Highland Thai, RSC

[AbuKeif]

All excellent questions! When I'm researching this kind of thing, the problem seems to be that there is a lot of 'received wisdom,' but not a lot of people have the time, resources, and freedom from security concerns to be able to test for multiple outcomes with large enough numbers of plants and arrive at reasonably 'scientific' conclusions. If someone has done this, I certainly hope they will pipe up in your other thread!

 

[meizzwang]

Some highland thai outdoors in the PNW. These plants almost look like kumaoni, except with more branching and thinner, smaller leaves. They're close to 2 meters tall and still going!

Leaves are big, but not gigantic:

 

[Water-]

nice plants.

looks like hemp genes got in there.

I have a pack and now I am more intrigued to see what I find.

 

[romanoweed]

Im not shure, it could been that the shady nearby Bushes made the broad Leafes so broad. Was the Seeds direct from Breeder?

 

[meizzwang]

These are the most recent reproductions made outside their region of origin from RSC. I think they were the original release, open pollinated. I remember reading ngakpa's comment that he thinks highland thai is of hybrid origin. These plants definitely grow fast and with great vigor.

Comparing green's plants to these, the leaves are night and day, but it's hard to judge what's going on at this point, as we could just be witnessing phenotypic variance. With manipuri, for example, the plants started out wide leaf dominant for a while and by the end of flowering, all the leaves were narrow leaf dominant.

Are hemp genes showing up this generation, or is this environmentally induced from growing in nitrogen rich soil? Check out this nanda devi pictured below in stark contrast. It also had a lot of nitrogen in the soil to begin with but is displaying narrow leaf dominance. However, this doesn't rule out phenotypic variance as the culprit for the WLD in highland thai: different genetics can "behave" differently to the same conditions:

 

[AbuKeif]

Arrgh... getting increasingly jealous of people who live in climates where it's feasible to flower these beasts out of doors! Looking great there, meizzwang.

 

[meizzwang]

Arrgh... getting increasingly jealous of people who live in climates where it's feasible to flower these beasts out of doors! Looking great there, meizzwang.

Don't get jealous just yet, there's still a long ways to go, and it gets cold/rainy here around November. Some years, we can finish very long flowering plants outdoors, other years, they rot way before there's even a chance.....

 

[Psy_explorer]

What a beauties... I personally wouldn’t worry a lot about phenos and general appearance, as long as we have the work of trsc we can access year by year to great genetic material apart from being able to reproduce our own plants.

 

[aeroponique2]

Superb is the word that comes to me when I see this landrace.
Well done.
Should be included in the next book by Ed Rosenthal

 

[AbuKeif]

Don't get jealous just yet, there's still a long ways to go, and it gets cold/rainy here around November. Some years, we can finish very long flowering plants outdoors, other years, they rot way before there's even a chance.....

I hear you, but in my neck of the woods there’s just plain snow by November! Here’s hoping the weather does you right this year...

 

[ngakpa]

Yes, as the description at the sites says, I suspect the Highland Thai originated from hybridizing Thai ganja and Chinese hemp

Check out the stems after you harvest - they're likely hollow, like a hemp plant

 

[meizzwang]

Some updated flower photos of highland thai. I had 2 amazing male plants in this batch that were used to hit up 2 females. Zero hermi issues so far. Aroma-wise, it smells mildly spicy like Nanda Devi or Kumaoni, but it also has a sweet aroma similar to manipuri! Under my conditions here in the Pacific Northwest, the plants have shown resistance to powdery mildew, but they're definitely susceptible to what appears to be botrytis (stem rot). However, I'm not seeing any rot issues in the buds just yet. Maybe these plants are better adapted to warm, tropical climates and are a little bit stressed by our cooler winter climate.

These plants get very tall very quickly, and have great vigor! Highland Thai physically looks like a mix between a himalayan sativa and a thai sativa.

I couldn't get close to the main cola since the inflorescence is so high up. This generation of highland thai physically looks very different from the plants showcased by Green in this thread, but the bracts on some of his plants look the same in shape and size. This variety definitely has large bracts.

Hard to say when they'll be ripe, but these will definitely be flowering into December.

Decent resin production:

 

[Green]

@meizzwang- looking good, some proper Xmas buds

 

[Im'One]

I'm wondering if I can grow these outdoors in mid Oklahoma. I live at 35° and have a large shop I could move them into for the last four weeks. Our first frost is typically mid October but it bounced back up and was only 25 for a day then back to 50s and ,60s. Would they be well into flowering and do ok in a metal buildingby November? Could I finish them inside for the last 4 weeks?

 

[AbuKeif]

I'm wondering if I can grow these outdoors in mid Oklahoma. I live at 35° and have a large shop I could move them into for the last four weeks. Our first frost is typically mid October but it bounced back up and was only 25 for a day then back to 50s and ,60s. Would they be well into flowering and do ok in a metal buildingby November? Could I finish them inside for the last 4 weeks?

