Hybrids found by the police in the Parvati valley!

hahahah "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.\

must be the new evil foreigners haha

I really struggle with this issue. On one hand, anyone would want to grow better crops to help feed their family. On the other, it would be a shame for cannabis to end up like Gros Michel, with the Cavendish banana being the only one to choose from at the store. And now there's a real risk of losing the the banana altogether.

I hope the Svalbard Global Seed Vault saves cannabis strains.

Here came the hybrids and our CHILOMBIANA, RIP, was lost.

Mustafunk said:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/Indi...of-marijuana-in-Himachal/Article1-733313.aspx



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:

Click to expand...

Landraces will dominate hybrids within 3 generations. Nothing to get one's nickers in a bunch about.

xet said:

Landraces will dominate hybrids within 3 generations. Nothing to get one's nickers in a bunch about.

Click to expand...

That only happens if the gene pool gets injected with foreign genetics once. If there's continued pollution in multiple areas the gene pool gets diluted, especially in continued selection through generations in the area the foreign genes were introduced. In the case of Morocco they are now only growing foreign genetics in most cases, there's very few areas of pure Moroccan landrace left.

At the moment there's still many areas in the Himalayas that aren't polluted and will continue to grow unadulterated landrace. If there's continued pollution then the areas famous for producing certain types of charas will have a different product to what the area is famous for.

Looking at this thread I get the vibe of outside westerners armchair dictating what would be best for a _______(lower, uneducated,primitive) “civilization” on the other side of the globe.

Why not save the hemp DNA in Iowa ? lol

Good cannabis plants evolve by selecting the best ones and growing them. People find hybrids better and they grow more of them.

Personally I love landraces, but many times that are not that awesome. In this day and age growers have gotten options and picked what they liked best.

Should growers not get options so ….? their region stays a genetic museum for armchair westerners ? Maybe “strain hunter” will put on an adventure hat and go there to make a promotional youtube ?

Not all landraces are awesome, specially if you try to grow them indoor. Also the most famous landraces have disappeared long ago, because they have been contaminated or simply replaced for hybrids because greedy narcos want a faster profit, and customers who didn't care about the quality or effects of the weed they smoke.

landrace hybrids adapt to their new environment over time and can produce some awesome stuff from my experience.

its not completely bad,

but it is unfortunate to lose anything

i dunno guys i've been in manali many times and the weed there, well, boring. it grows everywhere there. it kind of has that rather monodimensional type of effect, not really couchlock, not really uplifting, it gets you high-yes, but nothing exciting. i'm not voting for these genes to be polluted with some hybrids, it just plain ordinary herb from a smokers experience and it plain sucks yield-wise. and mind you i did wait and harvested it late october to get a test. locals though.. they start to rub plants as early as late august to make hash, basically as soon as plants grew visible flowers (3-4 weeks), so almost all hash you can buy in manali made from utterly immature plants. perhaps some one do allow them to mature but i am not aware of such indiividuals.

green404 said:

Looking at this thread I get the vibe of outside westerners armchair dictating what would be best for a _______(lower, uneducated,primitive) “civilization” on the other side of the globe.

Why not save the hemp DNA in Iowa ? lol

Good cannabis plants evolve by selecting the best ones and growing them. People find hybrids better and they grow more of them.

Personally I love landraces, but many times that are not that awesome. In this day and age growers have gotten options and picked what they liked best.

Should growers not get options so ….? their region stays a genetic museum for armchair westerners ? Maybe “strain hunter” will put on an adventure hat and go there to make a promotional youtube ?

Click to expand...

Truth.

If we were only allowed to grow strains native to our own lands, all of us in Northern Europe would be growing hemp.

Imho, growers /farmers should be able to grow/farm whatever strains they like- hybrid or not.
It is not anyone’s place to be world police, least of all us canna-folk who should despise oppression in any form

TychoMonolyth said:

I really struggle with this issue. On one hand, anyone would want to grow better crops to help feed their family. On the other, it would be a shame for cannabis to end up like Gros Michel, with the Cavendish banana being the only one to choose from at the store. And now there's a real risk of losing the the banana altogether.

I hope the Svalbard Global Seed Vault saves cannabis strains.

Click to expand...

Become your own Svalbard.

BTW: If bananas weren't $0.99 CDN a pound right now I would have bought some earlier.

