Vavilov, Afghan Sativas, and Uzbeki Giants

[Guest]

Do you have the whole paper or a link to it? The abstracts intriguing but I'd like to see the meat and potatoes.

You are a vibe collector :wink:

 

[poorwhitefarmer]

incredible thread!

 

[Dkgrower]

One of the things DJ short says about ruderalis is that its a pheno that's created when indica is bred for a northern climate and I agree with this. So ruderalis and indica are the same thing. This (morphology) I feel is the only true difference between indica and sativa. Indicas when feral in a northern climate become the ruderalis pheno of indica. Sativas when feral in a northern climate become weedy hemp. Sativas show a strong correlation between latitude and thc/cbd content and fiber production suitability. This is how a wild malawi specimen can be 10% thc (better than beasters) and most wild cannabis in the us and canada is ok for hemp production although that is what its descended from. Indicas on the other hand will retain their chemotype better until the climate gets cold enough to produce the ruderalis pheno which typically kills the thc content.

Here I dont agree or misinformed, wasent the ruderalis strain plants that spread from cultivated cannabis plants fore fiber production into the wild where they establish them selfs. And where those fields not Sativa´s when defined on morphology ?

I think that the reason why the ruderalis are autofloweering is that is spread out in a continental style climate like main land russian where the winter sets in september some places and have to reproduce in a short summer, so the plants had to find a way out of this dillema, and hence auto flowring also I have read that the seed´s have soem special wax that bugs eat so the seed´s fall´s off and that sould also be a pheno of the ruderalis.
That seems to me to be a trait that the plant devolpes in respons to the shorther summer period and not so much if it is a sativa or indica

Hey zamalito, love to see those original pic´s of cannabis plants lemarks got from his freind,

I find it funny when one rember that lemark is French and they always have a second take on definitons so no wonder that he on the basis of some plant material sendt to him from india that looked very differnt from what was growing in europa set up his own sub species,

have to smoke now but will come back, It is the second time i write this closed the window by mistake

 

[Dkgrower]

Bump am I complety wrong,

Cannabis sativa L. subsp. sativa var. spontanea or ruderalis

I still hope to see them photos

 

[Harry Gypsna]

great thread, really bloody great thread......

 

[zamalito]

Hey dkgrower! Sorry I just saw your post. I will try to get those pictures uploaded in the next 48 hrs.

I should've been more clear on what I was saying. I'm 100% certain that russian ruderalis wasn't bred by man to be autoflowering. I was referring to the ruderalis strains used by drug cultivators of america and western europe. I believe these are the product of intentionally breeding indica and indica dominant lines for early harvest. I believe that encoded in the dna of cannabis indica there exists an autoflowering phenotype that displays as a response to a very short growing season. I have personally seen indica seedlines bred for an increasingly short season not only develop autoflowering traits almostimmune to the effects of light cycle but also developed the traits of a complete loss of potency and requiring seed to be frozen for 6 months before more than a couple can germinate. All of these traits are asociated with the russian ruderalis. With all of the confusion of cannabis taxonomy. Whether the russian ruderalis is descended from indica or sativa really depends on one's definitions of indica and and sativa. Because of the similarities between russian ruderalis and the ruderalis pheno produced by cannabis from the hindu kush and himalayas bred for early finishing i believe the russian ruderalis is possibly either descended from cannabis of that region or shares a common ancestry with that region.

 

[medjool]

zamalito,

If you can please explain why do you need to freeze the seeds for six months before germination and why does that improve the success rate???

I just had a couple frozen seeds pop FINALLY but the non frozen ones, although older, are much happier to pop.

Maybe I need to germinate on the new moon??? I see lots of people I respect do so.......


mrs m

 

[zamalito]

Its a weird trait I've only seen twice that ocurred with true autoflowering seeds. Its a self preservation mechanism that occurs in many plant species acclimated to northern latitudes. It prevents seeds from germinating within the same season as they were created making them first underfo a winter before being capable of germinating. That's why it was so interesting to see this trait pop up in indica seeds after they'd been inbred to autoflower.

 

[medjool]

omg.......... that totally makes sense !!!!

