Vavilov, Afghan Sativas, and Uzbeki Giants

[Reign of Terror]

no prob man

 

[Reign of Terror]

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.

very true, a lot of the pieces of the puzzle is coming together man...this info is great.

Reign


...you know...i find it so damn sad that nobody is even really considereing this information useful...pretty sad if you ask me

 

[zamalito]

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.

 

[guineapig]

Man i got so excited when i saw the title of this thread had the name "Vavilov"!!!!!!

I am very interested in Vavilov and his explorations into this region....
Although he is just mentioned as a footnote in RCC's MJ Botany, i feel more research
should be done into his original report. The region which he explored is the absolute
epicenter of Cannabis Hybridization. I believe this is because of 2 factors: the different climates and altitudes which are in this region and the fact that it lies
smack dab in the middle of the ancient silk road. Therefore, strains were probably
carried from Chinese merchants, Arab sailors, African tradespeople, as well as the
indigenous Uzbek and Tajik tribes.....

Remember that during Ancient times it was absolutely essential to carry a supply of
Cannabis seeds with you in case you were shipwrecked or somehow stranded in a
different land for a season or two......people had to have a source of rope, clothes,
and medicine (among other beneficial uses of the Cannabis plant), so people carried
Cannabis seeds wherever they went.....in fact, scientists believe that Cannabis
first arrived in Central America from a group of shipwrecked sailors in possibly
the Michoacan region.....but this is getting off topic....

So Vavilov enters this Cradle of Cannabis Civilization and he finds an amazing
variety of Cannabis plants....one of the varieties he found he names "Kefiristanica"
because there used to be a region called "Kefiristan" which was populated by
people who trace their lineage to Alexander the Great.....Alexander the Great was
known to supply his soldiers with copious amounts of Cannabis to make them
march without feeling as much pain and under his rule the Cannabis plant thrived....
Unfortunately the Kefirs are extinct today, but when Vavilov explored the region
he still found traces of this ancient culture......i hope to find more info about this....

Oh and i totally agree with you Zamalito that THC did not evolve as a defense against
arid conditions.....i too disagree with RCC on this point......personally i believe it
has all to do with herbivory deterrence/ attraction.....now it is true that the tip-top
sphere of the resin gland absorbs UV rays and acts as a natural sunscreen, but i
believe that this is a secondary effect and negligible at best.....the plant needed
the UV light because if you look at RCC's MJ Botany you will see that in an
experiment in the lab, Dr. Raphael Melchoulam converted a solution of CBN (in the
presence of atmospheric oxygen) to a 20% solution of THC acids of various isomers,
some of which have not ever been observed in nature.....therefore, i think the plant
needed a way to convert CBN to THC and the UV sphere helped it to capture all the
possible UV light like a perfect magnifying lens.....all light that hits a sphere is
concentrated directly into the center, prescisely upon all of the CBN acids which are
yearning to be converted into THC.....

Oh, one more thing......RC Clarke's Cannabinoid synthesis diagram has been
modified by recent discoveries in Cannabinoid Chemistry....CBN can be directly
converted into THC without passing through the precursor steps which MJ Botany
describes.....so don't be afraid to question RC Clarke, even though of course i
bow down to him because he is absolutely the man!!!

this thread rocks!!!!

-kind regards from the guineapig

 

[zamalito]

Thanks G-Piggie!! (Hope you don't mind the alteration of your name it has a nice ring to it) I wish the community spent more time reading Clarke and Mechoulam than Soma.

 

[Reign of Terror]

exactly...it like they dont give a fuck about true strains and landraces...all they want is some fake ass sour d...sickening

 

[guineapig]

Yes Reign of Terror.....

To put it a bit more politely, it seems like most people are looking at the flash in the
pan when they really should be concerned with the big picture.....elite clones (or
different breeders' versions of elite clones) are nice and all, but they do not address
the real Cannabis Call-to-arms which is the preservation of true strains and land-races......

But really, given the present Cannabis Inquisition which is funded by governments and
controlled with the bullet and the gun, what can the average person do? Probably
most people feel helpless, so they may as well grow the best that they can and
not bother with a land-race strain which might have a long flowering period or
smaller buds or whatever.......