I highly doubt there's enough westerners bringing in enough packs of Greenhouse Seeds special feminized mixes to water down the genetics of the million wild plants in the Paravati Valley. It's a drop in the bucket.
What's happening is that the growers in the region aren't stupid. Growing ganja is big money. Why would they use wild hemp plants used for fiber to make hashish when they could bring in drug varieties from other parts of India? I'm sure they could get thousands of hybrid seeds from a few pounds of ganja from the city. Water it and fertilize it instead of using the scraggy naturally grown plants and you can compete with the other operators.
There's probably no end of people willing to bankroll a grow and supply good hybrid seeds. Hopefully enough of the profit ends up in the hands of the locals to benefit their communities.
I'm sure the wild plants are still there, still growing and getting used by villagers for hemp. They're feral plants and adapted to the region. My guess is that they'd make breeding a drug strain impossible, so many males dumping the pollen would water down the gene pool after a couple generations. Probably have to buy new seeds every year.
Let's look at the messenger here, the anti-drug narcs. Of course they're going to make it out to be a disaster. It's an excuse to hire more cops, shake down more locals, and drive the price up a bit.
I'll also point out this is not the same as Morocco. Wild hemp plants don't grow there. No history of hemp use, too dry for feral plants. Cannabis had always been grown for kif or hashish. The Himalayas are covered in hemp plants with a long history of cultivation. Moroccan strains were crappy and useless for seeds or fiber but that's a different point..
Because of the cop's report everyone is reacting like this is a brand new thing, 2018 someone decided to grow some drug plants and ruin the Paravati Valley. Drug plants from elsewhere have been cultivated in huge numbers since the 1980s. If the local hemp plants were going to be ruined it would have happened a long time ago..

I'm not a fan of boys ghs, far from it, but it's certainly not their colorful seeds to do damage, rather it is the smuggling organizations that push these western strains, everywhere,from Thailand to Mexico,a farmer does not care much about landraces, he grows cannabis to feed his family, does not become rich, so if he finds strains that produce more or give a product that is worth more, he will certainly abandon the old cultivars...

A little example:the cannabis of the Mediterranean area (Balkans, Albania, South Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco) all derive from fiber hemp,with a production of medium resin as well as power,the market evolves, it demands more,which is why over the years they have abandoned these "reds" to switch to the Afghan and Dutch skunk varieties ...

Damnit I didn't check the date this thread is from 2012!
I did a bit of digging and the Indian Hemp Report from the 1890s mentions drug varieties cultivated in fields alongside the feral hemp. Cultivation of drug varieties in India is ancient but there's always been wild feral hemp growing as well. I think there's something about the conditions that favor feral plants losing their potency and reverting to hemp. No fertilizer and watering, no selection by people for potency.
I found similar accounts from Robert Connell Clarke, news reports from the 1990s, people have been bringing seeds into the Paravati Valley and cultivating high potency charas strains for a long long time. The cops who came up with that story to start a moral panic over cannabis weren't being very creative.
The good news is that in a 2016 article and a couple others there's a local politician who's pro-legalization. He's a descendant of Kullu royalty, has the respect of the villagers and is a member of parliament. His name is Maheshwar Singh. He's been pulling out old tax records to show that hemp and hashish have been a commodity with a long tradition of use. The only foot ware allowed for pilgrimages are made from hemp.
Locals are getting good prices too, $50-150 for 20 grams. Their Malana Cream made from high potency hybrids won a couple Cannabis Cups I did not know this. Hell, instead of recapping it here's a link to the article.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/cannabis-marijuana-malana-where-is-a7454651.html

therevverend said:

I highly doubt there's enough westerners bringing in enough packs of Greenhouse Seeds special feminized mixes to water down the genetics of the million wild plants in the Paravati Valley. It's a drop in the bucket.

Click to expand...

Mix one part of shit into 99 parts of honey, you will ruin all the honey.

i like that


good one Dr Banner

Mix one part of shit into 99 parts of honey, you will ruin all the honey.

Click to expand...

So what's your answer? Throw the villagers of Parvati Valley in prison? Send out hundreds of cops to spend their summer marching up and down the mountains eradicating all the sown patches while sparing the wild hemp?
Are you personally growing wild hemp from the Parvati Valley? Have you ever smoked it? If you think it's honey that's what you should be growing and smoking. Not hard to get seeds from The Real Seed Company. After all your tag is named after a strain you think is shit..
They have been growing high potency hybrids next to the wild hemp plants for over a hundred years. That's why Paravati has the reputation it has, the finest hashish hand rubbed in the world. I know what wild hemp is like, it ain't pretty.
You're saying the villagers should give up their livelihoods to make a bunch of westerners feel good inside...

