This is an interesting theory on the origin of Reeferman’s Tuna Kush from Mriko over at ICMag, who gathers landrace and heirlooms from Pakistan. He sees the Yarkhun Kafiristanica in it that he passed out to people, including Reef:
And then I see Kwik sells it as Chitrali, and references Mriko’s own collections of it, with the note that the Yarkhun Valley has been a caravan route since time immemorial, matching Reeferman’s description of Tuna Kush as coming from ancient hashish routes.
More detail from Mriko on the collection:
“Hmmnope nope, this is all same valley, Yarkhun (except Laspur of course). The seeds I have grown outdoor, and subsequent crosses, where all from Pattrangas village, West side of the valley, Hindu Kush range. The original, pure Yarkhun seeds that I have shared around come from Miragram 2 village (there’s another Miragram down stream near Chitral), East side of the valley, Hindu RAJ range.”
It looks like Mriko was trying to get a preservation project going based out of Paris named ARICA, and the landrace/heirloom collections for it occured in 2004:
And this is his log of the collection journey:
And comments from the growers he gathered from:
“Indeed, for the area I’ve visited (Chitral/Yarkhun), there used to be charas caravans coming from Yarkand, towards Kabul. And it’s a branch of the Silk Road as well, so there has been loads of trade in this region indeed. I remember that first time I was thre I enquired about the origins of the cultivated hash strains, I had two different versions : one saying they come from Badakhshan (local ruler was linked to the Chitral Royal family), the other from Kashgaria (Kashgar/Yarkand area).”
And this post has photos of the Yarkhun plants he harvested the seeds from:
Interesting stuff, maybe someone with more landrace experience than me can comment on any similarities you might see in the Tuna vs these?