At least we are discussing the issue here......maybe we can get a better picture of
Cannabis from an ecological and evolutionary point of view.....truly it is one of the
most important strains on the planet and i thank all the seed-hoarders around the
world who are saving batches of land-race seeds.....and breeders such as Reeferman
who take the time to preserve the land-races while simultaneously creating true and
vigorous f-1 hybrids.....(and yes i know Reef does have a version of Sour D but don't
hate on him for it.....it's just what the market demands at this time....)

-kind regards from the guineapig wheek! wheek!

 

[zamalito]

For sharing his breederstock instead of treating it like a cash cow reeferman deserves some serious respect. The sad thing is with most breeders hording their breeder stock and selling only unbreedable polyhybrids that can't be used to produce more stock many of the rockstar type dutch breeders are acting just like monsanto or other gmo seed co.'s and I feel that once capitalism gets its grips into something there's no getting rid of it.

 

[zamalito]

I also thought that cannabis seed would be the one thing I'd definitely take if stranded on an island but didn't know that about the sailors. I forgot where the kafirstanica reference in mj botany could you clue me in? Also do you have any references for more indepth of what vavilov wrote directly?

 

[SativaBelieva]

Another Sativa fan here... and after recognizing some sativa in HashPlant#13... I got interested in the legend of Afghani Sativa HashPlants... and the history of the region... and I'd like to read more on Vavilov, Alexander and Kafiristan...

Zamalito, you're a great story teller... thank you and the other contributors here for sharing your insights!

 

[zamalito]

I'm glad you bumped this thread. Its one of my favorites. I have a few links to translations and summaries to vavliov's research I will try to dig up today.

 

[Farmer John]

I wish the community spent more time reading Clarke and Mechoulam than Soma.

True that, very interesting talk going on here, great thread!!! people should really start to look at the possibilities that landrace varieties offer, where nature has done the breeding part, are actually much more valuable if thinking about the future, anyway, most of the modern stuff that has been in, out, and roundbred x 1000 with just a handful of genetics in the background, cant just think of anything good happening in there..imagine, growing out a field of some ancient inbred indicas or sativas, then collecting only the plants that are most impressive...wow, what would be found there? I guess something else than NL, lol.

 

[SativaBelieva]

Vavilov's Cannabis Kafiristanica... is regarded a wild Indica variaty... see email interview with Dr. Ernest Small by Robert C. Clarke...

As a result of our botanical and chemical studies, we established a formal botanical classification system for Cannabis, that has been very widely adopted. We recognize only one species - C. sativa L., and as described in my 2-volume book, The Species Problem in Cannabis, Science and Semantics, this was critical to settling a forensic debate over the existence of "legal species" of marihuana. Drug forms were placed in subspecies indica while non-drug forms were placed in subspecies sativa. Within subspecies indica, all domesticated forms were placed in one variety, var. indica, and the wild plants were put in a second variety, kafiristanica; and similarly within subspecies sativa the domesticate was recognized as var. sativa and the wild phase as var. spontanea. Since the cultigens intergrade with each other and with widespread weedy forms, all classifications of C. sativa are necessarily inexact. One element of this classification has proven to have a huge impact - the way we separated the "non-drug" subspecies sativa from the "drug" subspecies indica on the basis of a dividing line of 0.3% THC, dry weight basis, in the leaves and flowering parts of the plant.

http://mojo.calyx.net/~olsen/HEMP/IHA/jiha6208.html

So... Sativas are non-drug subspecies?... and the Kafiristanica is classified as drug subspecies as a wild Indica!

 

[exactlywatt]

i'm glad this got bumped too! hell of a thread zamilto!! the most interesting and informative one i've read in a long while...

i've got some landrace beans from laos/cambodia and now i'm really getting restless waiting until i can get em' growing.

