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Landraces . Will we ever smoke what we once had? If no is there a Way back?

CannaZen

Well-known member
I'm not referencing the photo with the spear leaf that was partially eaten.
 
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therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
The answer to the question is no, we will never smoke the same cannabis we once smoked. Once it burns up it's gone forever. We can't be 17 again, drink that first beer, lose our virginity twice.
I'm serious, not trying to be silly. Each cannabis flower is a unique combination of conditions, genetics, curing, that can never be replicated again. That's why the cannabis we have now is an amazing unique thing that should be appreciated for the miracle it is.
As far as recreating strains of the past of course that's possible. But it's on you to do the work. No one else appreciates that bag of half seedy lime green Mexi you got out of Reno 30 years ago. If it's going to be recreated then you have to do it.
Before the internet I'd say it's impossible. Now for your time and money you could find at least the start of what you're looking for. The legwork, breeding, and growing is up to you.
The problem is that when you get what you're looking for you may not recognize it or like it. We've all changed. Probably a lot more then the plants have. The fields and mountains the cannabis was grown in have probably changed too. And the growers are probably a lot older or dead or imprisoned or drooling in a wheelchair.
I wish someone would make a documentary, go to Thailand and Oaxaca and Columbia and other places that grew the old famous varieties. Track down the old growers, record their stories, take pictures, maybe they have old pictures? Find out how they grew where the seeds came from, etc. It'd be hard but not impossible. Now would be the time to do it because they'll all be gone soon.
 

Dropped Cat

Six Gummi Bears and Some Scotch
Veteran
I have a cross that includes the genetics from seeds circa 1978.

Today, I'm literally smoking plants that I smoked 40 years ago.

And the smoke is sublime, everyone who has partaken has mentioned
the unique, clear embracing experience.

Many growers have expressions of legacy plants that haven't been made public.

Good thread.
 

romanoweed

Well-known member
Exactly Dropped Cat. In my Opinion ther has ben a Point in Time in that Cannabis had the Possiblity to show the strongest Examples of its Kind , even if in the broad Mass, like in mexican Brickweed you didnt find any Goods.
So in this Times you could find the Juwels, that much is clear to me. Also quit shure i am that this Juwels was in General Landraces, not Hybrids of diffrent Continents.
What i still dont know, wich Kind of Point was Cannabis at that Time, wich Procedere was it trough. And how could we possibly if even get back there, fast, if we wouldent have this Genes in our Hands or only partial.
So how much were this Yuwels wild Races from Nature and how much were they domesticated. How was they mixed up. Would we understand this better, we could probably go back. But i guess (probably im wrong) this times it was much easier to cross, every Fruit we eat today was evolving trough Crossings and multiplicating in Size, somtimes in Taste seemingly without Problems ! It was mostly just Selection of the best onest i guess.
But the the wild Races was probably the hard to Imitate or exchanche Part of this Yuwels. Thats also why im asking at the head of the Tread, is there actually a wild/complete untouchd Cannabis Plant wich is a Yuwel , or has there to be somthing manmade in the Formula, and probably the manmade Part was still complex, since we probaly crossed things for 2000 years, comunicated strongly and trough that probably were still a big Part of it.
So knowing this better would probably help to determen if i should go Seedhunt for Landraces today, how they should look, cause they might not be pure(mostly pure) or not cause i also could rather use some further worked Manmade Seeds(still talking about Landrace Seeds) wich probably include Bad Traits but are overal stronger.


Cause the mixing up of many further worked Manmade Seeds could probably bring me back to the same like a Landrace. Same for mixing of only mostly pure/wild Strains. Wouldnt this work?


Trough that i could improve my say already little Yuwel even more.
So: could i go back trough the mixing of probably lower Poteny Strains, wheter quiet pure/wild Strains or further worked Manmade Strains (of the same Landrace) and recreate this Complexity of the Yuwels? So i would actually hypotetically loose Strongness but trough the (sheer) Number hypotetically gain mor Complexity , and fill the Gaps of a already ownel Little Yuwel ! And i dont mean just a to random Crosspolination, i mean still to select somehow . Cause if something is less Strong it wouldent automatically hold some more Complexity.


How to get back this Blankness/Complexity?
 

ahortator

Well-known member
Veteran
I think this market is subjected to the laws of supply and demand.

If people are willing to pay for such strains and know how to recognise them well to avoid being ripped-off and they reject hybrids. The ones still preserved in clossed circles will arise to the market.

