By Exhaling deep drugs from a blueberry cookie joint grown in City Farmers BCN The smoke from my hit moves upward into the rafters of a 16th-century modernist palace in the heart of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. Celebrating the freedom to enjoy weed in a country where cannabis still exists in the gray zone where cultivation is decriminalized but commercial sale is illegal. I’m in Barcelona, Spain forMore specifically, I Hash Marijuana & Hemp Museum At a party celebrating the collaborative efforts that bridged the divide between two historic cannabis seed companies, sensi seeds and Humboldt Seed CompanyIn their collaboration, a new chapter in the history of marijuana is dawning. This continues the tradition of a legendary fusion of Californian and European genetics that began in the 1970s when cannabis crossbreeding began.
The collaborative project is called Breeding Grounds and has led to the release of four new feminized seeds: The Bird (OG Kush x Humboldt Dream x Larry Bird), Auto Pineapple Kush Cake (Pineapple Muffin autoflower x Banana Kush Cake autoflower ), Auto Amnesia Jelly ( Mint Jelly autoflower x Amnesia autoflower XXL) and one of the very popular and acclaimed Z terp family, Purple Berry Muffinz (Purple Bud x Blueberry Muffin x Zkittlez). But arguably more important than the lineage of new cannabis varieties is the emblem of what they represent. Inheriting the genetics of the first cannabis seed bank, The Seed Bank of Holland from Nevil Schoenmakers, his Sensi Seeds have brought the world’s classic cultivars such as Sativa dominance. Jack Herer It has been in the business of selling cannabis seeds from its home base in the Netherlands since the 1980’s.Established in 2001 in California’s Emerald Triangle, Humboldt Seed Company stocks a vast array of phenohunts, their signature strains and more. has built a reputation as a trusted breeder through its award-winning cannabis. full berry muffinThe 2023 merger of the two companies is reminiscent of how cannabis breeding began in the 1970s. That’s when people like Sam the Skunkman and Ed Rosenthal inspired the synthesis of European and Californian cannabis genetics to produce the first cannabis hybrids.
“When I first heard about The Seed Bank, the predecessor of what is now Sensi Seeds, my uncle had a shed where he kept all his gardening supplies and hid them in that shed. high times I remember sneaking into his cabin, reading a magazine. high times and behind high times I saw an ad for The Seed Bank,” explains Benjamin Lind, co-founder and chief scientific officer of the Humboldt Seed Company. “And I just clicked like, ‘Wow, I can actually order seeds.'”
From an early age, Lindo had watched his family create cannabis hybrids and learned the importance of seeds in securing the next year’s harvest. Sensi Seeds, he says, was the first cannabis seed company to appear in his vision while eating early morning lychee berries he obtained from one of Barcelona’s famous food markets. And when he met the people behind the company decades later and toured their facilities, he knew the breeding work they were doing matched his own.
“A lot of our processes are very similar,” he says. “All breeders are different in how they breed cannabis and few share similar beliefs and philosophies, but we get along very well.”
It’s no mere coincidence that two similar ideas in the world of cannabis breeding have come together. It is the result of years of hard work by cannabis cultivation expert Ed Rosenthal. and merge. Rosenthal’s relationship with Sensi Seeds goes back many years. A mutual friend who had a cannabis club and magazine introduced Rosenthal to his Ben Dronkers, founder of Sensi Seeds, in the 1980s.Once introduced, the two began working together Museum in Amsterdam dedicated to the history of the cannabis plant First opened in 1987.
“At the same time Neville [Schoenmakers] Because he was indicted, he sold his business, the seed bank. [Sensi Seeds] And he flew off into the Australian wilderness and was never brought to the United States,” explains Rosenthal. “We are close and then [Dronkers] At various times they hired me to do the work and I think they put $50,000 to $100,000 into the defense. ”
The defense referred to by Rosenthal is federal court It began in the early 2000s when he was convicted of three felony charges related to growing and selling marijuana. After the trial, jurors, who had not been provided with key information that Rosenthal had been commissioned by the city of Oakland, California to grow medical marijuana, condemned their verdicts, and in 2003 Rosenthal was finally sentenced to death. He was sentenced to one day in prison. Offer time.
Rosenthal calls Sensi Seeds, now run by Dronkers’ son Ravi Dronkers, a “legacy family” and sees them interacting with the Humboldt Seed Company, noting that “the culture isn’t all that different. ” he said.
“I knew this was the way to go, so I did everything to make sure it wasn’t messed up,” he says. “I’m really excited about this. This is going to be very big.”
The announcement of the collaboration took place during the second iteration of the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum in Barcelona in mid-March, when guests were invited to sing their joints in bowls filled with Spanish blueberry cookies, accompanied by birch flutes. can be rolled. Those in attendance included Jack Heller’s son, Dan Heller, who was spotted snapping pictures of his father’s framed photograph that was displayed in one of the rooms dedicated to hemp. In a gray market country, smoking and enjoying flowers and concentrates takes place in private cannabis-friendly social clubs and spaces. This obviously includes a cannabis-themed museum during private events, but a restaurant that pulls down roll-up doors to give diners the discretion to smoke weed at their tables while the waiters light up. is also included.
In a candid evening conversation after a smoky dinner in Barcelona, Rosenthal discussed cannabis breeding with Nathaniel Pennington, co-founder and CEO of Humboldt Seed Company. The basis of cannabis breeding is creating new representations of the plant by crossing or pollinating female flowers with pollen from male plants. F1, or first generation, is when a breeder crosses two of his landraces (breeds native to a particular area and not bred) or when a breeder crosses two of his inbred lines. occurs. Final crossing results, published by a reputable seed company, come after at least four generations of her inbreeding. The reason strains are inbred or crossed from plants that share similar genetics is to stabilize the seeds to ensure that they retain similar physical characteristics once they are grown into plants. Cannabis plants have a complex set of DNA and, like two sisters in the same family, when two cultivars are put together the result is not genetically identical but similar, known as phenotype. will have a different expression. The art of creating cannabis seeds involves the painstaking work of reaching a point where all seeds have the same expression. This is a process known as genetic stabilization.
“When it comes to breeding, it’s not a true science until it’s reproducible,” explains Pennington. “[True breeding doesn’t occur] Until you do the same experiment, I’d expect the same seed population to be multiplied by the same seed population to give the same phenotypic results. And if you can’t replicate that experiment, you haven’t really accomplished anything other than creating a clone strain that can be cloned and propagated forever, but that’s a bit of a handicap if you ask me.
In a world full of companies making dubious claims about seed lineage stability, some companies like Sensi Seeds and Humboldt Seed Company stick to the science. , to contribute to the diverse gene expression of the world’s most popular flowers, blessing humanity with cultivars that can be trusted across oceans and territorial boundaries.
“Both of our families have worked for generations to maintain the best strains and bring them to the modern market,” Lind said in a press release about the breeding grounds project. We both evolved on different continents with different selection pressures, and although we live in worlds apart, we have very similar philosophies based on our love and respect for plants.Amsterdam It was only natural to cross-pollinate the best of California with the best of Northern California.”
