Extinction by Hybridization: The Cannabis Biodiversity Crisis

[romanoweed]

@rurumo
are you on overgrow aswell?

and how you wanna work with old 70s Lines?

I ever thought that selecting only few individuals (even working with 100s of plants, keeping one pheno) could result in problems.
I ever was a fan of the idea of keeping 50 percent of phenos of a given line. And therefore GAIN less, BUT also not be in danger of loosing anything.

That spiritual effect, that clearness, that edge, might all be in danger simply by not keeping that much phenos.
I also dont feel there was that much improovement needed in what i once smoked. It was close to goodlike, close to perfection. Ultimatively hallucinogenic.. zero anxiety.

would you try such a largescale Minimalselection for maintaining landraces? (the danger of possible enviromental pressure changing the landrace besides)

 

[Rurumo]

@romanoweed

I'm just getting back into indoor growing 10 years after moving from a legal, to a medical only state-finally decided to get my medical card last month and I'm just setting up my first indoor grow in a long time. I plan on getting a provider license next year which will allow me to increase the total canopy size I can legally grow, which is when I'll start any breeding project. I've been growing outdoors since the late 80s.

I also think it's best to use as large a genetic sample as possible when preserving a landrace. Selecting a special phenotype for a new strain is fine, and many amazing plants have been discovered this way, but for the sake of preserving a landrace, it only makes sense to use as many plants as possible-of course selection for health and vigor can still take place. I bred chili peppers for many years doing this and ended up with very healthy plants suited to my climate.

I'm still not sure exactly which landraces I want to work with. I love all of them to be honest. I'll soon be growing out some Ace Malawi and Panama for personal use, and I would very much like to try their Annapurna, as a wild type charas Sativa. I grew up on the latin American landraces, and honestly, some of the good Mexican brickweed I got in the 1980s was vastly superior to the dispensary weed that is common today-I wish I still had the seeds I had from back then, which I used in guerilla grows.

I think it's impossible to keep these landraces from changing, but as long as we grow with a large enough sample size and don't interbreed or hybridize our breeding stock, we can still maintain most of the genetic richness and character that we love so much. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with people creating new strains, though I'm partial to 100% Sativa strains always, I just feel that a concerted effort needs to be made to preserve as much of the landrace breeding stock as possible. Otherwise we'll lose the foundation of all those amazing potential new strains forever.

 

[romanoweed]

your priorities seem the same.
-Letting a Strain unchanged priority Nr. 1,
-selective "bottlenecking" for some overall liked Traits like look, commonly accepted effect, or adaptation priority Nr. 2

I think you can do bouth in the same Time. If you just keep many percent of Plants.
I get the feeling, the few who work with landraces often have priority Nr. 2 set much higher.

And i would find it so cool if someone one Day would sell something that might leak in adaptation, might leak in look, leak in commonly accepted effect. ¨But has that ultimativity. Has that spiritual trip. and that a buyer can keep (open pollinate) without thinking twice how long that thing might be viable if kept.

I also rather can accept growing 20 plants and getting only one trip-weed-pheno. Instead of having 20 propperly enhancing phenos. Thats what i miss. the trip, and i rather trip once for real than 20 times slightly. Quality over quantity.

I have no idea if you ever get rich wich such a seedproduction, but atleast you did the best that ever could happen for cannaworld in my oppinion.

Im a great fan of Reeferman, who actually relased superb stains, Hoabac, Cambodianhaze, Bodhisativa (its a strainname)
So, it seems possible to relase tripweed, atleast i guess based on his name resonating somehow in cannaworld. Probably you need to relase some Afghani Indicas aswell just to pay the bills.

I can tell you i read alot after my Experience with hallucinogenic Cannabis. Wanted to find that strain again, so i openminded listend what the "Hippies" had to say, the Tripreports come mostly from SEAsia, Middleamerica , and Middleafrica.

I found the SEAsian tripreports were just the best (in my oppinion). These make you hallucinate , thats what people said. But no fear, Anxiety on some of them. Perfection.