 

[Daytripper]

Its a self preservation mechanism that occurs in many plant species acclimated to northern latitudes. It prevents seeds from germinating within the same season as they were created making them first underfo a winter before being capable of germinating.

Zamilito,ever heard of the plant hormone ABA- abscisic acid? One of its functions is to prevent seed germination until a certain amount of time passes. ABA breaks down easy

I know some seeds need to be frozen though I wasn't aware that any cannabis seeds needed freezing.

 

[Rgd]

stratification

 

[Farmer John]

i dont know if some varieties really need the freezing but thats pretty much what happens here in Finland anyway, gonna let a crop of Lowryder go semilla loco this year means that I let them be, some open pollination, millions of seeds and then I hope some sprout in the spring, I've tried it with other strains and they seem to get a better start than any surrounding weeds for some reason lol...anyhoo, thats how hemp grows here in periphery, sprouts, grows, flowers, makes seeds, drops the seeds in the ground where they spend the winter and then again in springtime they start to grow, so should be pretty easy to make LR go wild here...

 

[Guest]

I have a friend in Moravia, Czech Republic, they have a massive wild population of ruderalis type cannabis there, but its more potent and taller than the Russian Ruderalis I've seen, but less potent that things like Top44 and Lowryder, so low potency for sure. That population is descended over centuries from Scythian cannabis planted by The Romans who used it for both fibre and intoxication. I tend to think that it's Iranian/Turkish strains (former area of Scythians) that has acclimatised to Central Europe. I reckon it's taller and more potent than Russian ruderalis as the climate is somewhat better in Moravia and less adaptation has been needed.

I have just found a pair of AF individuals among a batch of Purple Skunk x Mighty Mite, strangely they are both the Purple Skunk pheno, one male, one female, so I'm crossing them so I have seeds ready by the end of May to plant outdoors here in the UK. Having a strain that can be sowed in late May, will flower by the end of June and finish by the end of August is of much use to me for outdoors as it will avoid the mould problems of September and be flowering during the best weather in July and August. These two showed sex at 28 days and imemdiately began flowering. Interestingly, the shorter ones that I took to be the Mighty Mite phenos still haven't shown sex at 38 days. The male started dropping pollen at 35 days from seed under 24/0 of coolwhite fluoros, they AFed at the 7th or 8th node. I've moved the female under my 250w MH on 20/4. As soon as I harvest a plant and have space in my other cab I'll pop her under my 250w HPS on 12/12. I'm just praying she turns purple.

From what I've read, Mighty Mite came about when a Canadian outdoor grower noticed some of his plants finished by the end of August so he selected these and over many gens Mighty Mite was born. The AF genes in my hybrid must have come from the Mite but why these are also the tallest and most Skunk-like of the bunch is a mystery. These seeds came from a friend in Canada who has disappeared from the forums, so I can't ask him about them. I only had six and got 6 plants, two are female, one being non-AF by the looks of it, the thrtee others are all shorter and more compact, so I took them to be the MM phenos.

Mighty Mite

Indica.

Mighty Mite is a famous BC Indica strain from the Himalayas cultivated for 12 - 15 years here. 80-100% Indica, it has a bushy single cola. Dark green with a dank pine smell and nice potency.

Height 2.5'-3.5'

Flowering time: 7-8 wks

Yield 1/4 - 1 oz in a two gal pot

Harvest outdoor: Aug 15. April in south hemisphere.

From a Cannabis Culture article on Ruderalis:

BC's Mighty Mite

About this time, on British Columbia's Gulf islands, an outdoor grower was noticing that his October finishing strain always threw out a few plants that finished much earlier – by late July or early August. After several years of selections for this early flowering trait, the Mighty Mite strain was born.2 Mighty Mite effectively incorporated the auto-flowering trait, while retaining the habit and potency of its drug cultivar heritage.

For those in the know, Mighty Mite quickly became a popular outdoor strain for filling the traditional late summer drought in BC's pot market before the market was flooded with regular seasonal outdoor bud. Slowly, over the years, these genetics have spread further amongst underground pot growers and been used most successfully in hybridizations with more potent strains.

