Hybrids found by the police in the Parvati valley!

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India...of-marijuana-in-Himachal/Article1-733313.aspx

Cops trying to seize control of one of Himachal Pradesh's top drug producing regions found new hybrid marijuana plants in remote forest of Malana village in Kullu district. Cops in remote forestland in Parvati valley came across hybrid hemp plants during campaign launched by the state police to destroy cannabis cultivation across the state.

"These plants are smaller in size and have more seeds than other hemp plants that grow in wild" Suprintendent of Police (Narcotics) Dr Vinod Kumar Dhawan told Hindustan Times. "Plants have been genetically improved. It appears so that new strain of hemp had been developed after thorough research and analyses", added Dhawan.

Hemp is traditionally used by villagers to prepare rope and shoes. The hybrid plants found have broader leaves and high content resins that are used for extracting charas.

Discovery of hybrid plants have sent anti-narcotic agencies into tizzy making them believe that drug mafia had scattered seeds of hybrid hemp plants to extract high yield of charas to sell at exorbitant prices in the international market as well in key tourist spots in India, particularly in Goa. To market the local charas, drug peddlers have created their own brands - like black widow Skunk balls, AK-47.

Malana cream -name given to charas extracted from hemp in the forest land of Malana village still remains the most famous. "I cannot say whether it is hybrid hemp but certainly these plants are different" says Superintendent of Police, Kullu, Abhishekh Dhullar, who himself has led the cannabis destruction operation in Malana Village.

Hippies when made this forest lands their transit home in the mid-70s, introduced drug culture in Kullu valley. Drug culture in the valley changed the trend forcing many locals to abandon traditional fruit growing and take up lucrative cannabis cultivation.

Anti- narcotic agencies are struggling to curb the expanding chars trade in the valley that have now drawn peddlers from Nepal. The state police have jointly launched a massive campaign to destroy cannabis. For the first time cases have been registered against at least 20 person under the NDPS act after cops and revenue officials detected cannabis growing in private lands. Further to make cannabis destruction campaign more effective state government allocated Rs. 1 crore under MNREGA for cannabis destruction. Till last month cannabis had been destroyed on 54,000 bighas of forest land across the state.

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It seems that the dutch and modern hybrids are polluting and arriving even to this remote regions of cannabis diversity... maybe Arjan and his Strain Hunters passed around Parvati lately too! Not many regions will remain with the time unless we reeducate people and try to keep hybrids at home!

If this continues, all the world areas will suffer what happened in the past in Jamaica, Thailand, Mexico, Colombia...

As Sam Skunkman said:

do not take hybrids to regions of traditional cannabis biodiversity

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Hi Mustafunk

I remembered this news from La Cominera in Colombia.

http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/actualidad/articulo-marihuana-precio-de-coca

I agree with you. The drug smugglers, law enforcement along the Strain Raiders are a great treat for the Cannabis biodiversity:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=192004

They are visiting all the traditional cannabis growing zones spreading their bloody hybrids and polluting landraces. I don't know why they do it. Perhaps they want to be the only seedbank with the last pure unhybridized landraces.

Hemp is traditionally used by villagers to prepare rope and shoes. The hybrid plants found have broader leaves and high content resins that are used for extracting charas.

Hippies when made this forest lands their transit home in the mid-70s, introduced drug culture in Kullu valley. Drug culture in the valley changed the trend forcing many locals to abandon traditional fruit growing and take up lucrative cannabis cultivation.

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This is at least very funny. The government and mass media pretend make us to believe that psychoactive ganja growing in Parvati is something new and introduced by foreigners. LOL

What BULLSHIT!!!!!! I was there in the seventies and believe me there was plenty of hash and charas in the Parvati District and the Malana area. Sure there has been introductions of some hybreds but not enough to hurt the crops at all. Hash is and always will be part of the culture of the people of that area. Jon 54

I have a close friend who stays in Parvati, he maintains that the WW and Skunk have been there for years already.. More than a decade? The genepool is already different.

Emotionally I find it really sad that this area has been contaminated.I love diversity as a matter of principle.
Rationally I know that,given a large enough population, the plants will evolve with the selection criteria of their habitat,i.e back to their landrace form.
Geneomes aren't written in stone,especially not in an organism that completes it's reproductive cycle in less then a year. This all hinges on there not being some pathogen that the hybrids have no resistance against,but if the hybridization has gone on for a decade or more without issue,I suspect it has already gone past that critical point.

my 0.2 USD.