Its also this kindness, and the certain subtility in effect (i mean it was sttroooong) that made me suspicious if heavy selection might not destroy more than it helps IN OVERALL. I learned , open pollingation (keeping every pheno) doesent let a strain utouched. It will reverse back to wild ancestral type Strain. Atleast if its done to often in a row. A strain changes every time its pollinated. Just to say its ot that easy. I just settled on the idea of slection (very slight. dont steer to much into any direction, and keep as many phenos as are more desirable than not. That leads us to 50 percent keepers? we will see)

Yes, mexican, or columbian like you probably smoked is up there (or better?) with the SE Asian, as is Middleafrican. The problem is these are not easy to find. I search them since 6 years. But i may give you links where to buy some. if you plan to keep your Priorities.

 

[Im'One]

Thank you for starting this thread. Seeing it motivated me to join this forum, though I've lurked here for information for at least a decade. I grew up enjoying and outdoor growing landrace cannabis in the 1980s, and I've long been disturbed by the direction taken by most seedbanks over the past 30 years. So few banks even offer landrace genetics anymore-The Real Seed Co, ACE, SOA...honestly, I can't think of any others offhand.

One of the biggest problems I see is that now have 2 generations of cannabis aficionados, 99% of who have never even experienced a true landrace. The majority of these people have never even tried a pure sativa. So the majority of the seed market simply doesn't know what they are missing. It's not their fault, but their ignorance is a driving factor behind this loss of genetic diversity. American popular culture promotes the stupefying "couchlock" effect as something that is desirable. Greedy fly-by-night seed companies and "breeders" hammer out new "strains" constantly, by simply smashing together whatever are the current popular hybrids, with no plan other than making money-the hybrid seed racket is the modern cannabis goldrush. Anyone who has bred cannabis on any scale knows that charging $100+ dollars for a 5 pack of hybrid seeds is pure exploitation. Not only that, but even the original popular hybrid strains don't even exist anymore-Blueberry is a great example: the "blueberry" strains that are offered now, even by DJ Short himself are totally inferior to the Blueberry I had in my youth, and that's not just the rose colored glasses of age, MOST of us "oldtimers" will say the same thing.

Modern hybrid cannabis is inferior in every way except for THC level than it was in the 1990s-the difference now is, the high THC plants are in more people's hands due to state by state legalization and medical laws. I smoked hybrid cannabis that was every bit as potent in the 1990s as the most potent strain I've had today, however, modern hybrids have lost the "character" they once had, and in many cases, such as blueberry, the terpene profile that they were once known for. Modern hybrid genetics has been "dumbed down" and homogenized to the point where I have no idea why anyone would choose one of these garbage strains over another, it's all high production generic weed, imo. I think we need to all do our part and introduce people we know to these landraces. Millenials and Gen Z (in general, there are always a few individuals who go against the grain) have bought into the scam of modern hybrid cannabis 100%, and personally experiencing landraces is the only thing that will change their minds. I'll never forget the first time a long time smoker friend of mine tried some of my Malawi Gold, it was almost a religious experience for him-the effects are so profoundly different from hybrids you can't even compare the two.

Sorry for this rambling post, I'm sure there are many people in their 40s-70s+ that see this thread for the first time and realize there are still a few people of class and distinction left in the world! I'm a legal medical grower in my state and I plan on getting licensed to increase the size of my grow this year-it will still be small scale, but I'll have the room I need to grow out a lot of males and females so I'd like to do my part to preserve at least one landrace strain. These strains are a gift handed down to us by generations of our ancestors, and there is a very real possibility that most of them will go extinct in our lifetimes. American corporate monoculture is polluting every corner of the globe where these landraces are still grown, and it is a SAD sad state of affairs when the local farmers think that American/European hybrid seeds are better simply because they are new and different than what they are used to. The same loss of diversity what we are seeing in our traditional food crops due to GMO monoculture is happening in the developing world to our landrace cannabis heritage, and only a concerted effort will save these treasures.

I have several strains with fifty plus seed of each but to grow out that many would be way over my plant limit. I can grow out ten or twelve a time then saveseeds and pollen, although my pollen keeping is not been as reliable as seeds.

 

[Sunshineinabag]

I have seen youngsters rejecting Thai buds due to the looks and the lack of skunky smell, until the point to refuse smoke them. Pretty insane but true.

Send em to vermont we don't roll like that. Come to vermont let's get the old lines working again

 

[White Beard]

Ngakpa, I’m curious to hear your opinion of the practices of discarding male plants, and moving so heavily to feminized seed over regular seed in the destruction you detail.