Aside from getting crops in before cops and other thieves can plunder them, these early plants have allowed growers to produce plants with much more commercial appeal than traditional Northern latitude outdoor marijuana.

Warm, dry summer weather with high light values allow buds to finish bright green and rock hard, making for better bag appeal. It is impossible to tell whether the many auto-flowering strains floating around all originated in the Mighty Mite family or are a result of many similar incidents, but it is certainly the most proven of all the auto-flowering strains. The fact that Mighty Mite is an inbred line and relatively true breeding for its auto-flowering trait would make it seem likely to have been a large contributor.

DJ Short has recently speculated that Ruderalis introductions into the drug cannabis gene pool likely came from repeated selections for early flowering traits from Indica based lines rather than actually being imported from Russia or surrounding countries (CC#39, Breeding Tips). Both of these scenarios are quite possible. General consensus is that all drug, hemp and feral strains of cannabis originated from the same source gene pool, therefore, Indica varieties would also have these auto-flower genes present somewhere in their genetic makeup.

http://cannabisculture.com/articles/3033.html

 

[zamalito]

I will try to see where exactly and dig up the quote but I think there's a section in mel frank's mj grower's insiders guide that mentions ruderalis seed showing slow and sporadic germination unless frozen. From my experience with seeds that need to be frozen when you try to germ them you'll see about 2-5% germinate within a week then another 2-5% the next week then 2-5% the next week and so on. I'm thinking that if you can keep them in germination for 3-4 months without damping off you could get a decent germination rate without freezing but it's easier to freeze them.

 

[medjool]

Finally some seeds are popping
I think this is why



up to one hundred ten in the day, the heater is still on at night...

 

[bongoman]

The talk about ruderalis is interesting.

I ran 2 crops of Lowryder #2 outdoors here this summer (sthn hemisphere) - the first batch was a seed crop and the second batch was a sinse crop from those seeds.

Now I literally plucked the seeds for the second crop straight from the hanging buds of the first crop and straight into paper towels and got a 100% germ rate.

I was fully expecting that not to work and that I would need to chill the seeds due to the ancestry of Lowrider #2 (a stable cross of Lowrider #1 and Santa Maria).

But no, these seeds were ready to pop straight away.

 

[supahdupah]

intresting thread!

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

I'm by no means saying that potency isn't genetic. I'm saying that the genetic morphology of a pure sativa attaches genes together in such a way that the genes that allow a plant to become fully acclimated and feral in a higher latitude are attached to the genes for low thc/cbd content and the genes that allow a plant to become fully acclimated and feral in low latitudes are attached to genes that promote high thc/cbd ratio. Whereas with pure indica it is less so until you get to a high enough latitude to cause autoflowering then the autoflowering trait is somewhat attached to low thc/cbd ratio. And this morphology i feel is the only true difference between indica and sativa.

" I must admit that my knowledge is somewhat dated and anecdotal but if you take feral hemp and allowed it to go feral in malawi it would almost always develop into a drug strain having a high thc/cbd content."

This is how drug cannabis was spread all over the equator. It was originally weedy hemp for european explorers.

"However the low latitude environment selects plants automatically for poor fiber production and good drug production."

I always read that all cannabis even the weakest ruderalis or feral hemp produces thc to some extent. I don't think its quite as simple as having either all thc all cbd or 50/50 due to one or two genes being present. I'm by no means a genetic scientist but the standard burbank description of how genetics work isn't satisfactory in that it doesn't explain how phenotypes form or how morphology works.

"If you look thc/cbd ratios of feral and landrace sativas you'll see that the the it is inversely proportional to the latitude ."

DNA has an emergent behavior. I personally think that at least speaking anecdotally there is a strong correlation between latitude and the genetic chemotype. I understand and definitely believe there is a way to separate the gene to produce a high thc/cbd ratio and still allow it to grow feral at higher latitudes especially among indica. But among wild pure sativa populations it would be an extremely difficult thing to breed that morphology out of it so if it did go feral the chemotype wouldn't be affected be latitude. Again a lot of my reference was written before 96 and all of it before 2000 so I could be wrong. We could just agree to disagree.

