What he said. Commercial effect on breeding

Smoker's Lounge
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This is great. Big shout out for speaking out on the nature of marijuana genetics.

I’m, an old hippie, been doing this for fifty+ years, and genetics have become boring. It’s like the wine section of the local Mega Mart, that contiained 10 reds 30 years ago, and now has a hundred. THEIR IS NO HOLY GRAIL! Never was.

To this day, there’s not s single bud I’d trade for a bag of original Jamaican, Acapulco Gold, or my favorite, Michoacan. But its great so see seed banks reaching to reconstitute those strains, or more importantly, the high profile they possessed, even if not the originals.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, best holiday of the year! (IMO, :wink:)

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When you go about Taking last years Cannabis cup winners and breeding them with this years Cup winners and Do the same thing every year This is bound to happen.Eventually Everything is using the same parents and the Family tree is now just one single branch.Go and see how many things Have White widow in them from the Amsterdam days innthe eary 2000s.Things started changing around the 90s by 2010 weed started to fall into what we have now.

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Yeah there’s definitely a focus on bag appeal since the rise of smart phones and social media with new users and growers around 10-15 years ago but i think you can find some interesting worthwhile genetics. I’m prob in the minority bc don’t have a specific cultivar that is my favorite and instead just continue to run different gear over and over. The constant variety of terps and potency keep me pretty blazed even with the occasional dud…even a few autos have been a nice change of pace.

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I agree that a universal Holy Grail does not exist.

I am a Geezer Outlaw Grower. Started smoking in 1967, began growing in 1970.

In the 1970’s( NYC metro) almost every year there seemed to be something new, many exotic and potent types of cannabis were available. Acapulco Gold, Panama Red around ‘69 or ‘70 and lots of very nice Mexican types in early ‘70s. Mid ‘70s lots of Colombian Golds, Reds, Wacky Weed, Chiba Chiba.
Around this time Sinsemilla became plentiful, and then Hawaiians and Jamaican flowers.Thai Sticks also were introduced to the NYC metro area. Back then weed was strictly verboten and all of these strains were more effective than people today are led to believe.

Anyway, I stopped buying weed around 1980, when I decided to move to SoFla to grow outdoors and fish year round.

Fast forward to 2023. I was living in SC from 2017 to 2023, not being able to grow outdoors in the winter brought me back to FL, Central Florida which is less densely populated than SoFla, looking for a place to grow in and out and fish until my impending dottage…

Well, anywho, I brought my last crop of flowers down to Fl from SC and I ran out a few months back.
Subsequently I’ve sampled various flowers both licit and illicit. I even used Leafed Out to see if I could find some decent flowers. I really was surprised that almost none of these provided a satisfying high at all.
So I thought, how could this be? Is it me? Took a two week tolerance break in order to re calibrate myself.
Nope, still not the high that I anticipated so eagerly.

All of the weed that I moved with to Fl got me so much more delightfully high…. especially FDM’s Sweet Tooth #4

Somehow, someway, I think that the quality of cannabis has diminished, or has been diminished intentionally?
I certainly cannot put my finger on what could be doing this.

Or I could just be an old fart shaking my fist and yelling at clouds.

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I think your right but the reason IMO is the small batch high quality that in previous years would have hit the local market’s and been quickly picked up is now bought and sold on the black market and picked up by distributors who push it out. Used to stay local to the area. Seems those days are gone. A bit like the white lightning of the past alcohol stories. It’s still around but it’s a moving target. It used to come to us eventually In years past, if it was harvested locally. Now I believe the better it is the further it will travel. Cheers !!!

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I know what I want, and I grow it. No need to chase the latest cross of diesel, cheese, and cookies.

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I watched that video this morning, I’m glad he posted what most of us have already realized on basic dispo weed. Very homogenized and nigh impossible to find targeted medicinal buds. It’s what led me here…

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Land race strains are still around, or check out strains from 20+ years ago.

What are you looking for?

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This is universal.
Weed has deminished all across the board
Even the farmers in Morocco on my last trip said the seeds are not the same anymore, and their field is getting worse quality with every seed batch they buy (they buy mostly white label fem seeds from Cali or Spain)
I even took a bunch with me to grow just to understand what they are given, I got like 6 phenos, all were trash.
I used to smoke Super Morocco hash and 2 hits would get you blasted
Nowadays we made dabs from the hash there just to get somewhat high haha

People started breeding 5-6 years ago for looks only as the market began exploding worldwide due to legalization in various countries
Breeders know no one can know what their seeds hold other than pictures.
So a race to breed the most beautiful smelly no effect no taste plants began, who can sell the most seeds to fancy new Instagram growers for another like ?
Gone are the days of bringing value in a pack of seeds, now it’s only a brand and a name.

