I think that all the indoor breeding in the last 50 years is not impactful on a scale great enough to irreversibly alter the genetic diversity of Cannabis sativa.
We are small humans who exist for a blink. Our greatest weakness is and always has been our ego. Human nature is to ponder on one’s impact in the world, with inherent subconscious bias towards belief in relevant interaction with this reality. We are the size of nothing in an infinite scaling system, existing for a blip of nothing in endless time.
Cannabis is not native to this planet, nor does Cannabis exist exclusively on ours. Cannabis is colonized throughout countless worlds and heralded by myriad cultures. The lineages are known well and the genetics are understood. Cannabis will always exist and will always be reseeded here. It is safe.
Obviously I write of times, events and systems which may as well be considered irrelevant to our short lives. As for discussion within the implied scope of this original poster’s topic, I assume the OP meant to encompass our last five decades of tinkering with populations indoors and, to me at least, it is implied that this “threat” of losing genetic diversity may affect those of us engaged in commercial agriculture involving Cannabis, or perhaps the world itself.
In this regard, I posit that we are still nowhere near any relevant genetic bottlenecks. These are brief points which I believe support my conclusion:
-Currently Cannabis is known to treat thousands of ailments effectively, and we have strongly correlated genetic expression of the Cannabis plant (ie. the oils and compounds harvested; terpenes, cannabinoids, other lipids, esters, etc.) to individual patient’s needs. Certain cultivars (or “strains”) or families of cultivars are well known for their specific effects. To offer an anecdotal example, I once had an older patient tell me that only outdoor Blueberry abates the incessant ringing of his tinnitus, and nothing else has. I am inclined to believe that a plant which demonstrates enough medicinal acumen to treat practically every ailment in such a broad, genetically diverse spectrum of peoples, is itself highly genetically diverse.
-Any grower who has grown out hundreds of clones in a diverse environment like the outdoors, or the same clones in multiple environments over time, will notice and attest to the slight variations in each plant which often occur. Ripening time, resistances, colour, flavour, potency, etc. all change from grow to grow, one end of the field to the other, region to region, all with identical genetic information. This demonstrates the immense and unknown depth of genetic adaptability Cannabis possesses; for example, the same cultivar, depending on light, water, and mineral availability in the rhizosphere, can choose to become male or female, become male and choose to grow female parts, become female and choose to grow male parts, or become a true hermaphrodite. A green plant can turn purple. A single plant can have wildly different concentrations in cannabinoids at harvest. Spectrum and temperature are known to play a huge role in the development of cannabinoids and terpenes. My belief it that we do not realize or comprehend the true hidden genetic potential of any single Cannabis cultivar (no matter how adulterated or bastardized the genes become), simply because we are all trying to “do it the right way”–within ideal temperatures and humidity and spectrum and intensity and air flow and lack of pests, etc. We are looking through a tiny pinhole and our “perfect”, ideal plants, and we are worrying about genetic diversity. But the truth is that this causes us to be blind to the deeper genetic flexibility Cannabis can exhibit. To illustrate this concept more clearly, please follow along on a theoretical example:
Each person on Earth plants 1000 OG Kush clones every day of the year. The environmental diversity (in geographical location, soil and microbes, water supply, sun exposure, climate, browser pressure, season, etc.) would trigger drastically different results, and it’s likely that we’d have low-THC MK grown in shady spots and harvested early due to rains–which would treat a different ailment and size of person very differently from a MK grown under 1150w Gavitas and left past peak maturity to create an abundance of senesced amber trichomes and the subsequent heavy narcotic stone.
Further, beyond the topic of producing colas for medicinal or recreational use, you could use cultural practices to produce unusually large volumes of fibre or leaf material. Instead of “doing it right” and using a Bloom formula and flushing to bring on the fade and allow fruit to set and ripen, instead you could just keep pumping in high Nitrogen Veg formula and creates huge volumes of leafy material. A real-life example is from a traditional indoor “fire” strain like Jacks Cleaner 2: this is renown to be hash-expert Bubbleman’s favorite hashmaking strain–but the Mendo Dope Boys didn’t want hash, they wanted a microphone stand, so they grew Jacks Cleaner 2 into a 22-foot-tall tree and produced an exceptionally long stalk with fibres that far exceed the length of the most productive hemp varietals. Think about the significance of that: An indoor boutique strain is still capable of producing exceptional hemp–so exceptional that it exceeds industry standards. What we tend to think of as “good gardening” and “bad gardening” is not “gardening” at all–gardening doesn’t exist; it’s only the name we give to our practices of applied genetic stressors and our desired and expected expression of those genetics. If each and every Cannabis plant and cultivar did not posses an immensely deep genetic potential, we would not be so widely successful in our endeavors with other’s seeds, regardless of their origin or background. You can take any seed and it will grow anywhere in the world people live–the resulting harvest is not strictly a “failure” or a “success”; for most of these ideas we have are based on what the plant should like in a jar before we smoke it. But you can grow Birthday Cake or GG#4 and harvest it perpetually for leafy greens while it is in a vegetative state. If this is the intention, is it not a successful grow? Or does the idea of someone growing Cannabis in perma-veg for culinary uses not sound like genetic expression, even though the genetic code dictates the plant’s reaction to such a prolonged vegetative growth (ie. late harvests in Alaska) or irregular light cycles (ie. a veg room with Mothers). Indica, Sativa, Hemp, Ruderalis. We divide Cannabis into those four groups, yet none of those groups adheres to any one genetic rule; Sativas and Indicas can ignore photoperiod, just as Ruderalis can be sensitive to photoperiod; but what we do as “gardeners” is find the plants we desire not to be sensitive to photoperiod and then call them “Ruderalis”. When breeders run trials, the plants which do not conform to our ideal plant are re-named and re-categorized, regardless of their true genetic makeup.
-Every Cannabis cultivation technique we have today emulates a different natural environment. There are the obvious ones like Peat+Perlite based supersoil mixes where you’re trying to emulate fast-draining fertile loam, and there are the less obvious ones like DWC with airstones which emulates a plant with roots that reach down into an underground channel/aquifer/river, receiving ample supply of oxygenated water. I mention this because, essentially, our ancestors were pheno hunting too. It’s obvious. They would plant in X location and get a shit result, then plant in Y location and get a better result. They were trying out different grow styles and systems. For sure these plants have been cultivated selectively by humans for millions of years. Where is the argument for current-day bottlenecking of genetics, or pre-1950s genetics being adulterated or misused? Do you think our ancestors didn’t have colloidal silver, whether naturally occurring or man-made? The past and our existing history of genetic tampering far outdoes any of this modern, 5-decade nonsense. Even with our accelerated cycles, we can’t come close to hitting even a millennium of influence. Arguing now that our selection process for taste or smell or potency is creating a genetic bottleneck is like arguing in ancient Egypt that growing in an arid desert is creating a genetic bottleneck. They don’t, they didn’t, they won’t. Cannabis has a gene pool far deeper than we understand, and we’re mostly blind to it because we are all obsessed with “best cultural practices” in our gardens.
I’ve already written too much. My friend is staring at me and kinda pissed we aren’t watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia right now. So I’m gonna cut this short. But I could imagine and invent and hypothesize a million examples and reasons for my beliefs. The bottom line is that Cannabis is a divine birthright. No gift of god may be tainted. Surely not by mere monkey men as us in a sneeze of time.
