Researching for a blog post

J

John Siam

420 Member
Greetings! This might sound odd but I'm looking around here to research for a blog post, to compare plant breeding and strain changes between marijuana and tea plants. You might think "why?"

I've been writing a blog about tea for two years and I keep coming back to subjects about plant types, origins and cultivars. I recently read an article on marijuana plant types, the history of different strains, and it occurred to me that people doing work on this have more experience with selective breeding and those aspects of horticulture than anyone I'm going to be able to contact related to tea. If I could find the right person they could provide some great input, and pass on knowledge that people in my field (hobby scope, as it were) just weren't going to get around to learning.

I was hoping to get input from one person, I just don't expect it to be easy to find that right person. I could clarify that more but basically I'd just like answers to a few detailed questions, which will really take some background to explain first. I can share all that here if it's of interest, but again I think I just need help from the right person.

This might be a good place to add some background. I don't do work related to tea, I don't sell it, and don't really have any present connection to marijuana, at all. I lived in a ski resort in Colorado for quite some time, on a long career break after running into some industry-downturn issues in my engineering field, and the subject came up there, but for a long time I've had no connection to it. It's not really relevant but I live in Bangkok now (just sharing), for the last 8 years, and I work in IT. I'm definitely not here to talk about that but I'm pretty open as people go so I could say more about here or Asia in general, or of course about tea.

Thanks in advance! Wonderfully interesting reading here, even though I don't grow or smoke.
 
Hi John!

I'm not 100% familiar with the blog portion of the website but I do know the people that do know a lot more than I do about it. Give me a minute here and I'll track someone down who can be of assistance.

In the mean time please take a stroll through the "Grow Room" tab at the top of the screen and do a bit surfing to hold you over. There's incredible information around this website with awesome people that can help guide you!

I'll be right back!

:peace:
 
Well I put the bong down and re read your post and read that it says "researching" for blog post. I thought it said "searching" for blog post. But I still think I can help.
 
sorry I wasn't checking this over the weekend, thanks for the input. I read the blog section, and there are some really interesting articles there. I'll have another go at explaining what I'm looking for. I wrote an introduction to the final blog post, which will surely change a lot, and could post all that as background, but I'll explain a little first.

I'm not trying to make tea out of marijuana, just to write a blog post about plant breeding. it really is a stretch to write a short article about plant breeding that ties developments from one type of plants to another type but that's exactly the point. people do keep coming up with new tea plant type cultivars (strains, one might say), but the process is limited and slow compared to how that works for marijuana. there are lots of reasons related to why the two are different, different plants (the main one), different goals, completely different context. one interesting difference is that most of the final outcome of tea is determined in processing steps (my understanding, quoted from a tea expert in the past week, but still debatable), where for marijuana cultivation is probably the main factor, then plant strain / genetics, with after growth production factors (eg. wet versus dry trim, curing) as the least significant factors.

all the same I think that the right people working in strain production have knowledge that would be really interesting to people that are on a completely different subject, like tea. for example, I read a bit on "hybrid vigor" on here, and how that relates to other more negative issues (potential ones, at least) with subsequent plant generations.

I'll post that introduction to the blog post (again, it's a draft, once I get more of the input it will change), and it will clarify where I'm going with this.
 
Here is the first draft of that blog post, the context for the input about marijuana plant breeding input. Probably no reason to give it a close read, a skim would make the point, unless for some reason tea plant development is interesting.

post draft content:

A bit odd to go there, isn't it? I'm not advocating either medical or recreational use of marijuana, or stating or implying any opinion about all that, but it seemed interesting to me to compare plant breeding related to the two plant types.

But why? The main trigger was reading a popular publication article discussing the history and genealogy of marijuana strains. That reminded me that I've been writing a lot over the last two months about issues related to plant cultivars, and to a limited extent about breeding and genetics (but not so much; only indirectly, as talking about types related to these subjects). Of course the same occurs with marijuana type development, just for different reasons (for drug effectiveness, but also for other ends), and in different ways and on a different scale.

