Questions for Sam the Skunkman on Hindu Kush Indicas

[Ras Pablo]

Almost ready!

Jah Man!! Really frosty and rock bud! But will be better see the complet estructure of the plant the leafs to!! These original skunk is afhani predominance isn't it Sam? so...what afghan do you use to create this Skunk if we could know iit.... hehe. Excuse me If I ask you so much and excuse my english!!


Thank's a lot Sam

 

[Limeygreen]

He used the Mazar, it should be in this thread somewhere I believe.

 

[Bluebeard]

Sam, I don't wish to take the thread anymore off topic than I have already, but I do owe a clarification to statements already made. When I described males as smaller, it was a reference to robustness, but not height per se. At least from what I have seen, cannabis males do tend to be the more petit sex although often tend to possess greater height at an equal number of weeks before flowering has initiated. Of course since males tend to flower with shorter nights than females, the light cycle play a huge role in their comparative size. My point was however, that just as with females, male populations have variability in size, and selecting based on vigor ahead of potency is not the best route, not that they were mutually exclusive, just that when you do select on vigor, population size must be increased to find a male of the same potency.

Selecting resinous males in and of itself, doesn't necesarily produce any improvement, just as selecting a female which is unusually potent from a parental population doesn't always produce any improvement. A mediocre plant from a consistently phenomenal population will almost always have better combining abilities than a phenomenal plant from a consistently mediocre population. I liken it to Elite females which stand out from the population, but tend to have poor combining abilities. Heavy resin producing males also have poor combining abilities, if they come from populations which fail to consistently produce the trait. But, when applied to other selection criteria, fixing the trait of heavy resin production into the male population produces substantial improvement in the female offspring in both incrossing and outcrossing, not just directly from the trait being fixed, but also because the glandular phenotype is now visible. I have yet to see the trait fixed into 100% of males, but have managed to bring the trait up to approximately 75% of the males into 3 unique populations over the course of 3-5 generations using seed runs ranging from 400-1000 per generation. Not all of these males were smoked, just as you hadn't GC tested every male. As this frequency of resinous males increases, so does the subsequent population, and immense improvements has been observed.

I cannot say for sure what cannabinoids I am selecting for. I breed for subjective effects, and was always under the assumption that there were only minor variations in cannabinoid ratios among the populations I have been working with in these particular projects. I felt that overall cannabinoid concentrations combined with variations in monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, non-terpene hydrocarbons, esters, aromatic compounds, organic sulfides, etc were mostly the cause in perceived differences but I really didn't know either way.

 

[Ras Pablo]

He used the Mazar, it should be in this thread somewhere I believe.

Hahaha it's true..excuse me !! I read it week ago..
Thank's Limey

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Bluebeard,
I agree that females have more biomass.
I to have seen very resinous males but to be honest I never followed up with any R&D. I also have seen females that had so much resin I could not believe it, almost as much as Ice or White Widow, except they had almost zero THC.

So you are saying that using resious males give much more resinous females? Makes sense but I don't know if it is the best method to achieve your goals.
What I mean is that Skunk#1 is only 16% THC yet it is reported subjectively to be much stronger, the reason is from all the non-Cannabinoids you mentioned. You need a bunch of THC but what is more important is to be sure what you like is in there and nothing you don't like. And it is not so easy. Goodluck.
-SamS

 

[dkmonk]

"Even aside from that, as much as I hate to admit it, all but maybe two or three western cannabis breeder's male selection techniques are in many cases no better than random pollination. Their breeding practices are almost solely based on female selection, and ineffective and frequently destructive male selection techniques" - bluebeard

You said this in another thread so i was wondering why you would think a more resinous male would be better then a regular male of the same plant, according to what you said wouldn't the offspring be better if you crossed just the regular ones I'm just trying to figure out what you mean because i am now confused.....

 

[Bluebeard]

Sam, what is your opinion on using antibodies for determining THC concentrations, in your experience is it cost effective, if GC is available but not on premises, and only accessible on a pay per analysis basis? I don't plan on using antibodies for anything other than THC concentrations.