But the problem is that most smokers nowadays are newbies used to 35% THC thick buds, who preffer to spend their lives couchlocked thinking they are smoking the best weed on Earth in all mankind history. And they think anyting else is crap.
 

romanoweed

Well-known member
If say im having this:


Wich is a insane Juwelish Vietnam, or was, but pretend i would own it and i wanna improve it cause there is something littlebit wrong in the Genes, i could feel it, could i probably use many of this:


picture.php




wich is Vietnam hemp but probably Blank/wild enough to REALLY bring in Health to the genes


Or would i better use this:

picture.php



"Honey B, Barneys "Wich is also a Vietnam (im only speaking in this Post of Vietnams)but more developed. Its not so strong but also not weak like Ditchweed, principially in the middle, but i dont see so much of an uglieness in it (probably you see it diffrent, but pretend..) does i better not cross the Limit of uglieness and use multiple Plants inside this Specification, and get a better Yuwel in the end


Or can i use also use Things like this:

picture.php



wich is a Vietnam that is little more strong but also has a Little Little more Ugliness than the "Honey B, Barneys" but there might be something like Absorption and Reflection when crossing multiple Aperances/Examples of a Landrace ?
 
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romanoweed

Well-known member
If say im having this:
picture.php

https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=77762&pictureid=1873519


Wich is a insane Juwelish Vietnam, or was, but pretend i would own it and i wanna improve it cause there is something littlebit wrong in the Genes, i could feel it, could i probably use many of this:
picture.php

wich is Vietnam hemp but probably Blank/wild enough to REALLY bring in Health to the genes


Or would i better use this:
picture.php
"Honey B, Barneys "Wich is also a Vietnam (im only speaking in this Post of Vietnams)but more developed. Its not so strong but also not weak like Ditchweed, principially in the middle, but i dont see so much of an uglieness in it (probably you see it diffrent, but pretend..) does i better not cross the Limit of uglieness and use multiple Plants inside this Specification, and get a better Yuwel in the end


Or can i use also use Things like this:
picture.php
"Hoa Bac, Reeferman" wich is a Vietnam that is little more strong but also has a Little Little more Ugliness than the "Honey B, Barneys" but there might be something like Absorption and Reflection when crossing multiple Aperances/Examples of a Landrace ?
 

romanoweed

Well-known member
So the "Hoa Bac, Reeferman" has actually probably the same amount of "Uglieness" like the yuwelish Plant, so why crossing this two?, Cause ther might be something like Absorption and Reflecting (meaning the Uglienesses arent on the same Place/same Traits so therfore could Absorb each other)
 

CannaZen

Well-known member
That hemp will slice thc/cbd allele frequency spectrum equally. Meaning you have to select based on the extremes over the time for preference.
 

Som 2

Active member
The thing that is exasperating to me is that commercial breeders who have access to old lines frequently aren't releasing them in their uncrossed form. So you get things like Jamaican Lambsbread x Hashplant. I would rather just be able to buy the Lambsbread and the Hashplant separately and make the cross myself if I want it, but that doesn't seem to be where the seed market is at. I worry that the practice of releasing everything as a cross, and crossing polyhybrids with polyhybrids is narrowing the phenotypic bandwidth of cannabis over time. For my self, I have a bunch of old seeds, but collectively if we don't make an effort to preserve the old narrow leaf sativas and fat leaf indicas in uncrossed form they are going to be lost in a sea of hybrids. The time to do it is now, because they do still exist.
 
I for one am all for preserving the old strains and landraces. You dont always want to drink 160 proof alcohol so why would you want to smoke the crack of cannabis all the time?

There needs to be a way to go back as well
 

Calgrow

Member
People preserve strains that are good if it is not around it probably wasn't that good. People always look back with rose glasses.
 

CannaZen

Well-known member
Well its hard to select based on quadrupedal quad dimension Landraces are great genetic baselines of desired traits you can always go back to.
 
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CannaZen

Well-known member
Well its hard to select based on quadrupedal quad dimension Landraces are great genetic baselines of desired traits you can always go back to.


Actually i think they are more than that. Heirlooms are an amazing source of wealth. A Landrace is a healthy spectrum of plants from a particular locale, Pure not in the sense of an IBL it gives a whole new fresh perspective.
 

