How Can I Contribute As A Sativa Breeder?

Smokin Moose

Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex Moderator
Just as we all benefited from SSSC and their networking of local European and North American seed breeders in the 1980's, we would benefit by a cooperative network breeding sativa or sativa dominant strains, stabilizing strains obtained in the country of natural origin and developing hybrids and stable strains from them. It will be space and time consuming, but these genetics would definitely have a large market. This concept would truly be an important undertaking.

My wish list includes strains from Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Columbia, Ethiopia, India, Hawaii, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, South Africa, Swaziland and Vietnam. Some may have other desirable genetics to add to this pure sativa gene pool. The Federation brought forward some unique pure sativa and double sativa hybrids with the Golden Triangle Thai and Celestial Temple Sativa along with their trademark Hawaiin Sativa. African Seeds and the Dutch seed banks offer various sativa from around the world. Pure Haze would, of course, have to be in the genetic pool. Certain sativas are not so long flowering and unwieldy they could not be used to produce nearly pure sativa hybrids and IBL's that were suitable for indoor growers also. Making hybrids of pure sativas with strains like AK47, Cinderella99, Genius, Jack Herer, Super Silver Haze and Skunk 1 would introduce potent sativa type genetics with more desirable structure and shorter flowering periods.

This will require dedication, time and hard work from people around the globe that are willing to travel to the locations not represented to acquire the seed stock. Individuals with a nose for adventure could spend some time making point of origin acquisition of the genetics for such a venture. It would not be too far fetched to visit some of these countries for adventurous people from places all over the world. Take a "vacation", if you make some connections, score some good local bud and see if any viable seeds are present. Many native land race strains have remained pure, while others have had outside genetics introduced. The older local growers in the region and educated breeders and growers would be in the best position to vouch for purity. If they obtained something of quality, vacationers could examine their "score" for seeds and consistency of the buds and send them home to evaluate. The indigenous strains of the countries listed are under represented in the overly reconstituted gene pool offered to us.

The larger scale outdoor growing to perform selective breeding is best suited to the tropics and greenhouses. Australia, Spain and their neighbors offer excellent weather conditions and proximity to local sativa land races for people living there. Africa, Southeast Asia, and India offer many unique genetics that should be worked with by experienced breeders and growers. Many individuals working in their corner of the world, developing strains and producing seed. The potential for meeting people who's locality has indigenous strains that have been cultivated for drug uses for many generations. These strains are needles in the haystack that need to be rediscovered and bred further.
The concept of seed archiving is important. There may be enough sativa strains in the hands of educated growers to probably fill all the locales on my wish list. Genetic diversity and continuance could be maintained indefinitely, if we organize a community of growers and breeders. Let's all put the time and effort into making strains available to everyone who wants them by forming a cooperative. The program goes as far as people are willing to contribute their own time and effort, not just people giving their seeds to others to grow. Sativa are like children...you have more patience and hope for your own. The idea is for people with the ability to set aside some time and space to perpetuate sativa genetics and hopefully come up with some special individuals to breed. It is my desire that individuals take the initiative to work with what is available to them.
 
Nooooooooooooo.........

Man I read all your threads and they're so informative even if a lot of them are cut and paste of other people's stuff.

This is where I've had enough though. In several threads you start off going on about breeding and how you like the great strains of old.... then straight away you start in with this crossing with indica crap. I'm sorry but it is just real bad advice.

I'm a sativa breeder and like many other sativa breeders around the world we spend all our time trying to breed indica genetics out of sativas. Have you got any idea how long it takes to breed even a single indica cross back out of a line? Do the Mendel maths...

Even the landrace sativas these days have indica in them from back in the 70's when the drug cartels took pakistani genetics all over the world so they could get two crops per season instead of one.

Why on earth would we want to do what you are suggesting? The Dutch have spent the last twenty years doing exactly that!!! They completely stuffed all the old sativa lines. Have a look at the old catalogues that you yourself posted up. The standard Dutch idea of breeding is take a sativa then cross it with Afghani. They crossed everything with Afghani.

Since then what you suggest... crossing sativas with AK47, White Widow etc has been done a thousand times. It doesn't produce a good plant at all. It produces a mongrel with phenotypes all over the place. Have you ever actually tried to work with a three way cross or a four way cross?

That is not what we want at all. Genuine sativa breeders (I've been doing it 30 years) these days are searching the globe trying to find landrace genetics that are still clean... and it's just about impossible.

A true equatorial sativa grows into a small tree. They used to be THE MOST COMMON cannabis phenotype from Thailand, Columbia, Mexico and some African strains. They grew 16 - 25 feet and took nine months to fully mature. These days the only tree sativa left that I know of is the Nepalese and nobody has the seeds. The strongest one was always Thai but I haven't seen a genuine Thai tree for years. There is still some original Thai strain seed in Holland and Spain but it's very hard to trust it after twenty years of Dutch breeders selecting the earliest flowering, short plants to seed.