I won't really be able to say much about that work in this, because it will be too far from focus to cover, but I can cite another reference or two in case it's of interest. To condense this discussion into a form and content that makes sense taken alone, in a subject that shouldn't fit in such a small space, I'll briefly mention some related issues from tea that I've been discussing (not a summary of tea genetics issues, just what came up), and then get expert opinion from a marijuana plant breeder about how that work and background informs plant development in the scope of tea. Of course the parallel only relates to some generalities being common; they are different plants, with development going after different aims.

Tea plant cultivar and strain development issues:


To keep this short I'll only mention some background discussion that came up in this blog, and then use that for further discussion based on expert opinion:

Da Hong Pao cultivar types and plant development: nothing I summarize would do the full story justice, but essentially five individual plants (sometimes cited as 4, or 6) are said to be primary representatives of a plant type used to make Da Hong Pao oolong tea. Of course it cannot be the case that five plants appeared separately from the cultivation history of other plants, with no other closely related plants in existence. The article I wrote about this was certainly not intended as final summary or even a snap-shot of current understanding.

Taiwan cultivar development: familiar to tea enthusiasts, Taiwan has a history of cataloging and developing existing and new tea plant strains, which most Thai tea production is based on. There are far more aspects of this development than I'd be able to introduce here, even as general subjects, a history, limitations in exportation, goals and achievements of this project, details about that list of cultivars, etc. One article in this blog discussed an interesting case in which a tea from that series, #17, was commonly described in Thai production by a name that doesn't match that number.

Based on this background a few questions come to mind, which will make for a starting point for the review.

1. How much difference might we expect from five plant examples of naturally occurring, conventionally bred tea plants of the same type (with some degree of assumption of tea plants matching experiences with marijuana plants)? Would it make sense to base separate individual strains on copying the same properties / genetic content from those plants?

2. To what extent can the genetics of one plant type / strain / cultivar be defined as a single, unique description? Doesn't the health and productivity of individual plants of the same type require some degree of genetic diversity within that plant type group?

3. It's my understanding that not all of the Taiwanese tea plant types developed by the TRES (Taiwan tea research agency) can be propogated by seeds. It's also my understanding that plant cloning is commonly used in marijuana growing to enable consistent production of plants with the same genetics, but taken together these two ideas raise separate questions. Does it seem possible these plant types / cultivars are designed to be propogated only through cuttings (essentially cloning), and to represent essentially only one set of plant genetics, to essentially all be the same plant, or would there be problems with that which prevent this as a possibility?



partial list of TRES developed tea cultivars



Other discussion could relate to the varying background between the two types of plants, although it is not as clear how to develop ideas from this starting point .

Based on very limited reading about marijuana plant development, the main driver has been drug related compound production, THC and CBD. But based on only limited reading many other considerations are factors, and goals of selective breeding (eg. size and shape of plants, flowering cycle maturity times, water requirements, pest resistance, character of plant flowers / buds related to smell / "taste," etc.).

For tea plant production two related sets of factors seem to apply: properties of leafs that relate to the outcome when processed as dried tea for consumption as a beverage (taste, etc.), growing properties related to effective production: growth rates, water requirements, pest resistance, etc. One interesting consideration is tolerance to cold, but I've read very little about developments related to that.


What could marijuana cultivation tell us about the potential for tea plant breeding and plant changes, with the obvious consideration that the two plants are not the same.

-to what extent is it possible to adjust the characteristics of a plant by selective breeding from examples within one plant type? what kind of rates of changes can we expect over a limited time, with what limitations?

-are there limitations in cross-breeding from different plants of the same general type, but from combining separate plant strains, related to genetic compatibility, or otherwise? aren't there problems related to recessive characteristics within plants bred for specific changes?

-what are the resources limitations related to individual research conducted on plant breeding? Put differently, what type of resource inputs and support might be required to expect results in creating new plant strains, and on what time-frame?
 
Those articles are great. Here's the thing; the people that wrote those could answer some of the questions I'd like to ask, but looking them up might not be so easy. I've tried contacting people different ways, in addition to joining groups in different places, but this is just going to take time.