I want to summarize what's been happening in the Parvati Valley the last 100 years. I say 100 because that's when westerners made written records. Ganja cultivation may be much older.
If I make any big errors, and if you have a source, please correct me if I get something wrong. I notice no Indian villagers have posted here, it seems to be mostly Caucasian. I'd like to hear from someone who's actually been to Malana, India or somewhere like it.
Everyone has been parroting the 'landrace good hybrid bad' paradigm without critically examining what they're saying. For some reason many people have begun to think of landraces as a holy grail of cannabis that is highly desirable. Without understanding the environment that produces them or the people who use them or the uses for them. In many cases they say landrace but mean heirloom. Calling strains that have been worked on and improved by breeders landrace because they haven't been crossbred with other strains.
For hundreds of years the people of Parvati Valley have survived because of the cannabis plant. Either from using hemp to make textiles or harvesting by hand rubbing to make hashish. Both are very labor intensive industries.
Wild hemp has grown all over the valley for thousands of years. This is exploited primarily for textiles by the villagers. The poor, the homeless, teenagers, and migratory people use the resins from these hemp plants to make a quick buck.
Besides the wild hemp, Parvati has a tradition of making head crushing narcotic hashish that gets everyone super baked. These are high potency drug ganja strains that are grown in plots on the steep slopes of the south facing Himalayan foothills. Often at altitude to escape detection by the piggies.
For decades there have been reports of plants with wider leaves, growing at higher altitudes. The higher you go the more wide leaf plants there are. I assume because the wild hemp plants have trouble sprouting early enough in the colder temperatures. Meaning the higher elevation plants are mainly cultivated ones. There may also be selective pressures at play for wider leaves and higher THC.
There is so much pollen in the air that it is difficult to breed-the hemp hybridizes with the ganja-lowering the potency of the ganja seeds. There are far more hemp plants then ganja plants because the hemp is indigenous.
The more well-to-do villagers routinely supplement their crops with seeds sourced from outside the Parvati Valley. These are grown in fertilized, irrigated fields. It's not like an evil Dutchmen came along, told the villagers their hemp was shitty, and introduced them to feminized $80 for ten seeds.
The villagers aren't idiots. Ganja has always been a competitive market. Until the 1930s there were literally tons of hashish imported from central Asia they had to compete with. Yet all along they kept their reputation for high quality. Because they were constantly looking for better cultivars made from crossing the best with the best.
In India there is a tradition of pilgrimages to holy sites which are spread throughout India. There are many Sadhus who travel the entire country staying at these numerous holy places. Many of these Sadhus love ganja and Shiva. Parvati Valley is named after Shiva's wife many pilgrims visit.
Sadhus have a tradition of planting ganja seed at holy places. I'm sure they are a constant source of seeds brought to the valley.
Hippies have been flocking to India since the 1960s. Many of them have permanently moved there. They brought with them access to strains from all over the world. Of course the villagers who know their ganja would take advantage of that. That means 50 years ago they were growing 'western hybrids'.
The UN has put pressure on India to end the fun and crack down on their ganja industry. In exchange for billions of dollars in aid. So every few years a bunch of unfortunate uniformed men have to crawl up and down the mountains killing cannabis plants.
The strange thing is, a few of them like it, like the money they make. So they think up ways to demonize the cannabis growers and users.
The press loves this crap. Every couple years they print a new article about naive villagers getting tricked by westerners into growing high potency skunk that literally rots brain cells. Get the pigs whipped into a frenzy, get some more funds to cut down plants and throw a few hippy backpackers in jail to squeeze a few rupees out of them.
Everyone sites Morocco as an example of how western plants take over but Morocco is a special case. Almost all production is to please a European market. Access to European strains and financing is a boat ride away. Morocco has to compete with the homegrown domestic market that's exploded in the last 40 years. If they were still growing their weak old time strain they'd be out of business. I've smoked the old Moroccan hash, not very good.
Cannabis has been adapted to many parts of the world, destruction of those cultivars is a bad thing. But thousands of crops, domesticated animals, and the environments they were created in, along with the people that use them, are disappearing around the world. This has been happening at breakneck speed for the last century but with climate change it's even worse if that's possible.
The ironic thing is that the very factors projected to be needed because of global warming, drought resistance and durability, are the factors getting lost as new cultivars are brought into areas to replace the old low yielding heirloom types.
The biggest factor is probably the changing demographics. People are getting run out of their villages to grow palm oil for instance. Or because of global trade their commodity becomes worthless.
This isn't the case in Parvati Valley because the villagers are able to make a decent living growing excellent ganja. I'm still blown away they won a Cannabis Cup, that's really fucking cool. Those people know how to grow.
The idea that 1 out of a hundred (more likely a thousand or more) plants changes the phenotype of a strain, seems unlikely to me. Their flowering periods probably don't overlap a whole lot, hemp probably flowers sooner. The hemp plants would have already been lost in Parvati Valley considering how long the villagers have been growing ganja. The wild hemp plants has adapted over thousands of years to withstand droughts and monsoons. The hybrids can't survive without their human caretakers.
Wow, this turned into a fucking essay..

Have spent three years in the Himalayan foothills. Not a vast amount of time but definitely more than most.
I have no written sources other than my own experience, what I've seen and what I've been told. Your essay rev, although interesting, has some points that are a little off..
Hopefully I'll have some more time to reply soon.