Without exception the most potent equatorial sativa was always the stuff that took longest to finish flowering (20 weeks plus), grew ridiculously tall and was most likely hermie. All the traits that are considered undesirable by Dutch "breeders." Look at the Haze strains they carry now compared to the huge Haze plants that were actually produced by the Haze brothers. Yet the seedbanks have the cheek to call it "Original Haze."

There is not a single old school sativa breeder that I know of who actually believes that crossing with an Indica is a good thing or wants any AK47 or whatever in a sativa line. Why on earth would we want that? Contrary to popular belief no old school grower believes that any of the Dutch strains are more potent than a true equatorial sativa. They're not even close. That is nothing but good marketing by the Dutch to sell their product. Crossing anything except another sativa only weakens the line and introduces a lack of resistance to mould.

The correct way to maintain a pure sativa line but lower height and flowering time is to do it with another sativa. You can cross with something like Kerala or Laos to lower height and use a Himalayan or Swazi (Even Durban) to bring back flowering time a bit. Or you can use something like pure Indonesian which is an absolutely amazing sativa.

The problem with breeding sativas is pure greed. That's all. The Dutch got greedy. An average dope plant produces thousands of seeds. In the old days we could buy 70 pure sativa seeds for $5. You could get 200 Mexican seeds for $20. In reality that is all they are worth anyway. Dope seeds aren't rare. The Dutch have artificially inflated the market value and held it there while they hook teenage kids on growing stunted plants in closets. They've convinced a whole new generation that closet growing is dope growing.

To breed sativa properly you need a LOT of seed. Sure you can get a lot off one mother plant but to breed correctly you have to maintain genetic diversity in the P1 line, not breed it all from a single plant. The Dutch have forced up the price of seed for landrace sativas and muddied the original gene pool. We can't afford to buy 500 seeds anymore, even if we could get them, just to grow them out and pick the ten best to breed from.

Not only that but once upon a time the Dutch practically gave away landrace sativa seed because it stretched too much and took too long to flower. Now they won't even sell it if they do have it. They jealously guard it and keep it to backcross into their own lines because indica hybrids just don't retain their potency when they're inbred or crossed. They produce big buds that look pretty but they have no kick to them.

The most potent killer weed I've ever smoked has always been rubbish looking small pure sativa buds. Usually Thai or Indonesian or Vietnamese. Loose fluffy buds with no weight to them at all, no massive crystal formation, not super sticky, no fancy colours... but with a kick like methamphetamine or crack.

This is my personal opinion from my own experiences growing breeding crops of sativas off and on for thirty years. I've never done a crop in my life that wasn't a seed crop and my biggest was 1500 plants with all my sativas in one place.

m0ng00se
 
^^^^ Truth!
Hi everyone.....some fantastic reading in these boards, I am happy to be here.
 
try to get your hand's on as many true landrace's genitics and back cross them looking for an ibl that meet your needs.i grow a kali mist(serious seed's) crosed with a brazilen landrace strain that helped revitelize the genetics giving that highbred vigor. I flower cuttings at 10 inches and 12 weeks latter i wind up with a plant that is all sativa top at around three to five feet but this smoke is only for the head.not a big yeilder undr 400 what lights
 
***** and Mongoose, I think both your arguements are valid except for just a few things ...This thing ...weed ... it belongs to all of us, and every wonderful advance that gets us higher, cheaper, and more secure is great. If youre a purist and you want to "specialize", well you go for it. Good for you!!!, this great hobby of ours owes you something! BUT, If youre just some guy like me, that likes good smoke that you didnt have to pay $500/oz for, *****, thanks for the advise. Youre both a credit to the ...cause. Stormy
 
Word.

i've just recently delved into small-scale amateur gowing and i've had a hell of a hard time finding any plants that i actually want to grow. Everything i come across is either pure Afghani/indica or severely dominated by it.
In my personal opinion, sativa blows indica out of the water. i'm not "dissing" indicas or their growers, i've sampled more than a few of them that were quite awesome and they definitely have their places and their benefits and their own intrinsic value but given the choice, i'll pick a sativa 95% of the time. Comparing an up, happy-feeling mini-trip :ganjamon: to a heavy-bodied, mind-numbing knock-out stone is a no-brainer or me. If i wanted to be that incapicatated, i'd take an ativan or some other tranquilizer. (Again, that's just my personal preference and i'm plenty aware of the benefits and pratical applications for indicas, especially in the medical/pain-relief field.)

Point being, it'd be swell to see a lot more PURE sativas become available in the preferably near future and i can't begin to thank breeders like mOngOOse enough for doing their part to keep the gene pool alive and as uncontaminated :goodjob: as is possible in today's indica-dominated pot scene.