Mine flowered (well, did 12/12 from seed) for 24 weeks indoors, no joke. I feel like it would be tough to finish them outside anyplace that typically gets snow by December. I'm not an expert, especially when it comes to tropical landraces, but I would be concerned that this landrace might not get the stimuli it needed to start flowering in earnest until things were pretty chilly in Oklahoma. If you were motivated and had the equipment, I'd certainly be curious to see how they would do with a light-deprivation setup, which could get your flowering started a lot sooner.



The other big concern with starting outside and finishing them inside would be height control--if your plants are 15' tall, they might not fit in the door. If your 'metal building' has really high doors and ceilings that could certainly help things, but I'd still advise major pruning, bending, and supercropping all summer.

 

[ngakpa]

hi,

imo, this "they flower forever" thing is an age-old mistake indoor growers make when trying to understand tropical strains

translating indoors flowering times into outdoors just doesn't work

typical tropical 'Sativa' landraces are grown as 6-month seed to harvest

some are more like 5-month seed to harvest


for example, the most typical cycle for them in the Asian tropics is to plant around June-July and harvest around Dec-Jan

the fact it's possible to keep a plant flowering for 24 weeks indoors doesn't mean that's how it's going to behave outdoors

as it is, if you really want to, it would be possible to keep Cannabis plants flowering almost indefinitely... essentially, that's what most growers are doing unwittingly anyway when they grow tropical Sativas indoors

think of it from the perspective of a farmer in India or wherever - there's no way they're going to want to grow a crop that takes up fields for the best part of a year

that's not to say that growing tropical Sativas at 35N is necessarily going to work... anywhere north of 30N will be a challenge

but that said, for sure there's a possibility for finding early variants within the population of these tropical strains that will finish properly further north

that's certainly been done with the Manipuri and Kerala, both of which have shown plants that were done by early to late November - e.g. in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest

(meanwhile indoor growers are reporting the same strains flower for 137,000 weeks indoors etc. etc. etc.)

 

[therevverend]

that's not to say that growing tropical Sativas at 35N is necessarily going to work... anywhere north of 30N will be a challenge

The bigger challenge you run into as a temperate grower is the long summer days. In Bangkok on July 1 the day length is around 12:55. In Oklahoma City it takes until September 1 for the days to get that short. This wrecks absolute havoc on the plants' circadian cycles. Totally out of whack with the season. Up here in Washington state tropical varieties start flowering a month later or more then my acclimated local strains.

This may make the '24 week' flowering times not as ridiculous as they seem. You figure a plant that's 4-6 weeks old will begin flowering when day length drops below 13 hours. If that's the case a plant planted on June 1 in Bangkok will have flowered for close to 20 weeks by the time it's harvested December 1st. These numbers are a bit silly, it doesn't really work that way but you get the idea. Tropical strains NEED to take 4 months to flower or else they'll be dinky little Autos. Which is the case in Hawaii for instance. Everyone is growing their California hybrids in hoop houses with supplemental lighting otherwise they'll flower immediately. Growing exotic plants far from their native environment with different humidity, temperature, soil, water, day length is bound to create multiple problems. It's a testament to cannabis' amazing adaptability that we can grow these strains in any shape or form.

I'm not trying to discourage people from attempting these plants, that's the last thing I'd want to do. I'd say the opposite, only by experimenting with these exotic varieties is cannabis breeding going to adapt to the new world man is creating. However as a breeder the goal should always be to adapt the exotic to your own local conditions, otherwise you're fighting Mother Nature every year. We know who will be the loser every time.

 

[AbuKeif]

imo, this "they flower forever" thing is an age-old mistake indoor growers make when trying to understand tropical strains


the fact it's possible to keep a plant flowering for 24 weeks indoors doesn't mean that's how it's going to behave outdoors


but that said, for sure there's a possibility for finding early variants within the population of these tropical strains that will finish properly further north

that's certainly been done with the Manipuri and Kerala, both of which have shown plants that were done by early to late November - e.g. in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest

(meanwhile indoor growers are reporting the same strains flower for 137,000 weeks indoors etc. etc. etc.)

Hi ngakpa,


Fair enough! I certainly come at this from the blinkered perspective of someone with mostly-indoor growing experience. I should also say that my budget (of space, time, and cash) doesn't currently allow me the luxury of sifting through five-dozen phenos to find the keeper that will allow me tropical performance at 41 degrees north. Someday, perhaps...



To be clear, Im'One, I say go for it! Apologies to you and anyone else who read my comments as discouraging. And when you do find that beautiful individual that retains its Thai sparkle outdoors in Oklahoma, be sure to lovingly develop it into an uncontaminated IBL and send some seeds of your well-acclimated Tropical Oklahoman back to RSC so that we can all receive them as freebies

 

[ngakpa]

hi

no worries at all, hope that didn't come across like a harangue

worth noting here:

some tropical strains and/or plants can be day-neutral

that's a technical term for auto-flowering

in other words, day-length isn't necessarily a relevant factor here

 

[CannaZen]

we work together or afraid as not.