Seeds of Africa seedbank???

[egodeath]

hm...

hm...

then that's more than likely they are not sourced directly from the growing region and have been selected, landraces have tremendous variation from plant to plant.

(Heirloom) strains do not have tremendous variation from plant to plant.
(Heirloom) and "real" strains have a basic growth pattern that is the same except if you grow out every plant and dont select you will see variation in size and "strength" of the plants. the look of the leaves will be similar and there should be no great variation in a (stable) strain.
you can see this very easily in wild plants they do not have a great variation and you can easily see that a wild parsley strain for example is different from another one that comes from another region and is a own strain.
Strains can have a bit of variation in the plants in a typical range of course but not tremendous. But they can vary in size quite a bit if you dont select from seedling.

For example a strain is a strain when the plants started from seed basically start flowering at the same time, another indication is the shape of the leaves at a certain point in growth.
If plants of a strain do not flower at the same time or there is a great variation in flowering onset then it is no (true breeding or heirloom) strain.
If a plant has greatly varying leaf shapes it is no strain.

Hybrids ( a offspring of two true breeding strains) have very little variation in the F1 generation but then in F2 you can see the variation.

It is possible that the Seeds of Africa seed strains I am growing are Hybrids from two true breeding strains and will show it in F2, we will see, but at this time I suspect that they are true breeding strains as I dont believe that there are very many cannabis seed companies that have true breeding strains to create real F1 Hybrids like they are common in "normal" seed businesses and would use at least a few different ones in my three strains I have from SOA.
Another indication I have to say they are heirloom strains is that they have certain characteristics that I have found common in my (sadly very limited) experience with heirloom strains.
Cannabis is a plant species just like any other and there are rules that apply to characterizing strains and most strains in the cannabis "industry" and the seed business that I have come across in my over 20 year cannabis growing experience do not qualify as a strain and do not qualify as a Hybrid.
Most strains I have come across and I suspect not only me are a completely thrown together mess overprized and overhyped shit, a rip off, shit sold as gold for the price higher than gold and gullible persons hopping on the waggon of every self proclaimed guru who knows jack shit and parroting their lines not knowing what they are talking about.

Maybe my assurance that these are not Hybrids is a bit premature but I will see in the F2 at the latest and till then I proclaim that this company would not use two true breeding strains to create a new strain because they dont have the resources and the capacity for it, but that is just my view.

 

[egodeath]

to clarify further: what is called a "landrace" strain should also be stable because it would be selected over generations by humans and therefore a own heirloom strain. people have bred it over many years in the area therefore they should also be not much variation.
Variation is an indication of mixing together of different strains (two true breeding or Hybrid of two true breeding strains with another hybrid of 2 or one true breeding strains) without selection in a too short of "breeding" time.

 

[egodeath]

hm

hm

i was speaking from the looks of the plants they have on their website, as haven't bought ant pack...but i've been in africa more than once and have grown some seedstrains from there and from african seeds...and never seen buds as tight and fast as this, this is what makes me believe they're not the traditional heirloom sativa strains in my humble opinion...just look at this indoor zamal pictures posted in this thread and any zamal picture on the net....this is clearly a zamal hybrid to me...

could be that they are not true african strains, thats the problem in the cannabis seed business you never know what is true and what not, it is very frustrating and sad to see so much diversity and uniqueness destroyed out of reasons I can not comprehend

 

[burningfire]

I don't think you've grown landraces yet egodeath, you would know there's a lot more variation in nature than in a controlled grow room.. that's what ensures the survival of the landrace, having grown a lot of landraces there's a tremendous amount of variation.

I don't know if SOA is legit, I know the pictures on their site looks nothing like african strains, who knows, the strains might be legit.

 

[egodeath]

hmmmm...

hmmmm...

I don't think you've grown landraces yet egodeath, you would know there's a lot more variation in nature than in a controlled grow room.. that's what ensures the survival of the landrace, having grown a lot of landraces there's a tremendous amount of variation.