It's strange talking much on here because I don't really smoke, so what to add about all that, and I don't want to be a nuisance to this community adding "that sounds cool" 50 times to be able to use the message function. It'll work out though.
 
There are some genius breeders on this forum. The best way I can think to start finding them would be to post something on the thread that Canyon mentioned, with a link to your questions here. Or even start a new thread with a more specific title to lure people in, and link to that. People grow because they're passionate about it. Breeders will be happy to talk about this stuff all day and will be happy to answer your questions.
And there's no need to feel out of place here. You aren't. You fit right in actually.
โชคดี!
 
JS,

"I don't want to be a nuisance to this community adding "that sounds cool" 50 times to be able to use the message function. It'll work out though."

Well you have me interested. I hope the thread gains a following.
Cannabis cultivation and breeding has undergone so many changes over the last say 50 years. The last ten years have brought commercial interest into play big time.

"-what are the resources limitations related to individual research conducted on plant breeding? Put differently, what type of resource inputs and support might be required to expect results in creating new plant strains, and on what time-frame?"

This ties back to your comment about some TRES plants being clone only. With cannabis it takes about six generations to stabilize a new cross. A search for 'cannabis in breed line' should give you an idea of the process.

Your blog, is it open to the public?

Best
canyon
 
My blog is open to the public, but to be clear, it's only about tea (maybe and travel, if I go places, like I was in Indonesia last month, but then I try to make the subjects overlap, for example visiting a tea plantation there). I always had planned to share whatever I research and finally post, although I expect it will take time.

I''ll share two related posts about tea cultivars (plant types), based on researching tea plants in Taiwan:

Tea in the ancient world: Tea Side Ruan Zhi Oolong from Myanmar, plus a cultivar mystery

Tea in the ancient world: Jin Xuan Taiwanese oolong from May Zest tea, and more about cultivars

Note that doing this shares my identity, or at least a lot more details, enough to put the rest together. I've already admitted that I've tried marijuana before, and qualified that by saying that I don't use it now, or for quite some time, so under the circumstances I won't join in much with further discussion about that. I live in a country that definitely doesn't guarantee free speech (Thailand), which would make for another separate interesting discussion. It's not like the cold-war USSR, we can talk about the limits a bit in public, but they don't protect people to say whatever they want here.

Thanks for the encouragement about not being out of place related to that one distinction. I'll keep working on this, and start another thread that may draw more attention.

It's fascinating that it takes about six generations to stabilize a new cross, which gets straight into how I'll only be able to use a few isolated ideas for this type of post, maybe a bit more if I break it into two. There is way too much background and potential in such a comparison to summarize it in a couple pages of text.
 
I might also qualify that I'm not a tea expert, just a typical blogger, I write about it, research it, drink a lot of it. I don't grow tea, or make it. No other tea bloggers chase down related story lines as I'm doing so I guess I'm not typical in that sense. It's just interesting to me, so I indulge myself in taking it the next step, and then the next step after that, which wouldn't make sense to everyone.
 
John,
I know next to nothing about tea and not that much more about marijuana.

From the lower part of your second link;

"Wow, right. That last part is about a different species of the camellia genus--if I'm using those terms right--so not really a tea plant, but related to it."
You might want to do some research into the genetics of auto flowering cannabis strains. The way things are charted in the tea world is unfamiliar.

Another thought would be to contact some commercial breeders.
 
Interesting ideas, thanks. The challenge for this, beyond finding the right person or persons for input, will be scoping, how to say a little that's interesting when the comparison really requires a good long book to accomplish. Since there is no reason to write such a book a medium-ish article is the limit, maybe split into two parts if too much comes up.

Another challenge will be that I can't become passingly familiar with marijuana breeding or strain development, even at the most general level, just to write one blog post. I've read a dozen pages worth of content on here, and that has been fascinating, but I'll have to stick to that level of effort, not so much.

