Help:Accessions

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This is a project information page for Landrace.Wiki. It describes the project's standards, processes, or structure. It is not an encyclopaedic article.

This page explains what an accession is on Landrace.Wiki, what you will find on an accession page, and how to interpret the information.

If you want to create a new accession page, see Help:Documenting Accessions instead.

What is an accession?

An accession is a documented sample or observation of a cannabis population at a specific place and time. It is the most granular unit on Landrace.Wiki: one collection event, one location, one set of observations.

An accession might represent seeds collected from a farmer's field, cuttings taken from feral plants along a riverbank, or a detailed observation of a cultivated population without any material being collected. What matters is that someone was there, recorded what they saw, and documented where and when.

Every accession belongs to a place in the geographic hierarchy: a field within a growing area within a growing region within a country. This structure lets you move between scales, from individual populations up to regional patterns and back.

Parts of an accession page

Accession pages have two main components: an infobox on the right side and a set of content sections below.

The infobox

The infobox is the sidebar panel that appears at the top right of every accession page. It gives a quick summary of the accession across several sections:

At a Glance shows the core identifiers: classification (Landrace, Feral, or Hybrid), accession type, selection type, sexual characteristics, chemotype, primary purpose, flowering time range, plant height range, photoperiod response, aroma, and effects.

Botanical Characteristics covers morphology: growth pattern, branching, leaf shape, leaflet count, leaf colour, stem colour, stigma colour, serration, and flower structure.

Processing records how the material is traditionally processed (e.g. ganja, charas, dry-sift, compression curing) and any processing notes.

Hierarchy shows where the accession sits in the geographic classification: gene pool, regional complex, growing region, growing area, appellation, and field. Each of these links to its own page.

Location gives the administrative geography: country, province, district, subdistrict, locality, GPS coordinates, elevation, and aspect.

Traditional Names records local nomenclature: the name used by farmers or communities, its pronunciation, translation, and any synonyms.

Collection covers who collected the material and how: collection method, sourcing type (point of origin, first generation reproduction, etc.), whether the population is autochthonous, collection date, collector, farmer name (always an alias), and expedition ID.

Conservation shows the conservation priority (Critical, High, Medium, or Low), legal enforcement threats, population estimates, male/female ratio, hermaphroditism rate, culling practices, and perceived introgression level.

Cultivation records farming practices: cultivation status, system type, scale, seed sourcing, planting method, planting and harvest dates for up to two annual cycles, soil type, and soil pH.

Preservation tracks seed banking: storage location, seed count, weight, and viability.

Genetic Relationships links parent plants, related accessions, and other accessions from the same population.

Not every section will appear on every page. The infobox only shows sections where data has been entered.

The map

If the accession has GPS coordinates, an interactive map appears in the infobox showing the accession's location. The marker colour reflects the conservation priority: red for Critical, orange for High, amber for Medium, and green for Low.

Coordinates are rounded by approximately 500 metres in prohibition countries to protect farmers. The map shows the general area, not the exact farm.

Content sections

Below the infobox, the accession page may contain prose content added by editors: context about the collection, notes on the local cultivation culture, observations about the population, or references to published research. A gallery section holds photographs, and a smoke reports section links to any community reports on the accession.

The tier system

Accession data is organised into three documentation tiers:

Tier 1 (Essential) is the minimum for a useful record: identification, location, collection details, traditional names, and basic botanical observations. Most accession pages start here.

Tier 2 (Enhanced) adds detailed morphology, cultivation practices, population data, conservation assessment, and processing/effects information. This level of detail usually comes from extended fieldwork or grow-out trials.

Tier 3 (Research Grade) covers laboratory data: cannabinoid percentages, terpene profiles, and genetic analysis. This requires lab testing.

A page does not need all three tiers to be useful. Many accession pages will have thorough Tier 1 data and partial Tier 2 data. Tier 3 is rare and will grow as testing becomes available.

Accession IDs

Every accession has a unique ID that also serves as the page title. The format is:

{COL}-{COUNTRY}-{REGION}-{MMYYYY}{NNNN}

For example, ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250075 is the 75th accession documented by the Zomia Collective in West Bengal, India, in June 2025. The components are: a three-letter collector/organisation code, a three-letter country code, a region abbreviation, a two-digit month and four-digit year, and a four-digit sequential number.

Geographic hierarchy

Every accession sits within a seven-level geographic hierarchy:

Gene Pool and Regional Complex are broad scientific classifications (e.g. "South Asian" or "Mekong Basin"). These are metadata stored on the page but not used for navigation.

Growing Region is the primary geographic grouping (e.g. North Bengal Plains, Northeastern Thailand). Region pages aggregate all accessions and growing areas within them.

Growing Area is a subdivision of a region, usually corresponding to a district or group of districts (e.g. Koch Bihar, Jalpaiguri).

Appellation and Field are the most granular levels: a named area within a growing area and a specific cultivation site within it. These levels are being built out as documentation expands.

You can navigate the hierarchy by following the links in the infobox. Each level links up and down: a growing area page lists its accessions, and an accession page links back to its growing area and region.

For more on the geographic pages themselves, see Help:Geographic pages.

Conservation priority

The conservation priority on accession pages reflects the urgency of preserving that specific population. It uses four levels:

Critical means the population faces immediate risk of loss from active eradication, rapid genetic contamination, or habitat destruction.

High means serious threats exist but loss is not imminent.

Medium means some pressure exists (sporadic enforcement, gradual introgression, declining farmer interest) but the population is currently stable.

Low means the population is relatively secure with minimal threats.

This is separate from the region-level conservation status (which uses an IUCN-adapted scale: Stable, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critical, Extinct, Unknown). The accession-level priority reflects the situation at a single site; the region-level status reflects the broader picture.

Classification

Every accession is classified as one of three types:

Landrace is a traditional, locally adapted population maintained by farmers over generations. This is the primary focus of Landrace.Wiki.

Feral is a population growing without deliberate cultivation, whether escaped from former cultivation or established from discarded material.

Hybrid is a population with known or suspected introgression from modern commercial genetics. These are documented to track the spread of genetic contamination into traditional populations.

Related pages

• Help:Documenting Accessions for creating a new accession page.
• Help:Geographic pages for understanding the geographic hierarchy pages.
• Help:Navigation for finding and browsing accession pages.
• Landrace.Wiki:About for an overview of the project.
• Landrace.Wiki:Norms for project standards on safety and evidence.