Food for thought

[Weskush]

 

[Ill_Evan]

Anyone can slap a name onto a seed. I think for the most part looking for the old school 90's classics that is not a clone would probably result in a "fake". 

But also, why would you want exactly that 90's strain? I can tell you it wouldn't be for yields, or even THC %. Those true classics, for the most part, kinda look like jutt at first glance sometimes 

The ideal situation for genetics would be for growers to exclusively buy local genetics that are selected for their growing style and overall preferences for bud quality and then start a new generation of "classics". 

Unfortunately we are at a point in time where imported commercial seeds for the most part squash the local market and we are left selecting from a massive pool of options and sources. 

At the end of the day, find a breeder you like and whos' seeds grow well in your environment and buy their limited editions or new releases. Grow a few and select for the best.

[SkunkPharm]

It is normally the stuff that dies not look the best and that is really hard to grow that is for some reason the best to smoke.

except for cheese. That shit grows easy flowers quick and taste fantastic.

[Weskush]

To be honest, of all the strains grown from our local seedbanks, Barney's Green Crack and Totemic's genetics were the only legit ones. Adding to this is why would i spend almost R2000 on a seedpack that most likely got obtained from a reseller thats getting rid of old stock only to be resold locally as elite genetics at elite price points. I did this. Fuckin twice and got screwed over both times. Maybe i was just unlucky. Maybe i just got robbed. Or both.

[Weskush]

Regarding my above mentioned comment. I refer only to the mainstream seedbanks that ive used. No names mentioned. To the honest seedbanks. Respect and let them be known. They deserve the business.

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

If I had a cent for everytime I've had this discussion with people. even here on the forum. but everytime it's a lecture from all sides about how "I just don't undrstand how well connected" these people are, but then the seeds where bought online....  

so basically, they're not connected? well, except to the internet. as we all are. 

I will not say much, but if someone thinks they got landrace seeds online, I'm sorry. If you think you got any famous old classic, I am really sorry.  

ouens will get butt hurt on this one, lots will go to the grave still swinging  

[Weskush]

5 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

If I had a cent for everytime I've had this discussion with people. even here on the forum. but everytime it's a lecture from all sides about how "I just don't undrstand how well connected" these people are, but then the seeds where bought online....  

so basically, they're not connected? well, except to the internet. as we all are. 

I will not say much, but if someone thinks they got landrace seeds online, I'm sorry. If you think you got any famous old classic, I am really sorry.  

ouens will get butt hurt on this one, lots will go to the grave still swinging  

Agree. Unless you didnt get it directly from the breeder, you most probably are getting just seeds of whatever's been crossed with Skunk or some old seeds that changed many reseller's hands. Sad state of afairs.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Weskush

[Prom]

Lots of seed fraud out there.. most actually on CBD strains. Every doffus wants to sell pure CBD plants but they are not that easy to come by... so just sell anything and put a CBD sticker on  But once you get the material tested.. you see with your own eyes that you got pulled over the table. I tossed seeds into the trash.. and paid 10$ for a seed. PacificSeedBank.com Not touching those scammers ever again... the potency test showed very clear that they didn't sell medical marijuana seeds as promised. Was just some crap with more THC as CBD. 

Once you find a breeder you think that they actually do what they promise.. you stick with them. If you want to be 100% sure.. you have to do the work yourself  Not that you know at the end what genetics you really have in your mother tent ^^ but.. at least the stuff is a great smoke and that matters most, i think.

[Weskush]

On a more positive note. Very interesting watch.

 

[Pants]

After growing @Totemic chocolate gelato outdoor this season without a hiccup I’m starting to believe. No bugs or PM. Amazing for the Cape even with the summer rains we’ve had lately


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pants]

Also the tortonis from the growoff were sown of the strongest genetics looking at what everyone went through. Waiting on his autos

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

6 hours ago, NatalieLawrence332 said:

I appreciate your suggestion of buying local genetics and selecting for the best, as that seems like a great way to create new strains that are tailored to your specific growing preferences.

if you wana breed you can start with anything you want, first F1 batch you gona hunt the best pheno and part of that is not selecting the one that gets pm everytime or hermies for no reason... that kinda stuff. and with each next generation you select the one with the most resistance. when people get into stabilising a genetic you have to torture test them every now and then, the one that remains the closest to what you looking for is the one you breed with, this way you select for resistance each time.