It would be nice if I knew a lot more about tea on the plant side since that would make it easier to reach across the divide from that starting point. The way it works in tea is that people start from a basic, established plant type, with a little variation related to that strain / cultivar development in Taiwan, and a lot for local variations within related types, then from there it's much more about growing conditions, harvesting, and processing. Most tea bloggers start to review what comes next, and mostly only what comes next, how final products work out related to different brewing techniques, with some discussion of storage issues.

Initially I was hoping to find someone that is a marijuana breeder also deeply interested in tea, but that's asking too much. I'm finding that growers with substantial experience in growing techniques aren't so hard to contact but finding someone working on plant strain development isn't so easy. A commercial developer would need a reason to want to help me, the same as for a more private individual, but there really isn't one, aside from general helpfulness.

I did start that second thread in the other more related forum area, but it doesn't add much more to this, it's just in a different place. There are always different approaches to take, though, maybe try to read more article or research content and put more effort into contacting those people through social media, one by one. People are busy, so making it clear the request is a personal one, that I need their help in particular, and that the demands are limited, asking for answers to some specific questions, may do the trick.
 
Hi John :welcome:

This is an interesting discussion, but I am not sure what information you are after.

Tea and Cannabis are not the same kind of plant, nor do they have the same legal status, unfortunately.

Tea production uses the leaves and shoots from the plant, whereas cannabis is grown for her flowers; cannabis is more like hops than tea and maybe hop cultivation would be a more fertile area to research. Highly hopped ale is very similar to tea in many aspects, so I assume that hop cultivators would have similar aims to tea cultivators.

Your questions seem to be about general breeding, but the world of cannabis breeding is a fragmented wasteland of wasted landsmen, cowering in fragmented basements, hiding from "The Man". Information about cannabis breeding is sparse and often contradictory. It is, historically and out of necessity, an underground business, with secrets that are as lost to time as the Landraces of the 1970's.

Most Cannabis is bred from "Bagseed" - Seeds found in a bag that contained cannabis buds (or in the bud itself).

Most popular strains are hybrids of phenotypes of lucky cultivars.

Tea cultivation is culture, history and botany; cannabis breeding is aptitude, will, time, space and luck.

Marijuana Botany - An Advanced Study - Propagation and Breeding of Cannabis

...nearly all Cannabis cultivators, no matter what their intention, start with seeds that are gifts from a fellow cultivator or extracted from imported shipments of cannabis. Very little true control can be exercised in seed selection unless the cultivator travels to select growing plants with favorable characteristics and personally pollinate them. This is not possible for most cultivators or researchers and they usually rely on imported seeds. These seeds are of unknown parentage, the product of natural selection or of breeding by the original farmer, Certain basic problems affect the genetic purity and predictability of collected seed.
Click to expand...

The seeds with which most cultivators begin represent varied genotypes even when they originate from the same floral cluster of cannabis, and not all of these genotypes will prove favorable. Seeds collected from imported shipments are the result of totally random pollinations among many genotypes. If elimination of pollination was at tempted and only a few seeds appear, the likelihood is very high that these pollinations were caused by a late flowering staminate plant or a hermaphrodite, adversely affecting the genotype of the offspring. Once the offspring of imported strains are in the hands of a competent breeder, selection and replication of favorable phenotypes by controlled breeding may begin. Only one or two individuals out of many may prove acceptable as parents. If the cultivator allows random pollination to occur again, the population not only fails to improve, it may even degenerate through natural and accidental selection of unfavorable traits. We must therefore turn to techniques of controlled pollination by which the breeder attempts to take control and deter mine the genotype of future offspring.
Click to expand...
 
Really the input from what you've just said, and what Canyon mentioned, and what I've scanned would already make for an interesting post, related to a scattered "random lessons learned" type of post. I can do better though, and draw this into a tighter focus.

I like the image of people crossing plant types in their basements, based on seeds from random sources. That's evolving now, right? Is that really how the major strains I read about on here came to be, sour diesel or whatever else? Or was it more a considered development by people that took such a thing seriously?