DKM, you kinda lost me. What do you mean by "regular plant" and the "same plant" ? I'm really not trying to be rude, I just don't understand what you mean. If you mean cuttings, then I don't believe there is any variation between two cuts of the same plant regardless of expressed phenotype,unless there is some sort of exposure to mutagen or possibly some sort of weird epigenetic thing going on.

If you're talking about resinous males as opposed to nonresinous males from the same strain, then maybe, but I don't believe in following any single selection criteria resinous males or otherwise, resinous males are just a tool to give you a part of the picture, resin production is an important part of the picture, but as Sam had just said before resin does not guarantee potency, and a male shouldnt be assumed as potent just because it is resinous, but it should be considered resinous, since it is, lol.

 

[dkmonk]

I was basically asking would it make a difference if you took the the best male and bred it w/ the best female or if you took the average male and bread it w/ the best female. Sorry about not being clear I lack on the techinacal terms for things and am just trying to learn the best i can.

 

[Dignan]

maybe we should write a book about Sam
~again, thanks a lot for your time skunkman

If Sam won't, someone needs to.

Great stories and knowledge. Thanks Sam, and all the other fine contributors to this thread.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Bluebeard,
I have not used antibodies for analysis from what I understand they are fine for determining presence I am not so sure about actual %'s being found. They do antibody analysis and I think %'s with blood samples though. And that works for sure.

-SamS

 

[charlie garcia]

Always found amount of resins to be firstly just a quantitative trait but not necessarely qualitative at all. Present breeding marketing likes plants to shine a lot but in my short experience not always found a direct relation and many lines I did in the past could have had not such spectacular resins but results instead could have been so good. Sure you can have lots of resins... but only important thing is if they are of quality. Good and many sounds nice combo

So many mistakes with males Often a box of surprises. There are also reactives to THC presence (police use them) to compare with other males but dont think myself THC is the only trait to look for and other traits have to be observed. Trial/error and sometimes knowing your lines u work with can help.

best

 

[Guest]

Hi Sam

I just received some Sensi Hindu Kush, Afghani #1, and Black Domina. I also have some Deep Chunk and some OG/Pure Kush. I was going to use these strains for personal stash breeding mostly, thinking they might be stable to use for breeding with Bubblegum's, which I enjoy very much.

I was just wondering if you had any thoughts or experience with these strains? Or should I not waste my time? Can we find some really decent pheno's from Sensi Seeds? I have heard mixed results. I was thinking about using these Sensi males on some killer Bubblegum females.

 

[justagrower]

Mazar, but then crossed with a Columbian, then selfed, then the hybrid crossed with Acapulco Gold to make it a bit earlier.
But to be honest in the same seed batch from Afghanistan you will find many phenos, remember they may have thousands of females that the seeds came from, as well as thousands of males hitting every one of the females, so that is a lot of possible combos.....


-SamS

British_Hempire,
"By selfed do you mean you made feminised Mazar x Colombian seeds then crossed one of these females to an Acapulco male?"

No one made feminized seeds until after 1990, I selfed the MazarXColombian hybrids to other MazarXColombian hybrids. This was in the early 70's.

-SamS

Hi Sam ,

i v read these posts a few times over and still not 100% sure what you mean by selfed . could i get away with saying (Mazar X Columbian F2) x Acapulco Gold = Sk.1 ? or were the other Mazar x Columbian hybrids from different generations / parents .


sorry if this is off topic , feel free to delete if it is but these pics are off the Sk1 Sensi seeds offer . quite a lot of variation in leaf shape and growth rate / pattern . from 14/16 to germ there wasn t 2 that were identical . whatever they ve done to this strain , i m sure it wasn t the direction you intended Sam . do you think it has been crossed with something or just heavily selected for the Mazar side . the pics show the extremes of the sizes of them at 4 weeks veg , the smaller , compact plant is a male , the taller a female . didn t get to flower em so no report on the smoke.

