preffer). It is not only hybridization. Actually they are replacing completely the strains by modern hybrids.

I remember my friends from Colombia showed me photos of their plants in 2008 grown from bagseed. They were all NLD. Now it is impossible to see actual NLD plants there.

I have seen the same happened in Mexico, Jamaica, Morocco, Swaziland, South Africa, Cambodia,...



Some years ago you only needed to get some weed in the street and a bit of luck, in some countries, (not in mine where we only have soap bar) to get a treasure.

Now you need to begin an almost mystic initiatory journey to a far away and dangerous country and meet your own old Don Juan Matus to get the same sativa (or NLD) seeds you were able to get from any kid in a city street a few years ago.

The problem is nobody care. Nobody reject the new couchlocking weed. In fact they think it is much better. I have seen some youngsters from poor countries where they still have original heirlooms showing their plants and buds of landrace sativas in FB, and all the people laughing, bullying and mocking at them because it was not the rounded and fat stupid overrated hyped modern buds.

The fact that Cannabis is a wind-pollinated species and is highly allogamous, also doesn't help. I can keep a tobacco strain at home with only a few plants simply covering the flower spike with a cheesecloth before they open. But you can be growing your wonderful NLD sativa while your neighbour is growing a feminized autoflowering hermie inside his closset. There is very little you can do, unless you spend a lot in HEPA filters, and of course growing indoors.

I think it is a lost war! Try to get a few landraces and keep them. It is the only we can do to save them!

You may think in some isolated countries some original landraces could be safe. But greed and stupidness travel further and faster than Covid-19!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqmR8LsCxQo/

The couch locking weed has always been ther..the sativas have always been there....the hybrids have always been there.....problem is evry one thought theyd always be there in their countries of origin....so no one preserved ther p1 strain lines but just caried on with hybridization.....people from those countries of origin saw these glossy magazines showing these new hybrids an thats wat they wanted....yeah thats ok but you need to preserve those older strains...if if you no longer want to grow them then the key is preservation...no one is being educated on the importance of preservation..how many kids in africa columbia ect really know how important those old strains they have are....how many people really preserve all these so called landraces they find before seling them or further working them or hybridizing them....who's telling all these newer generations in these far off countries how important those old strains are an how to preserve them. I dont see hybridizing a strain as the problem if im preserving the building block I use to make that hybrid....the problem is educating people an teaching them the importance of these old strains/pure strains/p1 lines..its those primary strains an each individual direction that you can take them that makes evrything wat it is today..one day it will be to late...alot has been lost allready....evryone needs to do ther bit....never has ther been as many people breeding as we have now...never has ther been so much money in the industry....someone should be educating an evry person who can breed needs to try an preserve what they can....together we can do alot and keep things in our the publics hands if we use our heads.

All the old genetics are scattered around the globe and far apart.
In these still mostly prohibition times (globally seen) there are too many isolated genepools which cannot mix (remember prohibition). If it wasn't for this lack of exchange, all could be good, but I fear it's getting worse. It's like in the animal world... too small and isolated populations wont make it very long...
CC

I'm an old guy, who took his first toke more than 51 years ago..

By the early 70's I was out of high school and old enough to have a few good connections..

There is definitely more good pot around these days but it doesn't equal the quality of the weed we could get in the early 70's..

I don't miss the bricks of shitty Mexican that were the norm, but when we got the good stuff, it knocked your dick in the dirt with it's amazing, head rush highs..

I'm not talking about 25% thc Indica buds that turn you into a couch potato, or relieve your physical pain..
I'm talking about the stuff that put your brain in outer space, but left your body energized so you wanted to go out hiking and exploring..
And sometime there was no ceiling to the high..

I miss some of the weed I smoked that came from the entire island of Jamaica, and regions of Mexico.
Weed like Oaxacan, Acapulco Gold, and Michoacan, plus plenty of others that had no names..
Also smoked some damn fine Sativas that came out of Central America...
I met a fisherman from Panama, in 1972, while I was in the Caribbean, who gave me some weed he brought from home..
It was red in color and knocked my socks off...

And I haven't even mentioned some of the weed from the lowlands of Thailand and Vietnam that some of my buddies big brothers brought home from the war..

I miss these purer Sativa strains from long ago.
On my 4th and last trip to Jamaica in 1994, I was soo disappointed in the weed I could get, that I have never wanted to go back again..

Hybridization has made some contributions to what we smoke today, but a whole lot of these contributions have not been for the betterment of our favorite plant..

..

ahortator said:

I am really tired to see the same happening not only to Cannabis. It also happens with cattle, pigs, fruit and vegetable landraces (or heirlooms, call them as you preffer). It is not only hybridization. Actually they are replacing completely the strains by modern hybrids.

I remember my friends from Colombia showed me photos of their plants in 2008 grown from bagseed. They were all NLD. Now it is impossible to see actual NLD plants there.

I have seen the same happened in Mexico, Jamaica, Morocco, Swaziland, South Africa, Cambodia,...

View Image

Some years ago you only needed to get some weed in the street and a bit of luck, in some countries, (not in mine where we only have soap bar) to get a treasure.

Now you need to begin an almost mystic initiatory journey to a far away and dangerous country and meet your own old Don Juan Matus to get the same sativa (or NLD) seeds you were able to get from any kid in a city street a few years ago.

The problem is nobody care. Nobody reject the new couchlocking weed. In fact they think it is much better. I have seen some youngsters from poor countries where they still have original heirlooms showing their plants and buds of landrace sativas in FB, and all the people laughing, bullying and mocking at them because it was not the rounded and fat stupid overrated hyped modern buds.

The fact that Cannabis is a wind-pollinated species and is highly allogamous, also doesn't help. I can keep a tobacco strain at home with only a few plants simply covering the flower spike with a cheesecloth before they open. But you can be growing your wonderful NLD sativa while your neighbour is growing a feminized autoflowering hermie inside his closset. There is very little you can do, unless you spend a lot in HEPA filters, and of course growing indoors.

I think it is a lost war! Try to get a few landraces and keep them. It is the only we can do to save them!

You may think in some isolated countries some original landraces could be safe. But greed and stupidness travel further and faster than Covid-19!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqmR8LsCxQo/

Click to expand...

Truth, compassion for our lost fruits......I can work lifetimes w people like this farmer! Many thx for keeping things real.

Chevy cHaze said:

All the old genetics are scattered around the globe and far apart.
In these still mostly prohibition times (globally seen) there are too many isolated genepools which cannot mix (remember prohibition). If it wasn't for this lack of exchange, all could be good, but I fear it's getting worse. It's like in the animal world... too small and isolated populations wont make it very long...
CC

Click to expand...

I wonder how many wild cannabis patches have been mowed down for cattle farming? Etc....could there actually be cultivars deep in jungles/rainforests that are mostly too treacherous for lazy folks to even attempt no matter how much money they got? Like REAL CULTIVAR HUNTERS! PRESERVATION WORK