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Clarification of Cannabis Identification
- Thread starter pjlive
- Start date
goingrey
Well-known member
I have a couple of issues with this.
The roman numeral categorization means you have to remember (or look up) what the number was. Why not just call it what it is, high-THC (Type I), high-CBD (Type III), or balanced (Type II)?
And categorizing chemovars with this can be problematic. Some landrace varieties for example, especially those used for hash rather than flower production, will have all three types of plants in the variety. Seems more like a chemotype categorization.
Also if it was introduced in 1973 and hasn't caught wind yet... Well, enough said really.
The roman numeral categorization means you have to remember (or look up) what the number was. Why not just call it what it is, high-THC (Type I), high-CBD (Type III), or balanced (Type II)?
And categorizing chemovars with this can be problematic. Some landrace varieties for example, especially those used for hash rather than flower production, will have all three types of plants in the variety. Seems more like a chemotype categorization.
Also if it was introduced in 1973 and hasn't caught wind yet... Well, enough said really.
H e d g e
Well-known member
I liked the Phylos galaxy distinction based on what they’re related to/polluted by.
Interestingly none of the plants they considered landrace contain any cbd at all, makes me think that the Lebanese Raphael Mechoulam first found varied levels of cbd in we’re probably already polluted by GM hemp.
Interestingly none of the plants they considered landrace contain any cbd at all, makes me think that the Lebanese Raphael Mechoulam first found varied levels of cbd in we’re probably already polluted by GM hemp.
pjlive
Active member
These are good issues, @goingrey! Thanks for your thoughtful input.
I saw this info floating around a couple of weeks ago. I almost immediately thought it might be a good idea to begin identifying the autoflowers as defined here, but then thought again because of the issue you outline here in that people would have to look up what the hell a Type I, II, II, IV, or V is. So I decided against it.
Things are changing fast now that people can publish their ideas and findings without the threat of legal or negative repercussions. It's great to know what people think about it, though, just in case it catches on more in the community. So, I'm keeping it on my radar for a while.
pjlive
Active member
Very interesting. Thank you!
Somatek
Active member
Why don't you think CBD is naturally occurring? Where did the idea that THC is natural and anything with CBD is polluted when the common understanding is it's just different evolutionary lines due to selective or environmental pressures?
Somatek
Active member
It's a useful way to describe plants in the industry where the primary concern is chemical composition (i.e. farmers needing to make sure their hemp has THC levels below legal thresholds, etc) but outside of that isn't very descriptive for either growers or consumers which is probably why it hasn't gotten wider acceptance.
Cannabis taxonomy has never been clearly established or well defined and has never really been resolved. Phylos had a blog post years ago about how their findings didn't support separate subspecies like indica or sativa but suggested one species wtih diverse sub populations more likely to express certain genes or traits. So as a grower I tend to focus on practical descriptions like narrow vs wide leaf, dense vs open bud structure, long vs short flowering, stimulating vs sedative, high CBD vs low, etc. That way people have an accurate picture of what I'm describing instead of their projection based on understanding of loose terms like indica/sativa/hybrid. When I'm talking to normal people that don't grow I just describe the effects/aroma's, sadly most consumers aren't really that experienced (at least in Canada, especially with legalization bringing some many new kids to the pool) and want simple categories like they're use to with wine/beer where taste/experience is consistent and repeatable so they seem to latch onto simplistic binary terms like indica/sativa.
H e d g e
Well-known member
I’m not convinced that everything containing THC is organic either, for something to be considered organic it must be either genetically edited in such a way that could have occurred naturally via selective breeding, or not genetically modified at all.
The Phylos galaxy clearly shows that pure landrace plants consistently test zero cbd content.
Where did it come from if the plants that modern genetics were bred from don’t naturally produce it?
The chromatography looks very different when comparing landraces to modern varieties. Something happened to them and there was nothing natural about it.
H e d g e
Well-known member
The top one is landrace, below is cannatonic.
It’s important that all plants and animals are properly classified as either organic or not in order for consumers to be able to make informed decisions, and for breeders to be able to preserve what’s left of the landrace populations.
The Phylos galaxy divides plant types in such a way that you can clearly see what each variety was contaminated by and by how much.
