Landrace or Heirlooms What Should be Used with Cannabis?

Professor DeBacco
Properly Naming PlantsLandrace
Landraces of crops are most closely aligned with heirlooms, being that they are naturally occurring.

They are indigenous to a certain region and developed their characteristics in response to the growing conditions of that area.

Landrace plant species are relatively rare because many have been supplanted with bred crops and have died out due to changing climate and human intervention.

Properly Naming PlantsHeirlooms
Heirlooms are open-pollinated plants that have been passed down from generation to generation.

They are living artifacts and living history exhibits.
Considered a reservoir of genetic diversity.

Open-pollinated cultivars mean that plants grown from seed will be true to type and will resemble the plant from which it comes.

Some plants, however, can cross-pollinate and therefore careful practices must prevent cross-pollination to maintain those varieties.
Heirloom Classification
There is some confusion as to how old a variety must be to be classified as an heirloom.

Some believe that any variety grown before 1951, when the first hybrids became available, is an heirloom.
However, many heirlooms are 100-150 years old or much older.
 
In regards to vegetables- Seed-saving gardeners have kept heirloom varieties alive, as has the Seed Saver’s Exchange in Decorah, Iowa.


Properly Naming PlantsHybrids
A hybrid is the result of pollinating one specific variety of a class of plants with the pollen of another genetically different variety of that class.

While a hybrid can occur by chance, within the seed industry hybrids are the result of the cross breeding of carefully chosen "parent" plants that produce "offspring" (seeds) that will have special characteristics.

By controlling the pollination process, this results in the offspring having genetic characteristics from both parents.

The offspring (seed) of this cross is called an F1 hybrid (F1 stands for "first filial").

The seeds from this cross will produce plants that are very uniform in plant habit, and carry a combination of traits from the parent plants.
Landrace vs Heirlooms
Landraces are wild cannabis strains that grow throughout the world free of contact with humans, so they retain their genetics and characteristics specific to that environment.

Heirlooms are landraces grown in a non-native environment.
Heirloom strains have not been genetically crossed or pollinated in a specific way, but have been brought from their place of origin and cultivated by humans in a new environment
Why Heirloom Needs To Be Used More
If you are growing a plant outside of the Postulated Domestication Area you are growing an Heirloom (or hybrid) and not a landrace.

It is only a landrace if it is being grown in its native geographic location.
Landrace Seeds Misconception
While growers want to have an original Landrace variety, if you are growing it out of the native area you are now growing an heirloom.
Landrace requires both the seed (or clone) and the location.
Heirloom just needs the seed or clone.

Link to Lecture Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UxxL...

*Due to the description character limit the full work cited for "Landrace or Heirlooms What Should be Used with Cannabis" can be viewed at... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d...