I’m sure I didn’t make it clear earlier that I completely agree with you about the introduction of “westernized” and genetically-throttled hybrids into primordial breeding environments: it’s not just a tragedy, but a catastrophe, and I’m 100% with you in opposition to the ‘poisoning’ of traditional landrace gene pools and in favor of preserving and maintaining the genetic heritage of ancestral landraces and the breeding techniques and environments that have preserved them for thousands of years. Very much to this end, I’m thrilled to learn about Kwikseeds, and I have every intention of exerting myself in in the preservation effort.

In context, I can’t shake the view that the virtual elimination of traditional breeding practices in the west has contributed to increasing the scale of the damage done by the intrusions - that the pursuit of “Bud Uber Alles” has compounded the situation, and I am interested to hear your views on the western obsession with cash-cropping and market-following which seems, sadly, to be getting introduced into Thailand, and I fear other traditional growing contexts - on on what can be done, perhaps, to prevent that extra layer of ‘contamination’.

An excellent thread, and thank you so much for it, and for all the links you’ve provided. Sorry it took me so long to get to the end of it!

 

[DownDeepInside]

your priorities seem the same.
-Letting a Strain unchanged priority Nr. 1,
-selective "bottlenecking" for some overall liked Traits like look, commonly accepted effect, or adaptation priority Nr. 2

...

I can tell you i read alot after my Experience with hallucinogenic Cannabis. Wanted to find that strain again, so i openminded listend what the "Hippies" had to say, the Tripreports come mostly from SEAsia, Middleamerica , and Middleafrica.

I found the SEAsian tripreports were just the best (in my oppinion). These make you hallucinate , thats what people said. But no fear, Anxiety on some of them. Perfection.

...

Yes, mexican, or columbian like you probably smoked is up there (or better?) with the SE Asian, as is Middleafrican. The problem is these are not easy to find. I search them since 6 years. But i may give you links where to buy some. if you plan to keep your Priorities.

This is exactly what i'm looking for ! Can you PM me ?

 

[White Beard]

Someone asked about subscribing to the “Curious about Cannabis” podcast: no, it doesn’t require a paid subscription, it’s available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher - so whichever of those floats your boat, you can go there and subscribe.

The BTS#3 episode Ngakpa linked to is TWICE as long, the link he gives is just to the first half; the entire thing is available when you subscribe and download it.

 

[romanoweed]

what are you looking for? to grow a given landrace in high numbers in order to preserve it to the highest degree/or with highest possible dedication for preservation? if so, tell me. Yes, or No.

 

[DownDeepInside]

Well for start I'd like to grow them to experience them. If one is right for me (if I fall in love) I'll definitely reproduce it. I already do that but on a small scale as I don't have massive logistical capabilities.But I'd love to experience those hallucinogenic strains. I once grew the old TRSC Nepalese strain and that was the first strain in my life which gave me near hallucinogenic effects with a pleasant mindspace. I was so excited, I figured I that's exactly what I want from cannabis.

 

[romanoweed]

thanks for the honesty, its a good thing. well, i need people who work them in a way it stays what it is. thats what i honestly search. i cant do it, my hunt for the old gold took enough time.

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

thanks for clearing that up

Your regurgitation of that popular social media catchphrase has done nothing to convince me that your original assertion about our friend at The Indian Landrace Exchange being a total moron who shouldn't be allowed to discuss the sciences publicly is in any way well reasoned. I listened to both of his Pot Casts and he seemed exceptionally well reasoned, educated and intelligent.

 

[meizzwang]

I ever thought that selecting only few individuals (even working with 100s of plants, keeping one pheno) could result in problems.
I ever was a fan of the idea of keeping 50 percent of phenos of a given line. And therefore GAIN less, BUT also not be in danger of loosing anything.

That spiritual effect, that clearness, that edge, might all be in danger simply by not keeping that much phenos.
I also dont feel there was that much improovement needed in what i once smoked. It was close to goodlike, close to perfection. Ultimatively hallucinogenic.. zero anxiety.

would you try such a largescale Minimalselection for maintaining landraces? (the danger of possible enviromental pressure changing the landrace besides)

I think of seeds I grew directly from Kholm: there was a wide range of phenos, ranging from low resin, to high resin production, almost zero aroma to spicy to incredibly fruity! The best smelling one barely got me high, and I have low tolerance. You could tell, just by the small sample size, that these seeds originated from a large, genetically diverse population, or at least genetically diverse mother plants. On a small scale, none of the plants were keepers, but I bet the population as a whole had quite a few keepers. You need to grow out a large number of seeds or get lucky to find those keepers.