 

[joaquin386]

He meant (Mazar x Colombian) x (Mazar x Colombian) and the result (Mazar x Colombian)square x Acapulco gold.

 

[Bluebeard]

From what I understand, you can apply the sample to a solution of antibodies and then measure the radioactivity in the precipitate, or you can apply a sample to a microplate treated with antibodies, and use a data plot calibrated to a GC. Both methods appear to be quite accurate, according to Paolo Ranalli, if done properly, you will get test results which are in between 95-105% the result achieved when the same sample is placed in a GC, the lower the concentration the less accurate. For example, if you were to test a male flower on a hemp plant, you probably won't get extremely accurate results, but if you test a female flower on a drug strain, the results should be quite accurate.

DKM, I agree with what charlie just said, there really is a whole slew of criteria that don't mean much individually, but when combined can mean a lot, such as a plant that when smoked feels like it is potent and of quality, produces lots of resin, tests for high THC, and produces good offspring is more desirable than just a plant which produces a ton of resin.

If one were to take the most vigorous male and female from a population and cross them, the offspring probably would be less potent than two plants chosen at random from the same population, but there is an issue of randomness and luck. The male selections I have made with high vigor being placed as an important criteria, tend to produce offspring which dont test as well, as their less vigorous counterparts. I cant say for sure one way or the other, just what I have noticed time and time again.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

He meant (Mazar x Colombian) x (Mazar x Colombian) and the result (Mazar x Colombian)square x Acapulco gold.

Almost correct, (Colombian x Mazar) x (Mazar x Colombian) and the result (Colombian/MazarXMazar/Colombian)square x Acapulco gold.

-SamS

 

[justagrower]

thanks for clarifying Sam .

 

[Hashmasta-Kut]

To tell the truth I don't want to write anything longer then short posts. And there is no chance I will bring out an old RKS anytime soon, it is old and uninteresting to me and I only work on what is close to my heart. If RKS was the best I can't help but wonder why no one has a clone of one, the RKS was around for years as seeds after clones were introduced in the late 70's? Then it would be easy to STS the lady and get pure RKS, not even real breeding work......

No disrespect to any of them I am a firm believer in different smokes for different folks, but they need to solve their own supply needs.

Hashmasta-Kut,
Maybe the people you know, but not the people I know, they prefer the sweet skunk#1 maybe 3 or 4 to one.



-SamS

hey Sam good day and all that. my foolish elders didnt know to keep mothers for many years, and over the 20 years or so the roadkiller we had declined in smell and vigor characteristics greatly thru unwise frequent recloning methods. With the advent of good butane oil, and my introduction of it to the few skunk growers i knew, they stopped growing the skunk once they found that oil of other strains was worth considering. it was really slow growing and hard to get good yields. when we all just smoked weed and hash, we really needed the skunk to get the full proper effect, every person i know who ever got to smoke the strain agreed it was superior to pretty much anything they tried.

i have the breeder steve 94 sweet skunk cut and love it too, but i just had the great fortune, imo of getting roadkillskunk seeds(late room selfed type), from the 90's, and one has even grown for me, out of 75 i tried. it was triploid but just switched up to normalcy. cant wait to taste her ~(';')~

 

[ngakpa]

Bluebeard,
"You have to remember that this region is the original home of the species, both indica and sativa, and close to all of the cannabis genome was in this region at one point in time"