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Sorry, but. . … how are MORE options boring? :man_shrugging:

The fact that I can now literally order a strain in whatever flavor my brain can even conceive. … How is that boring?

Gatekeepers of old genetics are boring, if anything

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On paper you can order it, but you will get 5% expressions of what that strain holds and what makes it special, maybe even 1% to be more accurate
It’s just the nature of things, when you smash endlessly, devolution occurs.
And when breeders found out looks sell, from there its just easy money for no work, sign me up anyday anytime.

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A different lost that we had here in Brasil, was in the northeast, where we had good quality on sativa dominants (i wont call it land racw as it is a deep discussion), im not sure, as I moved out from there, but we still had those until early 2000

The thing is…we are talking about a ilegal market, outdoor…so characteristics like sooner harvesting changed that old good stuff. The worse is that those gennetics are pretty much gone…

The rest of the story u already know, cookies and cream ans so…

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Personally, ive bought some amazing modern strains over the past few years. cranberry blast and sugar rush (if that is their real names lol) being my two current favorites, actually made to my all time top 10 smokes.

It really seems to come down to how good the source is. I think it’s definitely harder to find good weed nowadays and looks can definitely be deceiving. There is a lot of crap on the market, particularly due to the increase in producers. Have smoked a ton of short lasting frosty terp bombs to find the ones i like lol.

Have grown a few hype strains, and those are definitely a crapshoot, but definitely found some interesting gems. Ive found a lot of nostalgic skunk terps in GMO crosses.

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Thats it, a good pheno hunt Job wiil do it🤘🏻

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I’ve found a few dispo weeds that I thought were very nice. But, usually I find the high wears off really quickly (like, 30-45 minutes)

That’s why I keep going back to old hazes and the azad kashmir. The highs seem to last 3-4 hours, and tails-off in the best possible way.

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Cant make more variety when youve backcrossed several of the same parental lines into themselves without properly diversifying and not breeding the same shared cuts over and over again .Its like cutting the end off of a blanket and sewing it to the other end to make it longer.I would give up every Cookie and Gelato Sherbert whatever Donut bakery bullshit on this whole planet just to have Some of the Old Loud Kind Bud of the 90s again you know the shit that over half of it never had a name ,the eighths that used to peel wallpaper and make you hear ants crawling the earth.All these Cookies and candies and gelatos and Flams and whatever and they all blend into the same shit.All this variety aint cutting it homeslice.I miss it when we had just Goodshit &Badshit

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Ok, well. It’s not like the weed you got 20, 30, 40 yrs ago was of some pure pedigree either :man_shrugging: all that shit was just re-chucked seeds one season to the next

Weed has LITERALLY NEVER BEEN BETTER than it is at this very moment in time. All the oldies are still available, but now we have an untold number of crosses that vary wildly in flavor and potency.

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If I understand the sense of the video, i’m reluctant to follow the same logic. Consumers and stoners are mixed now, and the interest for the plant vanished as fast than the market’s growth. It’s always a matter of demand at the end of the chain, you can be angry about it but you can’t dodge this fundamental conclusion.

When stoners, consumers, connoisseurs are mixed … you make an average to satisfy the largest number. It’s never at the advantage of the quality ^^

Fast-washed highs/stones, weed to binge and the equivalent of the fast-fashion in cannabis seeds. But only when you’re a customer of this market … that’s the advantage of this saturated market, like already said.

I just see this like the tomorrow morning of a big fiesta. Some have lost their underwear in the battle and others not :joy:

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I don’t know, what I don’t know. I wish I could try a wide variety of true medical strains from a dispensary to see what works for my health issues. Things that are mixed ratios with a variety of cannabinoids. Strains with THCv, CBG, etc… The “medical” stuff I’ve seen is just focused on high thc.

I have limited space to hunt and plant count restrictions, so it will take quite a long time to find keeper strains. I do have a couple African and Russian landraces to get going. Hoping Hoku Seed co. has a Black Friday deal to explore a variety of his work.

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All the dispo hash if tried has been shit. I finally found a decent mail order one which, while not the best ever, is at least good.

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