Very sad news...

maryjaneismyfre said:

I have a close friend who stays in Parvati, he maintains that the WW and Skunk have been there for years already.. More than a decade? The genepool is already different.

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I heard that 2 from a guy who lived there for more than 20 years.Only high in the mountains you can find the traditional varieties, but hybrids in the lower parts of the area.

Keep on growing

..........another reason to save traditional landrace seeds

I don't know if that's such a horribly bad thing, there are 10000s more wild plants so much more pollen, hybrids will probably flower later too so everything's already pollinated by the wild plants.
Also even if the genes get mixed up the environment will make the most suitable genes survive. IMO if you plant white widow in jamaica after 10 years it will pretty much be a jamaican sativa. After all cannabis is all the same familly, the ancestors were all the same. Difference in varieties are due to difference in environment and climate, nature selecting the most suitable genes(the most suitable plants simply produce more progeny), and humans selecting the best drug genes thereof.
If White Widow stays the same White Widow after 10 years it means its genes are better.
Or that local drugfarmers just aren't as succesful in breeding as western breeders who have controlled indoor environment, clones and massive selections to find the best plants...
I thought all drugstrains were created by man, as cannabis grown naturally without selections would just revert back to low thc hemp.

I mean it's sad that original strains, bred for hundreds of years by local farmers in the same environment selecting the same way, steadily improving or maintaining their quality are getting mangled with other genes but with time and energy, using the same location(or artificial environment) and selecting in the same way you could reproduce those strains.
You could go as far as say that the original strains are changing anyhow because of global warming and pollution etc

Just some mental rambling and my 2 cents...

I'm going to stir the pot here and say that it is because man has taken this plant and planted it in every corner of the globe and cared and loved for the plant and made sure that some survived and because during this it has been exposed to every kind of pest and every kind harsh condition the environment has thrown at it and some have always somehow survived..sorry, it is because of this that it is our most 'medicinal plant' we know of, in terms of how diverse the range of protective terpenes is that it can produce potentially from within its genome or with selective breeding.

There is no other plant in nature that can produce the range of anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-acarid and insect repelling terpenes that cannabis can. This is not even exploring the cannabanoid terpenes. I think it is positive in the long run to introduce good genes from other corners of the globe as novel terpenes and chemistry will come out and we as well as the growers stand to benefit. The landrace cannabis was only introduced there by man anyway at some point in history and I think after many generations natural selection takes care of things with weak pest and rot prone lines dying out. Ive seen AMAZING things come out of native fields once F5 and later generations are reached after introduction of foreign genetics. I think what is important is that ruderalis genetics and autoflowerers are not introduced as well as hermaphrodite prone genetics. Also I have seen shocking dope come out of areas that used to be known for good weed a few years after introduction of dutch genetics so what is also important is that varied genetic pools are introduced and especially hybrids with stable landraces and elite hybrids because of the benefit for all. I have seen and heard of rural poor changing their fortunes with a yearly crop becoming a quarterly crop with different resultant hybrids strain lines settling out to distinct different flowering times in the year once pressured with the climate and other factors allowing for a more constant supply of much more valuable medicine to market for them. Pest and mold resistance can be introduced as well if smart introductions are made.

my 2 cents..

I hate to rain on the parade but any hash I tried from Kulu or Parvati valley including fabled malana cream have really stupid effect to them, boring and plain with a lowish ceiling. Even true high grade malana cream which is really like a chewing gum is a delight to inhale but the type of high is.. well, just boring, like if you take benzos of some type. Israeli people though seems to like this type of stone a lot and smoke huge quantities daily to the point of becoming vegetables. That being said personally I don't see anything special to be preserved from these areas. One local seller I met in Leh kinda reflecting my feelings said he himself as well preferred afghani or pakistani to any manali/parvati hash.

Remember it's just my experience and IMHO, no offense intended for a native cannabis genepool.

That's bad news indeed, but nothing news alas. I remember, when reading articles before my very first trip there in 2002, there already were instaces of foreign hybrids being grown in Malana and Parvati.

Also, some of the patches I have seen in Kuthla same year looked too homogenous to be native genetics.

What BULLSHIT!!!!!! I was there in the seventies and believe me there was plenty of hash and charas in the Parvati District and the Malana area. Sure there has been introductions of some hybreds but not enough to hurt the crops at all. Hash is and always will be part of the culture of the people of that area.