but for someone that just wants an easier time at growing in SA, it would be suggested to start off with local genetics as they have already done the breeding and selecting, well.... locally... so the genetics carried in their strains are obviously already more adapted and acustomed to our local environment in terms of wind, heat, frost, indigenous fungal spores, pathogens and pests... all that stuff. 

on the other hand someone who's just starting out I wouldn't suggest breeding right away from the first grow and then also I would say go for any genetics, because you're going to have to familiarize yourself with an religious IPM regime either way. at some point, same as all of us, everythings gona be 100% one day an the next day your plant is covered in PM or RSM... not enough regret in the world to explain loosing a whole crop to skipping one simple IPM day... trust me brother, IPM is a must must MUST. so going for local genetics as a way to get around that would be to shoot yourself in the foot. at least you could do with local genetics is still make yourself used to do one spray a week during veg. every week. 

[trichomechaser]

The topic of this post is something I spend a lot of time investing in. Because there is certainly truth to the idea that people are growing 'fake strains'. BUT, it's also quite easy to find out who still uses the real thing and who doesn't, so long as you know who to trust - or at least who has proven themselves over the years to be focused on legitimacy. Because holy shit, there's a lot of guys that should be selling used cars. They can convince their audience of anything, regardless of how removed from fact it is.

Unfortunately, if one gets real about this topic, feelings get hurt as well. People see their favourite breeder being called out and they think that because they found good plants in their seed pops, that the breeder is trustworthy. I've even seen guys get offended when they learn the cut they think is X is actually not.

Because this is such an important topic I feel, I just want to share my experience as someone who spends a lot of time researching breeders and have worked for a couple seedbanks in vetting genetics suppliers and breeders.

These are the main problems when it comes to 'fake seeds' and 'untrustworthy breeders/sellers'

• The Rename Game / White Label
• The Fall of the Dutch
• Replicas
• Authenticity of breeding stock
• The clone market

The Rename Game

In cannabis genetics it's often a case of trying to establish provenance. In other words, what is the true genetic lineage of a strain. Unfortunately, websites like Leafly popped up a few years ago and made the problem even worse. Because lineages that have been shrouded with elements of half truths and mystery suddenly get replaced by incorrect, but authorative statements on what is in a cross. Girl Scout Cookies is a good example of a cut that has a somewhat mysterious lineage and while some parts of the puzzle are out there, they aren't exactly on display on some popular website, they're discussed by guys who were close to the crews, on old forums and in small communities of people who are passionate about this stuff.

The way a lot of the big seedbanks work is not like people think. They aren't all these passionate breeders walking around their facilities making selections all day. In many cases, a lot of the Dutch and Spanish genetics (will touch on this in the next topic) are outsourced. There are 2 or 3 really big breeders in Europe, who supply the same seeds to a number of 'breeders' - it is a massive white label industry. The breeder then packages, brands and markets the product. In many cases what they sell it as is something that's popular and currently desired, but what people get is just a renamed seed that may share some expressive traits.

This has been common practice for a number of years now and it's one of the reasons I haven't dug into Dutch genetics for the last 5 years. Though there are still some guys there doing things legit, I don't want to take that away from them. I also don't want to make it sound like it's only these countries where this is practiced, there are a number of shady breeding practices that occur across a number of countries. But because of the legalities, Spain and Netherlands tend to be the most common locations for these companies to set up.

The Fall of the Dutch

One of the biggest challenges, especially in South Africa, is that there remains this idealistic view of Dutch genetics. Back in the 90s, breeders in Amsterdam had a lot of freedom. They weren't getting raided or shut down for large grows and were able to conduct large pheno hunts for their breeding. This was the era where a lot of seedbanks/breeders started to establish themselves and also do some unbelievable work. At the time, Americans were looking to the Dutch for what was hot. These days it's the complete opposite.

What happened was, over a decade ago now, the Dutch government started to seriously clamp down on what one could and couldn't do with cannabis. And in the process, they raided a number of large, popular breeders at the time. In those raids, a lot of elite genetics were lost. Cuts that had been held onto for decades. A lot of people aren't even aware of these raids, because a lot of those companies never stopped selling the strains that they did before. But those that grew both the old and the new variations were able to tell the differences in the plants.

What tended to happen here is that they would simply replace the cut they used with a sister or hybrid of the plant. But it's hardly ever going to be the same, especially when bred with. Since then, the Dutch have started to focus less on their traditional Hazes that made them popular in the 90s, but instead they often seek to release US varietals, things like Cookies and OG hybrids - despite the plants not representing these cuts in most cases.