I don't know if SOA is legit, I know the pictures on their site looks nothing like african strains, who knows, the strains might be legit.

you are entitled to your opinion, but i still say that for me a "landrace" is a strain cultivated by humans over many generations and through that made into a strain.
maybe our definition of variation is different or a misunderstanding and has to be clarified. just for further clarification, if plants of the same strain have for example leaves at a certain growth level that differ extremely (variation is tremendous) for example 20 plants of a hundred have leaves that are what is called indica and maybe to further the variation, have double serrated edges on the leaves, and 80 out of a hundred have what is called sativa style leaves (thin) and only one time serrated edges (at a certain stage in growth and compared) then it is not a strain. not a landrace and not a "modern" strain.
heirloom strains can vary more than "modern" bred strains but they can not vary tremendously from plant to plant because it would then be no strain, landrace heirloom or hybrid. it would be a unidentifiable mix.
if plants grow wild in an area after time they stabilize and do not vary tremendously, if they do it is a sign that they have not been breeding together for long.
that does not say that these plants cant be nice, have a good high or whatever but they are not a strain or landrace.
there are definitions for plant breeding, heirlooms and tremendous variation does not qualify as a strain, landrace or heirloom.
nature can vary more than the lab but, if i may say so, if you would have looked have at nature better you would have seen that and understand what nature is and what strains are and what landraces are.

 

[egodeath]

you are entitled to your opinion, but i still say that for me a "landrace" is a strain cultivated by humans over many generations and through that made into a strain.
maybe our definition of variation is different or a misunderstanding and has to be clarified. just for further clarification, if plants of the same strain have for example leaves at a certain growth level that differ extremely (variation is tremendous) for example 20 plants of a hundred have leaves that are what is called indica and maybe to further the variation, have double serrated edges on the leaves, and 80 out of a hundred have what is called sativa style leaves (thin) and only one time serrated edges (at a certain stage in growth and compared) then it is not a strain. not a landrace and not a "modern" strain.
heirloom strains can vary more than "modern" bred strains but they can not vary tremendously from plant to plant because it would then be no strain, landrace heirloom or hybrid. it would be a unidentifiable mix.
if plants grow wild in an area after time they stabilize and do not vary tremendously, if they do it is a sign that they have not been breeding together for long.
that does not say that these plants cant be nice, have a good high or whatever but they are not a strain or landrace.
there are definitions for plant breeding, heirlooms and tremendous variation does not qualify as a strain, landrace or heirloom.
nature can vary more than the lab but, if i may say so, if you would have looked have at nature better you would have seen that and understand what nature is and what strains are and what landraces are.

and if i may so say also, maybe you have not been growing real landraces or you would not make such false statements

 

[egodeath]

and if i may so say also, maybe you have not been growing real landraces or you would not make such false statements

and to further clarify: www.upov.org

 

[egodeath]

http://www.upov.org/test_guidelines/en/fulltext_tgdocs.jsp?lang_code=EN&q=cannabis

guidelines for strains

 

[burningfire]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landrace tremendous might be a bit of a exaggeration but landraces survive because of that diversity

 

[egodeath]

whatever

whatever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landrace tremendous might be a bit of a exaggeration but landraces survive because of that diversity

well if the internets sayings so, then it must be truthsy

i forgot what the exact rule for a heirloom strain was because it has been a while since i worked for UPOV, but if i recall correctly then the allowed variation to call it heirloom (landrace) was 5 out of a hundred could be different, if the variation was bigger it was not viewed as an "landrace" or heirloom.
for modern strains it was 2 out of a hundred if i recall correctly.

and this makes sense, because "landrace" strains (which by definition has been used by humans : "a landrace is a dynamic population(s) of a cultivated plant that has historical origin, distinct identity and lacks formal crop improvement, as well as often being genetically diverse, locally adapted and associated with traditional farming systems’.") have to be predictable in the sense that the farmers could rely on specific strain traits such as flowering time or resistances, they would not use crops that can not be relied on at least in the overwhelming majority.

i will leave it at this.