It’s important that all plants and animals are properly classified as either organic or not in order for consumers to be able to make informed decisions, and for breeders to be able to preserve what’s left of the landrace populations.
The Phylos galaxy divides plant types in such a way that you can clearly see what each variety was contaminated by and by how much.
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goingrey
Well-known member
The Phylos subpopulations are kind of strange. The fact that they have separate "Landrace" (green) and "CBD" (orange) subpopulations does not mean that landraces do not have CBD. It should just be understood as landraces and modern CBD strains (the Cannatonics and so on) not being closely related. At least this is my understanding.
Drug landrace/heirloom varieties bred for flower use have been selected for high-THC and low-CBD over the years. Especially so in clones that have been selected/kept from them, that samples to Phylos would possibly be from. So with this particular type of varieties there may be some truth to what you are saying.
However, landrace/heirloom varieties bred/selected for hash production, where many plants are mixed so the chemotype of an individual plant doesn't determine the quality (high) of the end product, or other non-ganja purposes do have both high-CBD and balanced chemotypes.
CBD and THC are not new (GM) introductions to cannabis. Both were found in samples from a 2700-year-old grave in China:
Phytochemical and genetic analyses of ancient cannabis from Central Asia
The Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, China have recently been excavated to reveal the 2700-year-old grave of a Caucasoid shaman whose accoutrements included a large cache of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic and burial ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
H e d g e
Well-known member
It’s the fact that the few varieties that tested pure landrace were all without cbd that made me think it’s not naturally occurring, not that they’re in a different category.
I hadn’t seen that ancient find, thanks for the link. It does seem that although THC dominant, it did contain some cbd, so maybe it is naturally occurring in small quantities, but not in the quantity that is produced by cannatonic or hemp.
I suspect that hash plants were probably worst effected by hemp pollen/high cbd chemotypes because they’re not traditionally selected in the same way as Ganga, but the hash I used to get as a youngster was definitely not cbd dominant, and I doubt much selection was going on back then either.
Since being crossed with hemp, cannatonic, OG and skunk as the galaxy clearly shows it has been, it’s no longer worth smoking. It’s why I grow my own.
How do you explain the diagonally cut solid blocks of colour in the chromatography pics I just posted? Do they look natural to you?
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Mudballs2.0
Active member
What am i looking at here...please?
Somatek
Active member
That seems more related to their sampling and categorization then anything, consider the fact there's only one listing for ruderalis which isn't classified as a landrace when it's a fully naturalized northern variation of the cannabis gene pool. If there was an extensive worldwide survey of naturalized/landrace populations I have no doubt we'd see everything from high thc to high cbd with everything in between.
Cannatonic is a highly inbred variety for CBD, that graph just shows the power of selective breeding for specific cannabinoids. It doesn't negate the possibility of there being type II or III populations of landrace varieties which simply haven't been listed in the phylos galaxy or where listed as hemp not landraces, which again seems more plausible then CBD being an unnatural mutation.
The galaxy doesn't show that hashplants have been crossed with or polluted by those other varieties, just that they share a predominant amount of genes with them showing that they're genetically closer then other samples. How phylos has labelled their clusters has always been problematic for creating this kind of confusion.
Somatek
Active member
It's the subpopulation reference bar, they're visual graphs representing the genetic make up of the different subpopulations they use to categorize their findings. So "skunk" is represented with red, hemp by yellow, berry by purple, landrace by green, cbd by orange and kush by blue. So if we look at the skunk graph we can see it's predominantly red (the genes that define that subpopulation) with fairly equal amounts of blue and yellow and small amounts of purple, green and orange. It doesn't tell us when things were crossed or if they even were or if we're just seeing the same genes in different populations, all it shows is how they're related to one another genetically by how much of their genes are composed of the different subpopulations. Berry is a good example of that, it doesn't mean they're related to blueberry just that they have the same gene combinations which express those traits which the varieties were listed under. I hope that makes sense.