I smoked Dutch 'OG' for a while before I finally popped some real OG hybrids, and the differences were astounding. Since then I've popped dozens of OG hybrids and can safely say all the stuff I was getting from EU around OG was not true to the original thing.

Replicas

So what happens when the Dutch and Spanish breeders see Girl Scout Cookies surge in popularity? Since it was an American cut and was held pretty close, those seed banks in many cases aren't going to get hold of the cut - so they dig into their vault, find what looks the closest and maybe shares some similar traits and then they cross that together and give it the name Girl Scout Cookies and then people buy it, knowing none the wiser. This is somewhat similar to what the guy in OPs video is talking about. 

White label is still a more common approach than replicas, but replicas still do exist and they are a big problem. I've even seen some local breeders suggest they are working with OG Kush for instance, when there is not a single cut of the original OG Kush in South Africa (I'm pretty confident on this). Sure, you may have an OG hybrid, but even then in most cases the OGs that I see being popped are blatantly white label or replica. If you're looking to work with a particular genetic, source it from where it was found. Just like you probably wouldn't look to the US for a Haze historically, you probably shouldn't look to Europe for real OG.

And this then ties into the next topic...

Authenticity of breeding stock

Not everyone is malicious, in many cases people are just uninformed or mislead themselves. Say for instance I hop on these forums and post a picture of a Chem 91 looking plant (of which I've found several in the S1s), if I were to tell people "Hey I've got a Chem 91 cut available" - I could even post pictures showing the same necrotic leaf traits and 'dog tongues' in the flower. Say guys got some from me and did some breeding work with it, they wouldn't even be aware that I had just given them a similar cut, but not the real thing.

This is a massssssive problem, and I've seen it often. Guys who have been told that what they've got is this or that. And they will fight to the death that it is what they think it is. So as a breeder, it's really important, if you want to do things honestly, to try and have as best of a knowledge of how specific cuts express, especially if one is looking to use clone-only cuts. There are probably 50 different cuts of Cheese that go around, from 10 different breeders, but so many of those growers are convinced they have 'the Cheese'.

This problem is bigger than people often like to admit, and no one is void from the impacts. There are well-respected breeders who have had to backtrack on what they claimed was in the line. This is particularly common with the Chem/Diesel/OG family, where a lot of similar, but inauthentic cuts exist.

I spend a lot of time listening to The Breeder's Syndicate podcast, as I know the guys involved are pretty anal about provenance and establishing a history, as well as having been around for long enough to know the real thing from the fake. Some of the breeders that are typically associated with that circle as guys like Archive and CSI:Humboldt - two breeders I really trust when it comes to authenticity.'

The Clone Market

Finally, there's the clone market. Good god... The clone market...

So similar to the above, with the authenticity of breeder stock - one can't understate the importance of authentic stock from clone banks. I won't mention names, but a rather popular local clone company imported stock from Europe and was advertising their new stock - but the stock they were advertising was clearly fake. The Girl Scout Cookies cut that they claimed to have looked like a classic Dutch, donkey-dick green plant. It was clearly not the real deal, and I don't think it was malicious, but I think that if you run a seedbank, it's worth making sure you can ID your cuts and have open communication with reliable growers who have grown the real thing, that can help you authenticate it.

Not all cases are so benign though. There are clone companies who hunt packs of hybrids, select a cut from that pack and name it the parent it most looks like. And many guys think that because it comes with certificates that it means its legit. Certs are easy to fake and require a few minutes in photoshop to setup. Additionally, people assume that large companies with big websites and who sell themselves as leading clone experts can be trusted.

Not only do many of these clone banks give you fake cuts, but they give you diseased plants that can wipe out your entire crop over time. One needs to be really careful about the clone market, especially when it comes to world renowned clone-only elites. Some of those cuts sell for tens of thousands of dollars - if someone is selling you big names with certs for pennies, that's something to raise your eyebrow at.

Sorry for the rant - but I hope it proves useful, as things aren't always as cut and dry as one expects.

When it comes to international genetics... I am still a huge fan of them. I want to source my genetics from those doing the largest hunts on the most authentic genetics. And in our current time period, that is the American market. But again... Know your breeders and do your research... Some international breeders I feel I can trust (just a few of many)

- CSI:Humboldt 
- Archive Seed Bank
- Swamp Boys 
- Jungle Boys 
- Bloom Seed Co 
- 707 Seedbank
- Crickets & Cicada
- Exotic Genetix
- Lucky Dog
- Riot
- Kingdom Organics
- Clearwater Genetics
- Bodhi
- Karma
- Prolific Coast
- The Source