Keep up the good work man, there are many of us who are greatly appreciative of it. It'd be a crying shame to watch the sativa gene pool fall off the face of the Earth for the sake of growing convenience when the return for the effort involved is so worth the while.
 
i know man, indicas have plenty of uses and lots of people who prefer them and i'm not questioning their value. It's just that there are dozens if not hundreds of both pure indicas and indica-dominated hybrids so there's plenty of variety or indica-lovers, including a lot of the old-school genetics (at least i think those are still around, i could very well be mistaken.) Whereas it seems pretty difficult to find (at least in my experience and from what i've heard from more than one person) any significant amount of remaining pure sativas. It just seems a little unbalanced. i wouldn't go so far as to denounce all indica/sativa hybrid breeding because i'm sure that they have their beneits as well but it would be nice if more people started doing their part to keep the pure sativa gene pools from going extinct. i think people should grow/smoke whatever they want to but that it's also of tremendous importance to keep the original strains alive and well for many, many, many generations to come. Especially those strains that are being bred out because they're finicky, difficult to grow, low-yielding, 15 feet tall etc...
It'd just be an awful loss if we let all of those awesome (and pure form) genetics disappear for the sake of convenience.
 
Hey Dain Bramage, got any of those Brazilian seeds left? I wuz gonna order some Serious Kali, and according to your post it would be great to cross it with the Brazil
 
Hey Dain Bramage, got any of those Brazilian seeds left? I wuz gonna order some Serious Kali, and according to your post it would be great to cross it with the Brazil

:sorry:no so sad should have grown some out for seed have looked into some seeds offerd by k.c.brains of holland thay have sevral strains with brazilian genetics
 
I glommed on to some Michoacan a couple months back. It looked the same as the old Meech of the 70's,bud structure was long and skinny w/ fine seedhusks and had a similar taste. However,you could smell the skunk odor before you opened the bag and that Indica high was a strong undertone against the psychedelic high of old Mexican sativas.

Oh well,there's always Oaxaca. If old time Mexican sativas are to be found that's my bet on where they would be found. Parts of Veracruz might be interesting too. Mota Jalapeno was damned good weed in it's time.
 
I would like to chime in.for meds my anxiety really helps with sativas I can still be active and I really wish there was a more pure high than from the herb i get now. I also have a very hard time sleeping I DO NOT LIKE PILLS so in this case indy works great. It all come down to buisiness and profitablity. a 20 week and lower yield is not good for buisiness this sucks And i think this happens on many levels throughout buisiness in the world.
And will ultimatly bring everything down. when will we learn that good buisiness is good for buisiness sorry for ranting....:cheer:
go sativa
 
Get a kif grinder or other small scale kif making device to use with your sativas,Pacha. Sativa hash/kif has a very clear high,IMO,especially fresh. It ought to do the trick.

I made plenty of hash out of Mexican sativas way back when by simply running the fine shake through a couple of fine mesh screens. As that weed was only about 2% THC,the screen hash made from it always turned out surprisingly well.
 
mongoose greetings
im from india and have probably never smoked indica bud more than a couple of times but iv smoked loads of different pure sativas from around india (south india especially) where strains have been grown and re grown for centuaries. there is huge diversity in india with many many different geographical features and climates therefore a ton of different strains some inbred by tribals for years, some wild, some lemon some mango some coffee, and im not even talking of the himalayas. i personally have just started growing marijuana but have seeds of various different marijuana with me and in maybe another year i might have 2000 seeds. you are welcome to take them if you ever are in india and work with them and send some seeds back:p. most of my seeds will produce orange to golden brown hairs. on travelling you will find blue red, white, black, purple, everything,anything somewhere in india. the cannabis culture here is ancient but growing in places outside the belts of extensive wild cannabis(all across himalayas) stains have evolved into many things i imagine. india has desert, rich coasts, rich fertile plains, rich mountains of some other level , thick rainfed forests all over the place,dry forests, innumerable fields of agriculture , grasslands etc and all these places marijuana will be grown by some farmer. we have the best sunlight, butt ton of genetics which are very diverse, space , religious sentiment towards ganja,farmers who donot know how to handle buds,a kg of marijuana for 250$ maximum (with few seeds), we are missing white guys to come and convince the government to legalise it. when it happens the world will be smoking indian marijuana for sure coz no other country has marijuana potential like we do. i just wish less hippies and more cannabis patients came here so that marijuana is seen less like a drug and more like a dietary necessity. oh and i totally forgot to mention northeast india which has been closed to white ppl for a long time coz of naxalite and terrorist like activity. those parts will have RARE ASS genetics very similar to thai gentics i presume. northeast has highest rainfall on planet thus will have some insane mold resistance etc.
 
Have some good sativa seeds? I'll take them. I actually grew northern Indian sativa last year and it's a fantastic smoke full of positive energy :tokin:
 
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