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Of course, but the problem is rather from which kind of plant they get their charas from. If I want some hash made from AK-47, I can gro the plant and do it myself. But if I want some fine parvati jungli, I still an try to grow the plants, but certainly won't get the result I would have in Parvati.
IF too much foreign genetics are introduced, at some point it will affect to local genepool.
Look at what's happening in Morocco, they are making more & more of hash from foreing plants rather than working at bettering their local kif strains.

Or that local drugfarmers just aren't as succesful in breeding as western breeders who have controlled indoor environment, clones and massive selections to find the best plants...
I thought all drugstrains were created by man, as cannabis grown naturally without selections would just revert back to low thc hemp.

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Well, with generations of experiences and litterally MILLIONS of plants in the wild to select from, the local farmers are at least as much as successfull as the western ones.
And when correctly selected, the jungli genetics can yield an end product of a way higher quality than cultivated plants. Last time I was in Naggar, one of my local buddies gave me seeds, which he told me he had received from his Malana shepperds friends who had selected seeds from wild plants to refresh the genepool of their crop.

Hmm, Sam also told me once that drugstrains were created by man. I humbly think it is completely erroneous.
That would mean that cannabis use is younger than agriculture itself, which I think is highly doubtable. The human first learned to recognize the valuable plants, and when gricultural knowledge & technology showed up, then started the selection & reproduction work. Who knows, cannabis itself might have played a part into the appearance of agriculture.

There is no other plant in nature that can produce the range of anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-acarid and insect repelling terpenes that cannabis can. This is not even exploring the cannabanoid terpenes. I think it is positive in the long run to introduce good genes from other corners of the globe as novel terpenes and chemistry will come out and we as well as the growers stand to benefit. The landrace cannabis was only introduced there by man anyway at some point in history and I think after many generations natural selection takes care of things with weak pest and rot prone lines dying out. Ive seen AMAZING things come out of native fields once F5 and later generations are reached after introduction of foreign genetics. I think what is important is that ruderalis genetics and autoflowerers are not introduced as well as hermaphrodite prone genetics. Also I have seen shocking dope come out of areas that used to be known for good weed a few years after introduction of dutch genetics so what is also important is that varied genetic pools are introduced and especially hybrids with stable landraces and elite hybrids because of the benefit for all. I have seen and heard of rural poor changing their fortunes with a yearly crop becoming a quarterly crop with different resultant hybrids strain lines settling out to distinct different flowering times in the year once pressured with the climate and other factors allowing for a more constant supply of much more valuable medicine to market for them. Pest and mold resistance can be introduced as well if smart introductions are made.

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It might proove true in a legal frame, but I think that because of the illegal nature of the plant, which makes it nearly impossible to relly study, such as for instance mapping the terpen profile of different varieties around the world through indept studies of both wild, cultivated and western commercial strains. But there's not. So when introducing new genetics, one just don't know what he's doing. What if some very specific terpens (or combinations) for instance would be produced by some particular strain which can be found only in a handfull of valleys and then come foreign commercial ones ?
We don't know yet enough about the plant to play that kind of game I think.

But still, there's some room for mistake I think, as the diversity of jungli genepool overthere is just amazing. But not sure this can last, for when I read about all this forest land that have been cleared of the plant, probably a lot of it was jungli which is were the biggest loss is.

I hate to rain on the parade but any hash I tried from Kulu or Parvati valley including fabled malana cream have really stupid effect to them, boring and plain with a lowish ceiling. Even true high grade malana cream which is really like a chewing gum is a delight to inhale but the type of high is.. well, just boring, like if you take benzos of some type. Israeli people though seems to like this type of stone a lot and smoke huge quantities daily to the point of becoming vegetables. That being said personally I don't see anything special to be preserved from these areas. One local seller I met in Leh kinda reflecting my feelings said he himself as well preferred afghani or pakistani to any manali/parvati hash.

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I have to, partly, agree with you. When overthere, I usually stay away from cream products, especially that from Malana, which I usually find boring indeed. Once I scored some regular Malana hand-rubbed charas, with bits of leaves, and it was top-notch material, better than any Malana cream I've sampled so far.
Once in Parvati I had the opportunity to smoke some cream that excellent, a wonderful lemony flavour and strong spacey high. I have very fond memories also from a jungli charas, made by an old man who was the last to know which plants to select in the wild, was I told, and it was indeed amazing. Strong apple flavour and some of the strongest high I remember about, with shrooms-like rushes.
There's definitely some boring stuff around there, but exceptionnal ones can be found as well.


