What Are Landraces and Why Are We Hunting Them?

Landraces are types of cannabis plants that naturally adapted to an area, over a long period of time, with no external influence. Landraces are the most natural form of cannabis existing on the planet because they have been constantly adapting and evolving, improving their harmony with the environment they live in. They are the basis of breeding, and the most ancient pure cannabis races existing on the planet. Landraces have been obeying a basic rule of nature inside their own environment: survival of the fittest.

We, at Strain Hunters Seed Bank, feel it is our duty to preserve cannabis landraces for the future of scientific and medical research, and for the basic human right to use a plant that has been used for millennia.

Landraces could hide cannabis profiles that one day may be used to create new medicines, and these medicines could improve or even save lives. Landraces are also needed to breed and create new strains of cannabis, with new flavors and new effects, which are enjoyed by mankind for medicinal as well as recreational and religious purposes.

Nowadays most landraces are considered at risk of extinction due to eradication programs or crop-replacement government programs, but certainly not because of external genetics, because landraces are always dominant in their own environment and always overpower any “intrusion.”

All landraces are valuable, simply because they are plants at risk of being lost forever. Some landraces are more famous than others, and more in demand. The legendary names from the hippy times are still popular today; the 1970s Manga Rosa, Malawi Gold, Swazi, Limon Verde, Punto Rojo and Colombian Gold are all very special plants, genetics with a real history, a history that lives on in pop-culture, songs, movies, and through word-of-mouth passed on from one generation of stoners to the next.

Originally published in issue 9 of Cannabis Now Magazine.

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