The post on Jan. 10 listed some potential questions, which spoke more to intention, but it seemed likely that with answers I'd change those to be better questions. Citing one will work as an example:


1. How much difference might we expect from five plant examples of naturally occurring, conventionally bred tea plants of the same type (with some degree of assumption of tea plants matching experiences with marijuana plants)? Would it make sense to base separate individual strains on copying the same properties / genetic content from those plants?

This relates to one mythical case in tea growing, that of two separate strains or cultivars derived from 5 distinct plants (organisms, not types). The plants are still there, supposedly, per lots of accounts, but tracing the genetics to the thousands of existing derivative plants is not simple. These probably cover a genetic range, perhaps occurring as several "cultivars," or maybe they don't break into categories in this way. My initial review identified two families of types, one of which occurs as two sub-types, but the final answer won't be that simple.

If this never does turn into a blog post I'll still take away some interesting ideas from it. At first I sort of expected there to be such a thing as a weed blogger, but of course I'm not seeing that, aside from blogs related to showing off pictures of buds, or some that post related news or stories.

It's an interesting thing about how that works out for tea, related to breeding and plant types. Although I'm no expert, and have limited inputs from decent sources, my impression is that either predominant plant types are imported from elsewhere or else traditionally evolved versions inherited from generations of growing history are produced. Neither case relates to someone working on developing new cultivars / strains, except for the work done prior to the first. In the case of Thailand commercial tea, better teas, not tea-bag type production, there are mainly two types grown, mostly to make oolong (relating to oxidation level, a processing step), #12 and #17 cultivar imports from Taiwan.

It's not what one might expect, right, two distinct plants grown to support an entire commercial industry that's had 25 years to work on that. One aspect of that might be error in what I'm saying; maybe those two general types have related to continual development within that broader description. Or it's remotely possible that most of the plants grown are quite similar, that differences in growing, harvesting, and processing are more significant factors, so there is less pressure to change that one input.

There are exceptions. One type, dan cong, from the Phoenix mountains area (a common name for mountains in China, perhaps not surprisingly) is known for individual teas showing unique flavor characteristics. This is one of a few exceptional cases where individual plants are used to make batches of teas, where for most teas and most contexts it's conducted as a combined harvest.

Oddly I wouldn't be surprised if pushing this subject into the light for public discussion gets more conversation going than had occurred prior (I mean for tea). I just wrote an article on diversity of types and mis-labeling within one of the 10 best known Chinese teas, Da Hong Pao, and people that weren't open to discussing what were essentially open secrets started doing so. But only a little, of course, and that will likely pass.
 
I like the image of people crossing plant types in their basements, based on seeds from random sources. That's evolving now, right? Is that really how the major strains I read about on here came to be, sour diesel or whatever else? Or was it more a considered development by people that took such a thing seriously?
Click to expand...

I may have generalized somewhat; not everyone was in a basement (some had gardens), but it was pretty much random and based on luck or popularity of a strain, due to some defining quality. If "Sour D" is popular, anyone who grows or sells a sour smelling strain will start calling theirs "Sour D". A popular breeder kind of did this with his seeds of "New York City Sour Diesel" aka "NYCSD".

From the Urban Dictionary:
Sour Diesel
A strain of cannabis originated from the Umass Amherst area, rumored to be an offshoot of the breader ChemDawg. Was quite popular among weed connoisseurs in Boston and New York in 2000. Was originally a wispy light weight strain. Soma later introduced a strain called NYCSD "New York City Sour Diesel". Claims some Rasta gave it to him in NYC, how ever this strain did not originate from NYC and was most likely was other strains bred for similarity with the original, most likely shares parentage with the currently popular grapefruit strain. Because of availability Soma's obviously different strain at the peak of NYCSD popularity the original from the streets of New York became known as ECSD "East Coast Sour Diesel"
Click to expand...

Here are some popular strains and a little about their origins, all quotes from Seedfinder.

