Question regarding ethics governing seed production

[GoldenGreenNaija]

Greetings from sunny West Africa!

My region is notorious for bad weed mainly because of the lack of knowledge with regards to cultivation, curing and preservation.

I figure they are planted indiscriminately in the wild (male and female plants together) and the female plants get pollinated as the final product typically contains 30% of seeds and 70% of "something" very leafy that doesn't resemble marijuana flowers.
It is pointless to smoke the final product as you will have to smoke a massive amount to get a buzz.. I tried infusing a batch and got a slight buzz but that was it.

I read that flowers from pollinated plants are very low in potency and I'm guessing this is the reason for the poor quality in the region.

I'll post a picture of the supposed "high quality" weed that was acquired for me to show you we are still in the dark ages in West Africa.

In my recent travels I've had the opportunity to get a hold of high quality auto flowering seeds from some Dutch seed banks.

Suppose I'm able to produce seeds via the methods I've seen on here (420mag) and elsewhere online to sell in my region. Probably going to be the first seed bank in Africa.

Am I doing anything unethical by producing seeds in my case for commercial purposes from my seed acquisition?
Would I be wrong to give my seeds the same name as the name given by the original seed bank?

Thanks.

 

[Blew Hiller]

Not sure if you can do much breeding with auto seeds...they are inherently feminized and crossed with Ruderalis. My understanding is you would need "regular" seeds and from these get a male and female and then get seeds from the pollination of those.

Ethics-wise, a lot of people do as you plan. You are better off making up a name similar to the original...I imagine the seed banks have better lawyers than you.

 

[GrizzWald]

They will have nothing to do with the name.. that name comes from two parents, ## & @@ producing seeds called *****. Your taking ***** crossing with ****** to produce ?????
The quality will come down to your selection and progeney testing with your various parent plants.. don't expect much, especially with autos, the % will be everywhere, the thought, yuk, all those shit plants...

 

[TorturedSoul]

I don't want to get into a rant about profiting from others' work, so I'll address the other part of your post:

My region is notorious for bad weed mainly because of the lack of knowledge with regards to cultivation, curing and preservation.

I find myself wondering just what, exactly, it is that causes "bad weed" (I call it cannabis - since that's what it is - because my government has been warring with us for decades and I refuse to fight for the other side in this battle) in a region that - I assume - has grown cannabis for a long time.

If I do a thing and do not manage to get at least halfway proficient at it, sooner or later I'll decide I'm wasting my time and go take up another activity, lol, one that - hopefully - I can actually do well. Anyway...

in the wild

I find it a little bit ironic that, when lots of people are lusting after landrace strains - including those from Africa - you wish to start supplying your area with commercial seed stock that'll get grown outdoors.

Aside from that... If your kid has ten toys, and he manages to f*ck them all up, is buying him ten new toys in replacement really a good idea? What I'm getting at here is... well, Jack and the Beanstalk was just a tale; there are no such things as magic beans. Give someone who cannot manage to properly grow cannabis the best seed stock on the planet, wait a year, and you most likely will have learned that they could not properly grow those, either .

Might educating the growers be a more productive activity, rather than trying to sell poor growers good seed? You are currently viewing one helluva reference tool, you know.

I figure they are planted indiscriminately in the wild (male and female plants together) and the female plants get pollinated as the final product typically contains 30% of seeds and 70% of "something" very leafy that doesn't resemble marijuana flowers.

In my country (United States of America), we have been known to get cannabis imported from Mexico. "MexiBrick," we call it. It's most often very poor quality stuff. <SCRATCHES HEAD> Still looks like cannabis (buds), though, lol.

It is pointless to smoke the final product as you will have to smoke a massive amount to get a buzz.. I tried infusing a batch and got a slight buzz but that was it.

Again, why do these people grow cannabis? Do they mostly use it for textile, paper, and other "industrial hemp" things?

I read that flowers from pollinated plants are very low in potency and I'm guessing this is the reason for the poor quality in the region.