I don't agree but what the hell, I am pretty sure Indicas were developed from Southern China varieties in the last five hundred years, then moved to Afghanistan.
The reason I like the more Indica Indica varieties is because the Indicas are cultivated for hash, the sativas just grow wild in Afghanistan and are mostly not even used, but they do contaminate the Indicas with Sativa genes, so you often see Indica/Sativa hybrids in seeds imported from Afghanistan. A good Indica to the farmers was one that made a lot of hash, on the flowers or leaves no difference, and the wild Sativas don't make as much hash.
If you saw fields in Afghanistan in the North from the early 1970's they were much more Indica looking because Cannabis was legal and proper seed production of pure Indicas was easier to accomplish and easier to obtain.
With 30 years of war the country and the genepool have been through hell.
Anyway what you seem to think of as normal Indica, is to me a mongrel of Indica and wild Sativas, while the exaggerated ones are the real Indica blood.
And yes I have many times grew out lots of seeds from Afghanistan and found Sativa or Indica/Sativa looking plants, but I have also grown out batches of seeds directly from Afghanistan that only gave classic Indicas. But to be honest every year they seem to be worse and maybe more Sativa.
Most seeds collected the last 10-20 years were from down south Afghanistan, while the best was always up in the north by Mazar & Balkh. Cannabis is a traditional up in the north with a lot of experienced growers and hash makers, as well as seed growers.

-SamS

hiya Sam -

I had always imagined most of the info about Afghanistan in RC Clarke's book came from you, but reading that it seems you have different opinions...

btw I have been told of certain bazaars in mountainous Hindu Kush Southeastern Afghanistan which still have sources of devilishly potent squat broad-leafed varieties - there is a mountainous province not far from Kabul which these days has a reputation for the strongest charas in Afghanistan

also, I have seen plenty of recent pics of the shorter indicas growing around Balkh area... this is pure speculation, but I think the short varieties could have come there with government instituted population movements of Pashtuns up to the north a few decades back....

the parallel suggestion that I'm making with that is that the monster tall strains in Balkh are Uzbeki and Turkic drug cultivars of a gene pool centred further North into Central Asia... I've never read all the Vavilov stuff, but people's references seem to support that

btw do you know who told RC Clarke that charas in Chitral is produced by hand-rubbing? ... by far the wrongest thing I saw in Hashish!...

combined with the way Hashish! misses out the whole Karakoram region, and also seems to dismiss Kashmiri charas as largely rubbish, it makes me wonder about the quality of some of Sifu Clarke's sources...

Kashmiri commerical ("M**a Valley") can actually be pretty good these days, and top end local consumption Kashmiri still has a reputation as some of the Himalaya's finest (wish I could say that I had tried the latter one myself though...)

and yeah my very limited experience of Asia is increasingly leading me to incline towards your theory of Yunnan as the origin of the species... found some really bizarre "Green Triangle" 'indica' plants a while back

btw I am told there are ethnic groups in Yunnan who have been making hand-rubbed charas traditionally since way back... maybe RCC would be able to give us authoritative info about that (?)

 

[Londinium]

combined with the way Hashish! misses out the whole Karakoram region, and also seems to dismiss Kashmiri charas as largely rubbish, it makes me wonder about the quality of some of Sifu Clarke's sources...

Kashmiri commerical ("M**a Valley") can actually be pretty good these days, and top end local consumption Kashmiri still has a reputation as some of the Himalaya's finest (wish I could say that I had tried the latter one myself though...)

Hello ngakpa, I just read your post and found it very interesting reading,Its great to learn something new about species origins,very Informative!
As far as Kashmiri hash goes,I have had 4 or 5 great examples of Kashmiri this century(one from Dec'07 that I have a little nugget of left) and they were all consistently the same high quality each time with age/freshness being the only small difference each time. They were all brought back by the same regular visitor to the area and were definately some very good charas IMHO,nicer than other Indian hash I have tried over the same time period.
I am no hashish expert but I have had the pleasure of smoking lots of types since I started smoking in the 80's and found Kashmiri to be a top 3 contender internationally.....just an opinion. So I also found Mr.Clarkes comments quite strange as well but each to their own. The Kashmiri I have enjoyed is dark but not Nepali black and more tacky than sticky but is still quite caramel inside when cut cleanly.It has an exspansive but smooth smoke and tastes rather nice,a bit like fermented fruit of some kind. The smell when rubbed in your hand is quite sweet and citrus-like. Anyway thats my two pennies worth,Good luck in your endeavours! JBo
Kashmiri is bottm left: