Talk:Hunza

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Discussion for: Hunza • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Hunza treats Hunza as a cannabis growing area: the valley of the Hunza river in the Karakoram, drawn on the present Hunza District. The valleys of Nagar across the river are treated at Hispar Valley and Hopar Valley, and the town of Gilgit at Gilgit.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Hunza is a growing area

• The page rests on one seed lot that names a place below the province: P.I. 390147 in the United States plant inventory for 1974 (Plant Inventory No. 182, p. 178, read on the page scan). It gives hemp, "About 16 km southwest of Karimabad, Hunza District", used as a source of oil and called Thunj locally.
• The entry does not say whether the hemp was sown or wild. The safflower lot next to it is marked "Crop sown April and harvested in September"; the hemp lot has no such line. A seed lot gathered for its oil is taken here as a harvest.
• Salim and colleagues (2019), Table 2, record thoonch (Cannabis sativa) at Hunza, with the seed used directly. They record use, not growing.

Growing status

• The status is Active. Seed of a charas landrace named Hunza Valley, collected by Angus Pretty, was received by the United States genebank in August 2024 (GRIN-Global G 33899, read 20 October 2026). Its coordinates (36.3167, 74.6500) are about 1 km from Karimabad, inside the border. The survey of 2017–2018 (Salim and colleagues) records thoonch seed in use at Hunza.
• The genebank record gives no year of collection ("pre 2024") and no narrative beyond "Another charas landrace" and a germination note. The survey records the use of the seed, not where it was grown. No source read describes cannabis fields in Hunza.
• The earliest dated record is the seed lot received in the United States in 1974; the inventory gives no date of collection. Active areas show no first year in the infobox.

Where the 1974 seed came from

• "About 16 km southwest of Karimabad" is not exact. Measured in a straight line, 16 km south-west of Karimabad falls across the Hunza river in today's Nagar District, about 4 km outside the Hunza District border. If the figure is a distance by road down the valley, the place could lie on the Hunza bank. The inventory does not say how it was measured.
• The inventory's "Hunza District" is its own label of 1974 and need not match the present district. The same page files Gilgit under it: "Gilgit, Hunza District" and "Bazaar in Gilgit, Hunza District".
• Thunj (the inventory), thoonch (Salim and colleagues) and thoonch or thounch (Qureshi and colleagues, 2007, at Gilgit) are spellings of one local name. Salim and colleagues also give thoonch as one name of Capparis spinosa.

How the border is drawn

• The border is Hunza District in OpenStreetMap (relation 15808174), fetched 20 October 2026 and simplified. It lies inside the Karakoram border. The area figure in the infobox, about 11,350 km², is rounded from the border; the government of Gilgit-Baltistan gives the district as 10,109 km².
• The district is a proxy. No source read maps where cannabis grew in Hunza. The border was not drawn from accession points.
• The map point (36.32, 74.66) is Karimabad.

Accessions

• VIB-PAK-GIL-0100000001 (Hunza General Population, from the Vibes Collective strain guide) is filed under this area because its name places it in Hunza. Its stored point and the strain guide's own map position disagree (see Talk:Karakoram).
• G 33899 (Hunza Valley, 2024) has no accession page here yet. A second lot from the same donor, G 34123 Raat Hunza Valley (received 2026), is "Actually from Nagar Valley, Pakistan (near Hunza)" by the donor's own note, so it belongs with Nagar, not with this area.
• P.I. 390147 has no record in GRIN-Global, the database of the United States genebank, when searched in October 2026: its accession page is empty, and the full list of the genebank's Cannabis holdings (873 lots, read 3 October 2026) does not include it. The lot has no accession page here.

Sources

• Plant Inventory No. 182 (United States Department of Agriculture, March 1976): title page and p. 178 read on the page scans. Howard L. Hyland signs the introduction as botanist.
• Salim and colleagues (2019): Table 2 and the methods (survey January 2017 to May 2018, six districts) read in full.
• Karakoram Conference report (Himalayan Journal 10, 1938): read in full on the Himalayan Club's site.
• Gilgit-Baltistan at a Glance 2025: district table, p. 3.
• Not used: a record in the Himalayan Uplands Plant database with the locality "Hunza/Northern Areas" (no date, no collector, no habitat). Qureshi and colleagues (2007) visited Aliabad, Karimabad and Nasirabad, but their cannabis entry is not tied to any of their localities.

What the sources do not cover

• No source read describes cannabis fields, growers or a growing season in Hunza.