 

[zamalito]

Thanks for the info sb. I thought vavilov listed two wild indica varieties kafiristanica and afghanica. Kafiristanica having a larger spheroid darker unmottled seed even more well adapted to an extremely arid climate and afghanica which was a lighter smaller ovoid typical afghan seed. My theory is that since these two varieties were wild and more adapted to an arid climate vavilov considered them separate from the cultivated hash plants . However I believe that what vavilov considered to be sativa by our modern definition were actually very tall indicas that had a long history of cultivation in the slightly more mild turkestan. The occasional long periods of extreme drought in afghanistan eventually wiped out the taller less hardy cultivated indicas (by our definition sativas by vavilov's definition). Soon after vavilov left afghanistan immigration from turkestan slowed down so thus the source of replenishing the afghan gene pool with the larger less hardy domesticated stock and the wild plants tended to penetrate and conquer the gene pool. I think that if vavilov saw some of the tall large wide branched indicas of uzbekistan and tajikistan he would've also labeled them as sativas.

 

[zamalito]

Vavilov was using the linnaeus criteria for indica classification. The linnaeus criteria is a height of less than 4.5 feet dense branches, conical shape, short nodes, coursely serrated wide leaves, and mottled seeds. The uzbek hash strains currently are 6- ft xmas tree shaped with medium node spacing and medium wide leaves. These could've even undergone hybridization with afghan genes during the 80's and could've been even taller and more narrow leafed before. Its hard to say but most central asian cannabis had undergone hybridization with afghans during this period including nepalese, chitral, north indian (kashmiri nepalese and chitrali hash plants were all fairly similar sativas in the 70s and in the 80's became hybrids with indicas and evetually indica dominant with there own character)

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

saludos zamalito, interesante informacion. gracias.

just a comment, but the sativa category for species as the only one seems to be considered without regarding the psychedelic effects of the different cannabis strains.
wouldn´t this be then an incomplete categorization? or is the whole indica = stone, sativa = vibrant, merely imagined?

peace.

 

[guineapig]

Well Paz it is true that indica = a narcotic stone while sativas = vibrant and energetic high.....this is a generalization which usually holds true......

But for these researchers and taxonomists who seek to categorize the Cannabis plant, the words "Indica" and "Sativa" have different meanings, each depending on which researcher is doing the investigation......for instance, "Sativa" for the Indian Hemp variety and "Indica" for the drug phenotype around the Pakistani region......The situation gets even more complex when the DNA researchers step into the scene and classify Cannabis according to whichever type of Mitochondrial DNA is in its cells....Then Cannabis becomes further divided into "Sativa," "Indica," and a new category "Cannabis Rasta".....Why the DNA researchers couldn't just find brand new names so as not to confuse us is beyond me......oh well....

gp

 

[zamalito]

Hey gpig long time no see. Paz I cannot help but wonder about the placebo effect with cannabis. With psychoactives especially when judging subtle differences we must always be aware of how powerful the placebo effect is. In a way Sasha shulgin has been spending his whole career studying the placebo effect. This is what got him into psychedelics. He told of a story where he once was given some orange juice by a dr that he thought was spiked with a sedative. He exhibited symptoms of having taken a very strong sedative. It turned out he wasn't given anything. This is Shulgin the man who has taken more psychedelics than any man on the planet couldn't tell the difference between a placebo and a strong sedative. If shulgin can think he's taken something when he hasn't taken anything at all certainly many of us can read a strain description saying a plant is energetic and feel energized after smoking it without the herb directly causing us to feel energetic. I don't care how experienced of a smoker you are it can happen to you. Speaking of psychedelics I believe they can ptovide a more objective means for determining a few of the characteristics of a plant especially ceiling and tolerance since only the very best quality herb can effect you when you're tripping.

 

[dubi]

Usually the wild plant is sativa.

Even in countries with long hash tradition like Pakistan and Afghanistan, the wild plant is mainly sativa,although this sativas are not very powerful.

The hash plant indicas are more related to human presence and growing culture. They are less fertile and more designed for big scale growing than sativas. It's hard to find an indica not related to human hash production. Some people says cannabis indica is a phenotype derived from cannabis sativa, that appeared after generations of man selections looking for resin production.

You can find some "wild indica populations" in Pakistan, China Yunnan, .... but i dont know if they escaped from human selected populations and became wild, or viceversa, the man took wild indica populations and domesticated them.