Irie !

greenhouse saving the planet ............

I smoked some skunk-affi-local hybrid from a swiss grower in Manali many moons ago and many more on every trip i go to but it is by most off the times just smaller fields.

the hole perfection off charas making and growing off plants was driven by
westerns 15 years ago u could go to the next vally Banjar vally and u couldent find any good stuff except fore where 1 dutch man lived with a indian fam, there u could get next heaven like quality he is not there any more and so is the smoke.

But local pepol in Himachal Pradesh are very conservative and they really stick to there practies and most off the time it is just worked lines they also have most things like flavor but the high is ver mellow and that is why many choose to add some power outside from

Bom shiva

Please like sams says, do not take hybrids to regions of traditional cannabis biodiversity.
What make years to evolve in a particular place, with his own caracteristics, can be destruct in one generation by foreign genetics.
The genes are always here but mix with other genetics and never be the same.
The baldheads have always strange ideas, no...
Please, use your intelligence, don't do things that you thinks are good but in fact are really not.

Over 99% of species that have ever been are now extinct.
Bit of perspective.

Anyone who tells anyone else
What they can and can't grow
Is making themself busy.

That's putting it politely.

If you want to preserve a strain
and you think that bossing other people around is the way to do it,
You should have a word with yourself.

How would you react if some foreign clungewafter accused you of destroying the "gene pool" and insisted that they knew best what should be grown where you live?

It is unwise to pollute the old geographically isolated gene pools. It can never be undone. It's much like those brilliant retards that decided it was a great idea to breed African bees with European ones in the new world to "improve" them.

Now about half the Western Hemisphere is overrun with killer bees thanks to their short sighted greed. (They wanted the bees to make more honey, instead they are just better at stinging people to death.)

Sure you can let fire ants loose in some tropical region you live in that doesn't have them because you personally think they look pretty, but you just condemned everyone in a 500 mile radius to have deal with them for the rest of time, not to mention the destruction to whatever local insect life and animal life is there.

People tend to be very short sighted when it comes to contaminating natural genetics with invasive ones from half a planet away. You simply can never undo it once it is done.

Hatter, fear of change is based entirely on your personal view of how things should stay.

Tell you what, why don't you make a big list of what belongs where?
Because "that'll really show all the retards", won't it?
Imagine how self-satisfied you'll feel when you've written it all down
and have tangible reasons to ban international travel, tectonic plate movement, etc.

You could build giant flamethrowers to incinerate any foreign species, and give lectures in colleges about how "everything must stay exactly as you like or [you'll] have a big tantrum".

Edit: and just imagine the fun of arguing with mustafunk and samskunkman about whose list is correct. Christ.

Well there is change and change.Keeping heirloom varieties alive is keeping diversity alive.The more polluting these landraces with the western genetics the more the risk you have that an entire species collapse in the near future by some kind of disease.See what happens right now with the Arabica coffeebean in South America.

As long there is no preservation for heirloom cannabis varieties we have to be care full.

Keep on growing

Why must outbreeding be 'pollution'?

Someone once said that they understood why people want to believe that the sky is falling.
I don't understand this mentality.
If you could explain to me why outbreeding is pollution and how a landrace is destroyed by outbreeding, I'd like to try to understand that because it's clearly a widely-held belief.

Also what makes you think that genetic isolation protects against disease?
Sure there are chances for retroviral transmission but what about the influx of disease resistance genes/traits?
Do you think that Inuit people were nearly wiped out by 'flu because some of them had kids with Westerners? That their genetic isolation should have protected them?

Finally, "as long as there's no preservation for heirloom cannabis..."
Where do you get this notion from? Do you really think that is the case? Really?
Only from where I'm standing it looks as though cannabis is perhaps the most preserved collection of subspecies with the most private collections held around the world.
Just because you struggle to find the same product in Acapulco as 200 years ago does not mean that Acapulco ganja genetics are not well-preserved in skunk#1 lines.

I think anyone who talks about 'polluting' or 'destroying' 'the gene pool' is seriously misled.
If you look at the genetics of flowering plants you find multiple copies of ancestral genomes spread intra and inter chromosomally.
There's no such thing as a 'pure landrace' beyond a general phenotype similarity.