Environment does not select for high THC, man does. Latitude has nothing to do with THC levels, mans selection for THC does, be it in Afghanistan, S Africa, the Equator, or Canada. That and the plants needs to finish in the local environment. If a low THC plant was allowed to grow feral in Malwai it will not become higher THC unless it is polinated by local plants with higher THC levels. It is not the environment that makes the changes in THC it is man or other plants pollen that is higher in THC.

-SamS

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

The work done by E. Small in 1978 (all the good cannabis research was done before reagan the rest is done on behalf of gmo seed companies and big pharm) says that indicas don't change as much genetically when they become adapted to a new environment. The generally accepted source of genetics for most the equatorial sativas in america and the carribean is hemp. And I don't mean to make light of the work done by early breeders but environment played a HUGE role.

"I don't think any of you would argue that if you grew 100 skunk 1 plants and did complete open pollination it would lose ptency very quick over 3 or 4 generations at most. Now my wild malawi though hard to grow is more potent than 90% of the skunk 1 I've smoked and that's after centuries of open pollination."

Look at all of the many equatorial sativas from mexico thailand columbia grown and bred with many many years of open pollination and its still amazing. Many of the varieties we know to do came from seeded buds. At the same time none of you growers in the usa (not hawaii) and europe can maintain your strains w/out careful selection of male and female. There's a reason for this. If you were to take a durban that had been maintained with open pollination in s. Africa and grows easy in new england after several generations of open pollination in new england it will be much weaker than it ever was in S. Africa.

You are comparing apples and oranges. With the first you are assuming the wild Malawi was only wild and never grown or selected by man? I doubt it.
And sure you will lose potency if you grew 100 Skunk #1 plants and let them freely pollinate for 3-4 generations. But the exact same thing will happen if you grow 100 Malawi and let them pollinate freely, that and you will find a bunch of intersexed plants as Malawi has hermi problems when ever I have grown imported Malawi seeds.

-SamS

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Again I'm glad you guys find this interesting. Im glad you guys don't believe everything you read on the internet either and have doubts. But you guys should research or ask someone you respect to get their take on it. I'm going to soften my point just a little by saying that my wild malawis are a bit of a freak and that when I refer or "reefer" (bad pun)

"to a drug strain all I'm saying is that it has a thc content above 1.5 % and a cbd below .5 in the flowers which at its weakest isn't exactly killer herb but will get you high and can be bred into something more decent. another characteristic of a drug strain is that its unsuitable for fiber content. ALL EQUATORIAL SATIVA FERAL OR CULTIVATED MEETS THIS CRITERIA. In contrast feral northern varieties always have a thc below .3% and cbd above .5% which will not get you high but will give you a headache and has some suitability for fiber production."

Another way you can look at this is examine how with different strains how different phenos develop when grown under varying conditions. If something is grown under one set of conditions and a certain pheno doesn't show up of course natural selection will not be able to select for those traits that do not show up under those conditions. This is true no matter how healthy the plants are or how long they are left to flower. Anyone that's grown a variety (especially sativas) that is much different outside than it is inside has seen this. Many of the best outdoor sativas smell different taste different look different and provide a different high when groen outside. This is caused by varying growth conditions that can tell traits to be dominant or recessive. While stress can affect this its not the only factor even when perfectly healthy temperature light cycle light intensity altitude nutrient and soil conditions all can shape what phenos are displayed by the genetics. I would think if any of you have the ability to talk to djshort reeferman or rc clarke they'll tell you pretty close to what I just said. I feel like kind of a know-it-all wanker spending so much time arguing my point. I try very hard to be open to changing my opinion even on things that I feel strongly about. I welcome and appreciate anyone that can convince me that I'm wrong.

Not true at all, there are wild sativa strains med high in THC, like 2-3% that are used for hemp today. Skunk #1 has a high fiber content and is fine to use as a hemp fiber source. I also have Equatorial hemp strains that are very low in THC below .2% and have great fiber yields.
You also say that feral northern varieties will have THC below .3% and CBD above .5% I am wondering where the wild Sativas in Nepal and India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, much less S Africa fit into the picture they are all from the latitudes of upto 29-30, 36, 37, 38, 41, or 34 in S Africa, and they all have high THC populations.

-SamS