The duality preservationists face with maintaining landraces is selection versus diversity. They're inversely proportional: the harder you select for specific traits, the lower the diversity becomes. The more you increase diversity, the lower the selection becomes. Who wants a field of mostly disease resistant plants with low resin, little odor, poor quality effects, but a few gems mixed in there? Conversely, who wants a field with mostly amazing smelling individuals with mostly gems in the mix, but they'll all hermi or have weird mutated seedlings generations down the line?

What's best for the population long term isn't necessarily going to yield the best quality product for the farmer.

If a landrace line already has uniformity or produces a high percentage of quality individuals from seed, it has already gone through strong selection. Maybe maintaining large populations of such landraces can help slow down inbreeding depression?

It is my opinion that in order to maintain landraces long term outside their region of origin with the goal of selecting the best qualities while also avoid inbreeding depression, they need to experience genetic change. To keep the lines as "pure" as possible, maybe it makes sense to cross similar yet genetically different populations with each other (example: Nanda devi x Rolpa, or Kholm x Mazar I sharif). Select the best, and cross them together to increase the frequency of desirable traits, but since the two populations are genetically different, diversity is maintained. Start by taking multiple select individuals from one population and crossing them with multiple select individuals from another similar yet genetically different population.

Overall, it's a tough thing to figure out, but ultimately, I think protecting landraces "in the wild" or where they've been naturalized for thousands of years and have enormous diversity today is the most effective way to maintain diversity long term. Even without human intervention, those populations persist as feral plants, which are genetic goldmines. Of course, the threat of those being polluted with modern genetics is the reason we have this thread.

 

[ngakpa]

The BTS#3 episode Ngakpa linked to is TWICE as long, the link he gives is just to the first half; the entire thing is available when you subscribe and download it.

I've done three episodes with Curious About Cannabis

The first is available in full on YouTube

The full second episode does require a subscription, but that only means a single payment of 3$ USD ... otherwise there is a heavily edited public version of it

The third epsiode will be out around Christmas

@White Beard

the greatest biodiversity is in wild-growing Eurasian populations

landraces (ie, traditional domesticates) also have immense biodiversity

not sure what you're asking me about breeding and feminized seeds etc., but obviously the constant narrowing of the genetic base of modern hybrids etc. is a problem, however caused

 

[ngakpa]

our friend at The Indian Landrace Exchange being a total moron who shouldn't be allowed to discuss the sciences publicly

dishonesty and straw-manning is a constant with you guys, isn't it?

the only person who has said anything about the kids at ILE being morons is you

trying to put the word "moron" in my mouth and then getting angry as if it was me that said it, is just very silly

ILE are dishonest, yes

stupid - who knows?

what I've pointed out is simply the evident willingness of these over-priveleged Indian city kids to use their IG accounts to capitalize on the cluelessness of many Westerners

that became doubly annoying when their bullshitting about Asian culture extended to trying to damage RSC's credibility (e.g. their crap about devatas and "Nanda Devi")

and far more seriously, their lies about the ecology and the catastrophic damage to Cannabis biodiversity caused by importing hybrids

that's how ILE and co made a name for themselves - for god knows how long hassling people by pm for hybrid seeds to take to Parvati

that's all - people should be made aware of how these kids operate

and really, have you really not understood what "chotu" means?

in India, you don't have fluent English and throw around words like "katabatic" if you grew up in a mountain village in the remote Himalaya

I have several hours of interview and documentary footage with Pahari villagers (not rich kids from Delhi), and I can tell you what they want the rest of the world to know about their troubles with city Indians

kidnap and human trafficking of their children, endlessly being ripped off when they try to sell their crops or products in town, getting beaten up and having their entire charas crop stolen when they try to sell it etc.

