Posted this in another thread already but it's a nice little piece of history with some classic comments. It is from a catalog of Cultivator’s Choice, what they (Sam and others) offered in 1985 (and ended up at sensi and others through amongst others flying dutchmen)
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Notice the last comment about the skunk #1, "low leaf to flower ratio". It's a shame Northern Light isn't on the list.
I think that is at least true for the haze->Thai. I have not seen enough of the mex sat and columbian up close to make a good comparisson. That said, the Amnesia White I've grown is (haze x afghani) x thai. Based on text at sensi it doesn't actually seem to be based on the amnesia cut but 'haze', i.e. no skunk (like in SSH). Calyx size is like a third or maybe even a quarter of the big CF calyxes. Dried and quailed the ones on the CF and chunk cross are bigger than the AW pre-drying. By itself a good calyx to leaf ratio, good yield, compact nuggets, yet skinny long (thai like) colas compared to others, seemingly partly because of the small calyxes. I will grab a pic later, had to harvest prematurely cause it rotted and hermied badly so didn't bother taking a lot of pics.
Anyway, from sensi site: "To ensure that none of the uplifting high is lost, Amnesia White has also been back-crossed with the Thai ancestors that give Haze most of its awesome power."
That seems to be about cannabinoids and
terpenes mostly, not necessarily the structure.
Something else I read (post from Sam) is that one of the things that makes O haze special/good is that it doesn't not hermie often despite the Thai in it. Thai is known to hermie easily. I said earlier in this thread that I think they should have used o haze instead of thai in the amnesia white cause the last thing you want is use a hermie thai if you can get haze from haze instead. I guess they chose thai to create (haze x afghani) instead of just (haze x afghani) x the same haze.
I smoked import thai decades ago, cheapest stuff on the menu, brown, mostly branches and leaves. Cheap but needed a lot to get high. Not at all like haze back then but based on the above I do get the impression Thai plays a larger role in haze than I realized.
*light bulb* So that could then very well be the reason why Chocolate Fondue is so much more hazy than the Cannalope Haze. Especially if CH = C99... C99 x thai x skunk...
I think it is primarily a result of hybridization, and partly through ongoing selection after that. Most vegetables and farm animals are hybrids for similar reasons. The benefits of new hybrid varieties are so great they literally help prevent us all from starving from food shortage.
Traits that can be quantified (flower time, yield, size of every part of the plant) are usually based on many different genes. By crossing two different varieties you not only get traits from the two parent varieties but also new combinations of genes that can result in new traits that were not in either parents. Medium x small variety outbred can result in something like medium + small, a shift of the entire spectrum, instead of a mix or average. While if you continue to inbreed the same medium variety it tends to stay in a spectrum around medium.
Comparing to original landraces isn't getting any easier either, many land races being grown and sold are not really pure land races anymore. From Malawi to Columbia to Thailand farmers were also impressed by the calyx to leaf ratio and yields of the western bred varieties tourists and others brought along and traded. They sell white widow and other popular varieties at Malawi lake, and the Malawi Gold suddenly got a lot less leafy...
There are over a dozen 'breeders' offering Skunk #1, often based on small populations, down to as little as one (selfed) or 2 plants. If I ever smoked an older more original skunk I honestly don't remember the difference. I probably smoked more Northern Light and orange, and especially hash, than skunk. I know quite a few people from the days I worked in a coffeeshop that I never heard say something else than "a tenner orange".
I smoked so much of my P-F1, has pine smell during veg already, that eventually I really had to grow and smoke something else. A few weeks after the last pine bud though I start missing it. It's like drinking tea with fruit taste for years and than going back to regular blend :) Pinene is one of the most common
terpenes in nature. Great insect repellent (mites didn't like the P plants at all) and because it's so recognizable it's easy to breed for. One of the downsides of going back to F1 is that I managed to get all the F3 to produce a milder/sweet-sour pine instead of a dark pungent one. I was hoping to sort of blend it with amnesia/ssh like haze but the AW is horrible.