Som 2

Active member
People preserve strains that are good if it is not around it probably wasn't that good. People always look back with rose glasses.
With cannabis I don't think it is that simple. For decades governments were (and mostly still are) trying to wipe out the plant. Most of what has been preserved in North America and Europe have been strains that perform well for commercial growers indoors under artificial lights. That means that growers and breeders intensively bred indicas and indica leaning hybrids and largely ignored tropical sativas. From what I grew in the '80s and early '90s I would say that land race indicas and land race sativas produced high potency individuals at similar frequency but modern strains lean heavily to the indica side. Even "sativas" like Jack Herer and C99 look like 50/50 hybrids when compared to an '80s Mexican or Thai. What this means is that the old, uncrossed sativa lines face a very real risk of disappearing. In many cases they are only being held by one or two growers who grow it for personal use because they like the smoke. If that grower gets popped the line is usually gone for good. With good breeding and grown under tropical sun these lines produce cannabis that is every bit as good or better than modern indoor hybrids but due to the legal situation they represent less than 5% of the genetics that are currently available.
 

Satyros

Member
I am not 100% sure if Kazakhstan is Eden, but it's pretty close.


The oldest business model I know of consists of hash transport along a Silk Road branch heading down to India. At that point, hash was accepted as currency, and you could even pay taxes with it.


I don't know if the area really produces "grail plants", but I think it remains mostly wild, semi-cultivated or un-hybridized. At the same time, I doubt that "we" will get much of it. Mostly anywhere "we" go is plundered, and everything original replaced with substitutes. Usually after a process of colonialization or something like a "Vietnam War".


Efforts to preserve original cultures, or horticulture, are mostly obscure minorities, some lone professor or rich retired person who then has little interest in contributing to the outside world.


It's tricky, but I agree with the sentiment of "give me the landraces and let me make my own crosses", but no, on an industrial scale, this can't keep up with indoor hybrids. Maybe in the future, if giant greenhouses or outdoor grows are permitted in the mostly no-native-cannabis regions, it could be done. All I can do is look at tobacco fields down the street and imagine well...what if this patch was pure Mayan something, and that one was Thai, I think it could be done, and then maybe podunk town U. S. A. would sell "real" Thai back to the Asians since their native patches are now mostly mixed.


Instead, I have one thing someone claims to be a landrace, and what do I do, immediately trash the males. With some more tolerance, that would be different. Cannabis is about the only plant I can get to grow properly. The potential is there, but as long as it is treated as "something different"--which it appears to be in the legal states--it will keep holding the short end of the stick.
 

romanoweed

Well-known member
to Satyros- that means you would replicate the Landrace in an other Place abandoned from external Polllen. Does i understand you right?
So, what would you doo then? Get some of the purest Landraceseeds from Origin, do an open Pollination with all after making the Enviroment Neutral so that the Plants can become a more uniform Race, like you do with positive inbreeding?


But there are two Problems i believe: 1: what are our Goals, is it recreate a PURE Landrace, to after we have her, improove modern LandraceStrains or completly Recreate the modern LandraceStrains(domesticated Yuwels) after? or is the Goal more to go Back into the Pure Direction, and look from then on every Time where to go(learning by dooing), meaning to also stop where our not pure yet Race has profited 100 Procent and lost all Problems 100 Prozent .
Means also, can you imagine it what it would look like if we could go Forward(backward) into a richer Race from not quiet pure Seeds?
Or Problem 2: if you go for Recreating just the Pure Landrace , how would you do it, cause positive Imreeding of quiet pure Landraces is not gonna do that,or am i wrong? (it would PROBABLY become more pure like an actual Landrace, but you never would know if you have some empty Holes, something missing...)


Thats why i think i would go from quiet pure, but at the same Time quiet domesticated yuwelish Seeds so i can see the Spectrum and same time dont have bad Traits, if i would wanna recreate an extremly perfect yuwelish Strain one single Time. And i would probly do the Selection by Hand and eye, thats the way i can imagine that cause i think if you ever use new Plants to Cross(as Source), i think breeding would be much more intuitive than 2Strain- Breading. without Tons of Calculations(even im not against Mathematics).
And if i want to recreate a perfect yuwelish Strain forever(Centuries, Milleniums), i would probably also doe Selection by Hand and Eye, but first try to create the PUREST Race first from QUIET Pure Landraces, and then go on from this Race the whole Way to the perfect Yuwelish Plants. Just maintain both Stages(and all between) all the Time as Seeds to progressivly recreate them.
Just dreaming a bit
 

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