the type 1, 2 , 3 system was started when people still thought that thc and cbd were on the same locus with co dominant alleles. this has been proven false. while thc and cbd are on the same chromosome they are not linked. also, the thc and cbd synthase are not singular. up to 10 different thc synthases have been found with different catalytic capabilities of cbga to thca. it now appears that certain thc synthases and prenyl pre cursors are molded by the wild progenitors home enviorment. in this vein i believe hilligs study using allozymes is best when discussing breeding. allozymes are mutated forms of primary metabolism enzymes. meaning they are not subject to selection pressure and by tracing them down thru progeny conclusions can be reached of both ancestry and chemotype. hillig grouped cannabis as evolving from 2 gene pools indica and sativa as follows-
cannabis indica are drug strains- east asian hemp, nld ganja, bld hashplant, and feral/wild indian/nepal
cannabis sativa covers european fibre hemp, eastern europe feral,central/northern asian
hillig found that east asian hemp category contained every allele in cannabis indica other then 6 pointing strongly to this group being the basal group of drug cannabis. the rest of the diversity was found in the feral/wild nepal/india category. the east asian hemp group had the most polymorphic locus, most alleles per locus, and 10 rare alleles found only in one strain. east asian hemp refers to korean, japanese, taiwan, northern vietnam and south china(yunnan) this matches with the most recent genetic studies placing china as the basal starting point for cannabis.
heres the paper if interested
cannabis indica are drug strains- east asian hemp, nld ganja, bld hashplant, and feral/wild indian/nepal
cannabis sativa covers european fibre hemp, eastern europe feral,central/northern asian
hillig found that east asian hemp category contained every allele in cannabis indica other then 6 pointing strongly to this group being the basal group of drug cannabis. the rest of the diversity was found in the feral/wild nepal/india category. the east asian hemp group had the most polymorphic locus, most alleles per locus, and 10 rare alleles found only in one strain. east asian hemp refers to korean, japanese, taiwan, northern vietnam and south china(yunnan) this matches with the most recent genetic studies placing china as the basal starting point for cannabis.
heres the paper if interested
goingrey
Well-known member
I have a vague memory of seeing a paper where Phylos detailed their methods but can't seem to find it now. Without it it's difficult to comment on the pictures too much. But they are not gas chromatographs showing the chemotype of the sample. In their FAQ they explain that they use something called a BeadArray (in the past TCSA+NextSeq 500) for DNA genotyping. They evaluate 2000 marker locations and then use them to match the sample to existing archetypes/subpopulations to define genetic relatives or uniqueness. That is what those graphs represent. The fact that a sample does not match the CBD subpopulation does not mean that it has no CBD.
It's quite possible that hash varieties have been crossed to, or even entirely bred from hemp varieties. I'm not sure there is anything "unnatural" about that though. CBD content in traditional types can be relatively high:
CBD content of hashish from Lebanon varied from 5.69% to 12.79% (an average 8.98 ± 0.59%), THC of hashish from Lebanon varied from 0.93% to 4.20% (an average of 2.38 ± 0.27 %), CBD of hashish from Morocco varied from 1.52% to 5.14% (an average of 3.72 ± 0.19%), THC of hashish from Morocco varied from 5.08% to 13.41% (an average of 9.21 ± 0.40%), CBD of hashish from India varied from 0.78% to 13.13% (an average of 4.59 ± 1.07%), and THC of hashish from India varied from 0.53% to 16.45% (an average of 6.35 ± 1.50%)
From: The main cannabinoids content in hashish samples seized in Israel and Czech Republic (Hanuš et al), doi: 10.1080/07929978.2016.1177983
H e d g e
Well-known member
Agreed, it would be great if they would start taking samples again and would paint a bigger picture of the situation.
I think I’m right in saying that cannatonic is a direct descendant of skunk which doesn’t contain any cbd so it must’ve taken some doing via natural selective breeding practices to achieve that.
Landrace plants have been heavily selected in different directions for a long time before any labs took an interest and yet none developed the solid diagonal blocks of colour we see in the chromatography of modern varieties.
I think I’m right in saying that cannatonic is a direct descendant of skunk which doesn’t contain any cbd so it must’ve taken some doing via natural selective breeding practices to achieve that.
Landrace plants have been heavily selected in different directions for a long time before any labs took an interest and yet none developed the solid diagonal blocks of colour we see in the chromatography of modern varieties.
goingrey
Well-known member
Ok I see what you mean with the solid blocks of color in modern varieties.
My interpretation of that is that it means that the modern varieties are closely related. Genetic bottlenecking, no doubt due to heavy use of Skunk, Haze, NL, and other familiar names to people on the forum... Whereas with landraces there is less of that.
