Fijian landrace

[Great outdoors]

I spent a bunch of time in Fiji in the 90's. Was quite hooked in with the locals. They grew plenty of ganja there. Sativa landrace that the indentured workers from India brought over with them a few hundred years ago. 12 - 15 foot tall plants with very open structure and extremely thin leaves. Long airy bud, you know classic sativa.
The reason I bring this up is as we all know the genetic pool for pure landraces is rapidly shrinking. I have watched some YouTube videos lately searching Fiji cannabis and some recent videos come up of the police chopping down these very same landraces. It seems and it makes sense that the gene pool is untarnished there. Even if there has been some crossing in areas with hundreds of islands there must be plenty of protected original landraces.
A search here had one thread with a couple people growing some. Anyone with any thoughts or experience? Are any breeders offering anything?

 

[therevverend]

Considering Fiji is the second largest producer in the region, behind New Guinea, you'd think there'd be more information about their cannabis strains. I've never seen any seeds offered anywhere. The drug war is bad in the country and I imagine there's a lot of corruption. It seems like a lot of villages depend on cannabis for $ and the trade is controlled by the village elders. Which means it's used both as a carrot and a stick, the stick meaning the cops will beat the shit out of you if you blab or piss off the wrong people. It seems to be a similar situation to the Indian reservations here in the USA. The elders make cannabis a scapegoat for their gang and hard drug problems while they're the biggest drug dealers and promote the gangs, guns, and drugs themselves.

There's probably some great stuff. I know islands have a lot of mold and mildew problems I'm thinking they've got to use genetics with strong resistance. I'm curious what their seasons are like, probably dry vs rainy with a long season and short seasons.

I attended a Fijian wedding years ago, they were East Indian. After the wedding all the men drank kava. It was nice, I was warm and tingly below the waist. When I was driving home the street lights looked much more interesting then usual.

 

[Great outdoors]

Yes back in the mid 90's when I spent time there I traveled to villages in the mountains were the entire village was in on the growing and would first make a kava offering to the chief before buying weed. Of course you couldn't just buy and leave you would end up spending a week staying at the village. Incredibly friendly people, they never want you to leave.
Most of the growing is done by the Indians though often mixed into there sugar cane plantations.
They have a dry season, our summer and a wet season, but they also have a dry side of islands, west side and a wet side, east coast. The weed was grown everywhere even on the wet side were it rains pretty much everyday.
Never saw mold issues and I was shown quite a few crops. Like I said big tall fluffy sativa's anywhere from average smoke to super trippy head sativa.
I'm old enough to have been through all the old landraces and it was a little different than anything I had before. Closest would be Thai, but it definitely was a little different.
Really surprises me no one has gone on a pheno hunt there.

 

[Great outdoors]

Realize I missed a couple points here.
You are correct they are very harsh with there laws. The native fijians are very religious and even the villages that grew it were strictly for survival, only real currency they would see. They would not partake in smoking and liked to just stick to kava.
I was told in the 70's they were quite open with it but times change. At least you are not dealing with a corrupt police force there and as a foreigner you would have to be doing something really stupid for them to bother you.
Obviously the police must have known about these villages that grew in the mountains and chose to look the other way.

 

[OnlyPureSativas]

Well this is refreshing. Someone (not you arjan) needs to go there and collect seeds for an open pollination reproduction, without giving the locals seeds of bubblegum diesel cake pie cherry #5 or some other hybrid haahha.

Its hilarious some guys can call themsleves the strainhunters, going around the world to collect rare landraces, only to give the farmers some hyrbid seeds, why just why....