Kush

[flyfishinrock]

I am pretty sure that the new breed of kush are far from being kush. Examples being master kush and OG Kush, neither of which have kush genetics but are marketed that way. I believe your research is accurate Racefan, and I also believe that both OG and Master originated in California and were given the KUSH name as a marketing ploy, as real kush (like kyle kushmans purple kush) are legendary. I personally had the joy of smoking real kush for about 6 years during the late eighties-early nineties and haven't since. The taste is unmistakable, and for me indescribable. It is a true cash crop with huge yields, of top quality smoke.

 

[flyfishinrock]

Just learned today master kush is a kush, so I stand corrected.

 

[TorturedSoul]

As previously mentioned, "Kush" refers to having (at some point in the parentage), one or more of the landrace strains from a specific geographic region. Wikipedia puts it as plainly as most:

Kush refers to a subset of strains of indica cannabis. The origins of Kush cannabis are from landrace plants mainly in Afghanistan and sometimes, Iran, Pakistan, and Northern India, with the name coming from the Hindu Kush valleys. "Hindu Kush" strains of cannabis were brought to the United States in the mid to late 1970s and continue to be available to the present day.

Kush strains were among those cultivated by the British firm GW Pharmaceuticals for its legally licensed commercial trial of medicinal cannabis.

Although with enough genetic dilution, one wonders if it is really correct to continue to use the moniker "Kush" at all in the strains' names and therefore I would say it is mainly a marketing tool these days for many of them. If I take a pure Afghani Kush and breed it with another plant, and then breed the resulting offspring with another plant, and breed the resulting offspring from that union with still another plant, and continue doing this... Would a plant 13 generations down the line still deserve to have the word Kush in its name even though it contained some genetics from the original Kush?

Not in my mind, although I would of course appreciate knowing it's lineage.

The pure (true) Kush strains would be the actual landrace ones.