New (North) Indian strains?

[Happy Times]

So I saw a bunch of stuff that looked like new offerings from Ace (Maybe I just don’t check the Ace website that often), looked like a lot of varieties based on North Indian genetics. It’s interesting to see so many sativas from northern mountainous regions. Couldn’t help but wonder if this is a region that Ace has recently travelled to or made local contacts from that lead to these offerings?

And seeing the variety of North Indian genetics made me wonder - would south India have different strains? Or basically similar?

Keep up the good work Ace!!!

 

[dubi]

Hi Happy Times,

Thanks for your interest on the Indian landrace strains we have recently started to offer from Indian Landrace Exchange and Khalifa Genetics.

I commented about it previously in the ' ACE Seeds 2020 - 15th anniversary' thread here in the sticky area of this room:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=370667

India is huge, with many different climates and cultures, and with a deep ancestral cannabis culture, so there are many many different interesting landraces there, in Nepal too, but curiously Indian and Nepalese genetics are not very present in western commercial marijuana genepool, and since ACE Seeds works mainly on the preservation of landraces and on the breeding with them, i felt it was of vital importance to start to offer more Indian genetics to growers from all around the world, so hopefully these great genetics are preserved in other parts of the world and introduced into new breeding projects to develop new strains with novel traits coming from different genetics.

Irrazinig and Indian Landrace Exchange team are doing an amazing job on documenting (in a way that it has never done before, at least publicly) and collecting Indian landraces directly from local farmers in their native places, where these landraces have been cultivated for dozens or hundreds of years. ILE are Indians so they can access to the most remote areas of the country and establish one on one relationships with the local farmers to collect seeds and to document the extremely wide and interesting genetic diversity of Indian subcontinent, in a way that a western or foreigner will never will be able to do (due to lenguage, culture and racial affinity, etc ...). So the Indian landrace seeds we offer from ILE are P1 seeds: collected directly from Indian farmers.

On the other hand, Khalifa Genetics works a bit like ACE, refining and taming the pure landraces by selecting the most interesting plants regarding terpenes, cannabinoids, effects ... selecting plants with better indoor adaptability or selecting the ones that perform better in other outdoor latitudes and climates different from the places of origin of the landraces, eliminating hermies and weak plants, etc .... overall adapting them to modern cannabis growing standards. So the Indian seeds bred by Khalifa Genetics are P2, P3, etc ....

South Indian landraces are quite different than the ones from the North. South India has an extreme tropical climate and the area is famous for its very long flowering ganja (bred and grown for the flower) sativa landraces. North Indian landraces are grown in subtropical latitudes, but many of them at altitude in the mountains, so the climates in the North are completely different and with very differenciated seasons. Many highland North Indian landraces are grown for hash production.

So, we currently offer at ACE Seeds website:

South Indians:

Kerala Gold: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/keralagold.html

Kerala Chellakutti: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/khalifa-genetics/keralachellakuttiseeds.html

Sheelawathi: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/sheelawathi.html

North Indians:

Kalimpong: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/kalimpongregularseeds.html

Kullu: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/khalifa-genetics/kulluregularseeds.html

North Indian Red Stem: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/northindianredstemregularseeds.html

Parvati Tosh: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/toshvalley.html

Rasol: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/khalifa-genetics/rasolregularseeds.html

Urgam Valley: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/urgamvalley.html

Wailing Valley: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/wailingvalley.html

and even a few ones from Kashmir which are extremely rare:

Kashmir Baramulla Valley: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/kashmirbarramullavalley.html

Kashmir Jhelum Basin Neelum Valley: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/kashmirjhelumbasin.html

Kashmir Lolab Valley: https://www.aceseeds.org/en/brands/indian-landrace-exchange/kashmirlolabvalley.html

And eventually, ACE Seeds website will be offering more and more landraces from India and nearby countries.

I did a trip alone around South India and Sri Lanka in 2018, mainly for holidays and to rest, but i also managed to get seeds from a very interesting and powerful ganja variety from a contact nearby Galle, in Sri Lanka. I sent me back the seeds to Spain by mail and they arrived in perfect conditions so i will explore them when the right time comes, but now ACE is focused in germinating first older landraces in our collection before they are no longer viable.

Hope the info helps. Some pics of my Sri Lanka trip

 

[farmerlion]

Beautiful vacation dubi, while these beautiful genetics won't flower properly where I live. It's a pure joy to watch another grower bring them through flower.
Peace. farmerlion

 

[Gandalb]

I'll buy some seeds of Kullu. I like the description on the website.