that's what dealing with outsiders from the cities can mean for Himalayan villagers

so at least get a grasp of how the society works before you go wading into stuations you clearly don;t understand and start "throwing your weight around"

at some point I will publish something fuller about what a nightmare it is for Pahari communities in most charas-producing villages dealing with folks from the rest of India

again, this is why we need legalisation, as it at least provides the potential basis for farmers to defend their rights and communities

 

[Sunshineinabag]

I'm soooo deep in this....we could call it a rabbit hole ...but like an encyclopedia of canna rabbit hole.....I just wish ida met you guys when I graduated high school lol

 

[Sunshineinabag]

Any insight on fat mango cultivars? They look nice. Aussiesxseem to be good at keeping things safe

 

[aliceklar]

I think it would be interesting to have complex landrace hybrids that aren't ever mixed with modern hybrids, but after the initial cross and selective pressure, are stabilized over time from many generations of natural selection. Maybe instead of an extinction of landraces, this could eventually, with decades of work and large population sizes, create a renaissance of new, desirable landraces!

Far from the goal, but the first step is crossing landraces with each other and developing breeder's intuition. Once you have that, then you can select which cross(es) are worth developing and acclimating on a genetic level to your conditions.

For the sake of inspiration: Parvati x Kerala F1: both parents, relatively speaking, were moderate yielders compared to the resulting F1 hybrid! Like the parents, the F1 had zero rot after being exposed to rain (unlike all the modern hybrids grown nearby), and like Kerala, this F1 is resistant to powdery mildew! In my opinion, this is the first step in the right direction: this F1 landrace hybrid is already far more adapted to the local conditions compared to most modern hybrids, and yield is comparable to modern hybrids:
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That's a pretty plant, but it isnt a good example of the start of a new landrace - because it is the result of 1:1 pollination (dont mean to be snarky - I may have misunderstood what you are saying!). It has the narrowest genetic roots. In a big enough open pollinated population (ideally working with at least hundreds of plants), natural mutation will ensure that diversity increases over time, whilst plants continue to adapt to local conditions, and valued characteristics are preserved by culling off-types. Point being it needs a broad genetic base to remain both healthy and sufficiently true to type to be recognisable as the same variety over time.

You're spot on about the importance of working with varieties over many generations. And for a variety to be sustainable it needs enough genetic breadth to keep it healthy. That's not going to work with a variety that is repeatedly put through single parent bottlenecks, especially if repeatedly backcrossed.

I'm also in favour of developing lines that are kept separate from the mainstream genetic pools - and starting from landraces is clearly the way to go (rather than crossing and recrossing the latest cookie clone). Even small scale cupboard growers can contribute positively to this by ensuring that when they grow landraces or old heirloom varieties, they do open pollinations of those lines first to back up the genetics in seed form rather than just hybridizing and losing the original. And growing multiple inbred lines from a landrace still leaves the possibility that those lines could at some stage be recombined.

 

[romanoweed]

@aliceklar, but after each done an open pollination, we need to find a way to keep them. After that the solution might not be to open pollinate again. Thing will get wild. thats why i brought my solution for it. This solution would(if it works) finally make our Eyes shine, and thousand people sitting on open pollinations of a given light, might not have enough (the thousand people included) hope to continue, to keep , to doo substental work in the future with it.
CAUSE if they bottleneck hard: thing gets too rounded the degyness the spiritual effect i guess.
And if the open pollinate again, thig gets wildish, hempy.

Thats why we should hurry and find a way to keep a given line as is (whilste crating new seeds)
This would give me hope, if thing can be copyed 100 percent

Thats also why i would not even aim on stabilisation, why? cause as soon as one does that, he accept a change in landrace. and acording to my feel, it feels risky. i say our job is done forever, if we can just keep something as is (whilst creating new seeds). There will be ever fascinating for a true old line, no doubt, even it has to much variation. Aiming even further than copying whats given (aiming for stabilisation) could proove risky, and could be fatal. I smoked the real deal, and all i wish, even it was only a pheno, that this is around, thats my/our job. I wouldnt even risk a percent of that line.

Shure each can do other things with it, but that is my vision. Copying the lines, and i feel it wont be easy.

 

[Sunshineinabag]

Listening to angus(rsc) on cac podcast.....I'll be supportive of his endeavors for quite some time. I love hearing him speak about the confluence of where the big variations between landraces ......20 ft cultivars with indica leaf sets yeehAa