Unknown or Legendary - Chem Dawg
Aka: Chemdawg
Breeder: Chemdog

Heritage (no serious source known):
Speculation 1: unknown indica strain (Kush, HP or NL?)
Speculation 2: Nepali x Thai

At a Grateful Dead show at Deer Creek Amphitheatre, joebrand (aka wonkanobe) and pbud met chemdog and sold him an ounce of very high quality pot for $500. Joe and Chemdog exchanged numbers and they later arranged for two ounces to be shipped to chemdog on the east coast. According to chemdog, one ounce was seedless and the other had 13 seeds.

In ’91, chemdog popped the first 4 seeds. From these seeds, one male was found and disposed of (chemdog was young, you can’t blame him). The 3 females were labeled "chemdawg" (now '91 chemdawg), "chemdawg a" (now chemdawg's sister), and "chemdawg b". In 2001, chemdog and his girlfriend attempted to germ 3 more seeds, labeled "c", "d", and "e". the "e" seed never germinated, "c" turned out to be junk (according to chemdog), and chemdawg "d" was the keeper.
Click to expand...

Unknown or Legendary - Sour Diesel
aka: East Coast Sour Diesel (ECSD)

breeder: ChemDawg

First of all, I go way back to the begining 92-93. my good friend from NY, was the one who got the Chem Dawg and Super Skunk first. And yes the Chem was first called Diesel because people did not like the name and because it was the "Cock Diesel" But you don't talk about the next strain created from the Chem Dawg. Also known as UnderDawg, Daywrecker, Diesel no.1 (Chem Dawg x super skunk/NL) from this the Sour was born hermied from the DNL(skunk).
Click to expand...

Clone Only Strains - OG Kush
Story #1:
OG Kush (the original cut) came from an S1 from in a bag of '91 Chemdawg in the Lake Tahoe area in 1996.

Story #2: (by Kailua kid from sierra seeds:)
In late '93 John from Grass Valley Ca. got the Chem Dog cut. He shared it with me, Jerry(cowboy) from Dibble Creek Ca. and Harold(Putz) from Sunset Beach Ca. Putz had a male he called the secret ingredient. It was a cross of Lemon Thai and an Old World Paki Kush. Putz bred the secret ingredient to the Chem Dog. The buds that came out of this cross were going around So. L.A. county in '95. Someone told Putz that Kush must be so good because it was mountain grown. Putz laughed and told him "this Kush is Ocean Grown Kush bro". The tag stuck and it became known as OG Kush.
Click to expand...

Sensi Seeds - Skunk #1
The one, the only Skunk #1. A true breeding strain containing the original Columbian x Mexican x Afghani cross that was the first true stabilized cannabis hybrid in the Dutch cannabis world.
Click to expand...

Clone Only Strains - Cheese
Cheese originated in 1988-89 as one unique female phenotype out of packet of Sensi Seeds Skunk No. 1 grown somewhere in the Chiltern Hills. This one plant produced impressively large buds and had a very distinctive cheesy odour. It was quickly cloned and named Cheese.

Around 1995 a Cheese clone was passed on to Exodus, an alternative community living in Haz Hall on the edges of Luton. Exodus organised free parties, championed the legalisation of cannabis, grew cannabis themselves and protected each other from the law. They also started CANABIS (Campaign Against Narcotic Abuse Because of Ignorance in Society). Because of all the people that passed through the Exodus community many clones were handed out to visitors and the strain continued to grow in notoriety.
Click to expand...
 
Those are really interesting stories, thanks. A lot of what I'm reading is very interesting, just not close enough in focus to work for the original purpose, to communicate as related to the subject of tea.

I think I'll have to step up the research to pin down specific people for possible support and ask them directly. It's fine that some of this is just for my interest though, learning about that development. It's a little odd that I don't actually smoke but interesting anyway.
 
An update: I think I found the right person, not so much a breeder but instead a marijuana journalist, so just a matter of getting some more input settled.

I did start that parallel thread in a different forum section here but it didn't seem to make any difference. The background reading on here and elsewhere add up to way too much, so as expected the trick is going to be borrowing some input and insights and closing up the article without getting too far in.

Hopefully I can update a link to the final result in the next couple weeks, unless I end up sharing this to a combined tea blog site I contribute to, then it will get held up in a queue for another month.
 

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