 

[burningfire]

I'm sorry, I didn't know you were an expert on the subject..

in reality things are quite a bit different, I am speaking from experience with seeds collected in the field.

maybe they shouldn't be using the term landrace then.

I will leave it at this.

 

[thejact55]

Yo jay sus. Does this Zamal Reunion look anything like your Zamal Reunion?

When it started out the leaves were quite wide for a supposedly pure sativa but as time progressed the leaves became more narrow.

The growth structure does indeed have something African as well as Asian to it.
While it doesn't look as pure as the GN version it could be about 90 - 95% pure though. Only a smoke / DNA test could reveal its true identity.

View Image

View Image

View Image

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That's a perrty Zamal canibisso. I can't wait for winter so I can pop those beans.

 

[egodeath]

other way round

other way round

no, you got it the wrong way, you shouldn't call the plants you collected and used landrace, if they weren't really landraces but probably a mix of strains.
How can you know that the seeds you collected were not mixed a few years before?
If they were not (as defined by experts that have been working with landraces not only of cannabis but also other plants) "stable" or at least not tremendously different from each other or varying more than the defined rate, then they were not landraces or heirloom strains.
If 5 out of a hundred is too small a ratio (for you as an expert in the field) then put it to 10 out of a hundred.
You can also found a new International protection agency and create new rules and maybe even change the laws governing earth regarding plant breeding and proclaim that strains are strains even if the plants of the strain all look different.
Green Apples and red apples and yellow apples and orange apples and striped green apples and pear shaped apples all on one tree and it is a strain (or landrace) according to you.
If you say so, and now I will leave it at that again

I'm sorry, I didn't know you were an expert on the subject..

in reality things are quite a bit different, I am speaking from experience with seeds collected in the field.

maybe they shouldn't be using the term landrace then.

I will leave it at this.

 

[egodeath]

P.S. do you know why all these lies and misinformation about strains and phenotypes and landraces and strains can have different phenotypes that is good, no no really its totally normal that one plant looks like a haze and the other like an afghan thats normal for this strain, diversity is good for the breeding, no really, and yes of course its totally normal for 10 seeds of an unstable (but still normal) strain to cost 50 Dollars or a hundred, everything is fine, I am your friend just giving you what you want... BULL ?

Because its a big con, its called rationalization.
Of course the con artists wont say, man are are you fucking stupid, I just gave you 10 seeds for 100 bucks and its just a cross of different stuff I collected from the roadside (= not a landrace) or crossed a skunk with another skunk or some "polyhybrid" (what a joke that is; another word for "I dont know what the fuck i am doing but cant be honest about it), they cant say that, so they say no its normal all supposed to be that way. cannabis is such a special plant the laws of nature dont apply to it...
and please give me 100 bucks more because i am so special...

For example there are sellers of cannabis that sell real heirloom and landrace strains for 5 Euro for 300 seeds and they are just small hobby breeders.
compare that to unstable overpriced and overhyped shit from all the "good friend" seedbanks...

 

[burningfire]

if you look at landraces from the Himalayas you will see a lot more diversity because farmers use the plant for multiple purposes... even if they cultivate drug types there will be seed/fiber types grown nearby that will pollenate those plants. while it might be different in Africa, there is still more diversity than in normal crosses. Cultivation does not happen in a bubble.

I posted my doubts about SOA partly because of the pictures they use on their site and the tall tales they use to sell seeds.. I suspect they were crossed to something 'western'.

 

[Thule]

People tend to get offended when the authenticity of something they value is questioned, it also happens when it comes to strains

Looking for pure unaltered cannabis strains is very much like chasing the dragon, as of now we have no scientific methods to make sure what we have is pure. We can only grow out the seeds and compare to what we've seen before. I've come to trust my eyes and nose on that.

Can't say much about these SOA strains specifically, but I've grown a few African strains along the years, Malawi Gold, Ciskei, Ethiopian Highland.. None of them looked like what I would expect from a 100% pure sativa like Original Haze, all strains were however quite uniform or at least recognizable. I didn't see any western influnces (well maybe the ciskei) so if any WLD influences made it to Africa it was probably a long, long time ago. Don't forget that the northern part of the continent is effectively a part of the middle east. Moroccan and Egyptian strains are hashplants, they came from somewhere, were they stopped from entering tropical Africa by a force field?

The commercial grow ops have had access to western seeds from at least the 80's, perhaps later in parts of Africa, so the newer the seed source the bigger the likelyhood of contamination. Don't even think about finding pure sativas in South Africa, the old African Seeds stock Swazi from the late 90's was already hybridized when I tried them. Their Malawi seemed uniform and pure, so did Afropips, though I wouldn't be surprised if the variety had a hashplant ancestor somewhere in the past as it's level of dankness is quite formidable for a landrace. (That would in theory also explain how Ace managed to breed indica traits into theirs)

These SOA strains have been collected quite recently haven't they? When I first heard of them I did a search on the strains and was not overly impressed by their looks. The Zamal for example is clearly a hybrid. I'm sure there are good plants to be found but my quest is to find the pure ones and tbh I think my chances of finding what I'm looking for is better in the older African Seeds and Afropips stocks. Sorry if I offended anyone.

 

[egodeath]

if you look at landraces from the Himalayas you will see a lot more diversity because farmers use the plant for multiple purposes... even if they cultivate drug types there will be seed/fiber types grown nearby that will pollenate those plants. while it might be different in Africa, there is still more diversity than in normal crosses. Cultivation does not happen in a bubble.

I posted my doubts about SOA partly because of the pictures they use on their site and the tall tales they use to sell seeds.. I suspect they were crossed to something 'western'.

like i said, i am growing 3 strains from them Pondo, Mozambica and Coffee, I can only speak for them and I gave my impression I have of these 3 strains and said that I believe that they are heirloom and have no dutch modification ,with which i mostly mean skunk, in them as far as I can judge up to this point of time and growing stage.
Call me arrogant but I believe that my judgment in this matter is better than that of 90 % of people writing here because
a) I have worked as a employee of UPOV controlling, testing, growing, filling out forms, entering information of plant growth etc. into computers etc. and before was an apprentice at UPOV.
b) have experience as a private grower of heirloom plants other than cannabis and of cannabis for over 20 years
c) have experience as a professional employee of nurseries and the "real" seed business

through this work I can judge if a plant looks similar or different to another plant and i know what to look for.
In the case of the three strains from SOA my limited experience with the strains because of the limited number of plants I am growing (another problem with cannabis seed companies and the laughable ten or twelve seeds per pack which would be unthinkable if it werent illegal and a big con by big assholes) lets me maybe prematurely conclude that they are landraces as defined and generally accepted officially, because the variation is completely in the range for landraces.
It is possible that I am just lucky and had packs with just the right plants or it may be a real hybrid like defined as an offspring of two true breeding varieties. in both cases i will know someway down the road and it would not surprise me.
Nonetheless I can recommend those three strains because even if they are not real strains and I was just lucky, they are nice, smell good and grow very nicely.

I can only repeat what I already wrote several times now, that strains like in your case of the Himalaya crops are not landraces if they are grown together with other strains. A landrace strain is as defined distinct and unique and if it is crossed with other strains with other characteristics they mix to become an "new strain" which will in future become a landrace if cultivated together for long enough.

It is of course possible that pollination happens through chance but the distinct characteristics of a landrace strain should not be changed too much because it would then not be an identifiable strain anymore.
Heirloom strains not only in India but everywhere in the world not only in the case of Cannabis but also of other plants like tomatoes have been developed and bred for thousands of years and even if they were not bred in a bubble, they still had and have unique characteristics in each landrace strain and were always given on and used and can be like in the case of tomatoes for example be identified.
Another good example is corn where there exist thousands of heirloom (landrace) varieties which were bred each to its own uniqueness (even before 1492) although it is very difficult to isolate.
So it also depends on the people involved in the landrace cultivation and the breeding of landraces and if it is mostly stable or a cross of different strains always thrown together with each new idea somebody has or just out of disregard.
Especially in our time it is getting more and more difficult to breed landraces because of the introduction of new strains by "good friends", "civilized" people who only "want to help" and show the "indigenous" how to "do it right".
Through this also a tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom of how to use landraces and "live with the land" has been lost and also had an impact on landrace strains and their make up and stability.

 

[burningfire]

People tend to get offended when the authenticity of something they value is questioned, it also happens when it comes to strains

Looking for pure unaltered cannabis strains is very much like chasing the dragon, as of now we have no scientific methods to make sure what we have is pure. We can only grow out the seeds and compare to what we've seen before. I've come to trust my eyes and nose on that.

Can't say much about these SOA strains specifically, but I've grown a few African strains along the years, Malawi Gold, Ciskei, Ethiopian Highland.. None of them looked like what I would expect from a 100% pure sativa like Original Haze, all strains were however quite uniform or at least recognizable. I didn't see any western influnces (well maybe the ciskei) so if any WLD influences made it to Africa it was probably a long, long time ago. Don't forget that the northern part of the continent is effectively a part of the middle east. Moroccan and Egyptian strains are hashplants, they came from somewhere, were they stopped from entering tropical Africa by a force field?

The commercial grow ops have had access to western seeds from at least the 80's, perhaps later in parts of Africa, so the newer the seed source the bigger the likelyhood of contamination. Don't even think about finding pure sativas in South Africa, the old African Seeds stock Swazi from the late 90's was already hybridized when I tried them. Their Malawi seemed uniform and pure, so did Afropips, though I wouldn't be surprised if the variety had a hashplant ancestor somewhere in the past as it's level of dankness is quite formidable for a landrace. (That would in theory also explain how Ace managed to breed indica traits into theirs)

These SOA strains have been collected quite recently haven't they? When I first heard of them I did a search on the strains and was not overly impressed by their looks. The Zamal for example is clearly a hybrid. I'm sure there are good plants to be found but my quest is to find the pure ones and tbh I think my chances of finding what I'm looking for is better in the older African Seeds and Afropips stocks. Sorry if I offended anyone.

some of the african sats are actually quite short and fast, not exactly what you would expect from a pure sativa. I agree that they can be quite uniform because they grow for buds and not fiber or seeds.. but there will still be a lot of diversity in those plants.. and I agree with you about the zamal looking like an hybrid.

what happens in a lot of cases is they reproduce the seeds and limit the genetics that way.. I guess some people like that when plants are selected that way and others would rather have the genetic diversity available to them.

it's not uncommon for landraces to have tall and short phenotypes. that doesn't mean they aren't landraces. you're obviously not going to see a DC type plant next to a South Indian sativa in the same seedlot.. but I think that if all individuals you've grown smell and look the same then the reproduction was done with a very limited number of individuals.

we can agree to disagree on the subject, I just don't think SOA is very trustworthy.. they remind me of WOS with their tall tales.

 

[egodeath]

we can agree to disagree on the subject, I just don't think SOA is very trustworthy.. they remind me of WOS with their tall tales.[/quote]


I agree but thats not just SOA or WOS, and in the case of Zamal when I read different phenos and look at the picture the alarm bells go ringing.

Thats why it wouldnt surprise me if my strains turn out to be a mix also, but I doubt very much that its a mix with dutch seedbank stuff

 

[burningfire]

There has to be diversity in landraces for them to survive, I should not have used Tremendous to describe it as this is dependent on the cultivation, I believe cultivated strains in places where only drug types are grown will be more stable in phenotypic expression.

I don't know what they mixed their stuff with.. but they're selling stories, not seeds.