Well... That isn't entirely true. Seeded bud is generally less potent than seedless because, the purpose of life being to procreate, once the female flowers are pollinated, the bulk of the plant's energy goes into producing viable seeds. If pollination occurs late in flowering, one can still end up with fairly potent (but still seeded) buds. They won't be as potent as they would have been, had they not been seeded and all other factors remained the same, but still.

I might otherwise wonder if the plants were lacking light - but since Western Africa is in the tropics, that seems somewhat unlikely. Unless they are guerrilla grows and the growers are forced to hide them amidst - and under other plants, of course.

Another cause of leafy bud is light pollution during the dark period. Are the plants grown where they receive uninterrupted darkness each night (not counting the stars and moon)?

100% (and nearly so) sativa strains give one airier bud than indcas - but many feel that the best strains in the universe are all sativas.

Poor soil might cause issues. Then again, those of us who have grown some landrace sativas have learned that treating them like indicas can lead to overfertilization / burning / nutrient toxicity. This is one reason why - when growing outdoors, in the ground - growing strains that are actually from the area is generally a good idea. Unless the growers are willing and able to enrich the soil, feed the plants, et cetera - and if they aren't decent growers in the first place, lol, this seems vanishingly unlikely - then selling them a bunch of seeds bred to grow under better conditions would not exactly be helpful to the growers (and could get a person lynched ) .

The same holds true with HOT temperatures. Grow cool/moderate temperature strains... and you'll end up with airy bud (and not a great deal of it). And then there's the light. In the tropics, you don't really have periods in the year when you experience 16 or more hours of sun per day, do you? If not, and you (and/or your growers) grow strains that aren't equatorial-type sativas, you are very much likely to find that those plants begin flowering as soon as they are mature enough - which generally leads to small plants.

So this enterprise that you are considering... You might eventually discover that it's a lot more complicated than you are currently thinking it'll be.

But imagine that you can deal with all that, develop strains that do well in your climate, your soil, and your local light cycle.

These people are still going to be growing their cannabis outdoors, correct?

Pollen travels even better than rumors do .

Therefore, you're still going to end up with seedy cannabis. Unless you want to go on a crusade to kill off all the wild cannabis that's probably growing nearby.

Which might be possible. In theory. But cannabis has been illegal on one level or another here in my country (one which has considerable government resources, BtW) for many decades. It started being labeled as a poison in many states beginning in 1906, and outright prohibitions began in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s, cannabis was regulated as a drug in every state, and in 1937 we got the "Marihuana" Tax Act - which required all cannabis bought/sold to have a tax stamp... that no one was actually able to purchase. It was only relatively recently here that cannabis became legal again in ANY state - and it is still illegal on the federal level. So, as you can undoubtedly imagine, the resources spent on cannabis eradication efforts in my country during the last century... would probably have equaled the gross national product of a small country (or two?).

Nonetheless, there is still "feral" cannabis growing in many parts of the country.

So... Good luck with that, lol.

ME, I'd work on educating the populace. Import some foreign seed stock if you absolutely must <SIGH> . But remember to make sure to pick strains that are known to do well in the conditions of your region. (And can you save a few thousand local landrace seeds before you embark on a journey that could well see it disappear in future years?) And definitely educate the growers before letting them have access to it. Otherwise, you'll probably be wasting your time.
I'll post a picture of the supposed "high quality" weed that was acquired for me to show you we are still in the dark ages in West Africa.

Probably going to be the first seed bank in Africa.

Afropips, Seeds of Africa, etc. weren't actually located in Africa, lol? (I don't know one way or the other, that's why I'm asking.) I think Ace Seeds is in Spain and World of Seeds is probably also located somewhere in Europe (both of these entities also have landrace strains, including African ones) - but I always kind of assumed that the ones that actually had some form of "Africa" as part of their name were located somewhere within the continent.

Hey, have you ever thought about contacting some of the companies that produce/sell African landrace strains and asking them to "give back" a little by helping you educate your local cannabis growers? They might all say, "No." But, like my brother says, "The answer is always no - until you ask."