Afropips

Afropips
Type	Cannabis seed breeder and retailer
Website	afropips.com (archived)
Focus	African cannabis seed lines and hybrids

Afropips was a cannabis seed business that sold lines described as African landrace cannabis alongside hybrids. Its website said that the business began in 2000 under a founder known as Afroman. The surviving catalogue and later sellers' accounts document lines named Malawi Gold and Nigerian, but do not establish the original field collection sites or dates for either.

Early biographical account

A first-person biography headed "Afropips" appeared in a breeders' history compilation posted by ICMag member zeppelindood in February 2005. It describes cannabis from Transkei, Swazi, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe before naming Malawi as the speaker's preferred source. The account says the speaker moved to England in 2000 and began making African hybrids there. The post does not identify the biography's original author.

Catalogue

The archived Afropips website divided its stock into African Pure, African Hybrid and Medical Seeds sections. Its December 2010 homepage offered products named Blue Cheese, Malawi and Nigerian. The site described its seeds as organically produced, selected and pressure-tested, claims for which no independent test was found.

The SeedFinder breeder database records 25 named Afropips varieties: Blue Cheese, Durban Poison, Fast Blast, Grenadella, Mabombe, MalSP, Malaki, Malawi Gold, Malawi Mini, Malberino, Malberry, Mr Majestyk, Nigerian, Nigerian 99, Nigerian x Afghan, Platinum, Power Malawi, Sangoma, Senegal Haze, Southern Ice, Swazi Red, Sweet Malawi, Sweet White Malawi, Tribal Vision and Triple Treat. The database is a record of names attributed to the business; it does not establish that all 25 were sold at the same time or that each was collected in the place suggested by its name. Afropips' own description included F1 hybrids made with non-African parent lines.

Malawi Gold

SeedFinder preserves a product description attributed to Afropips that calls Malawi Gold a traditional landrace selected after ten years of experience with Malawi growers. It gives a flowering period of 14–16 weeks and lists its THC content as unknown. Its claim that a particular effect resulted from THCV is not accompanied by a chemical analysis.

The Real Seed Company (RSC) identifies Afropips, via a collector community, as the source of its Malawi Gold 2019 IBL seed line. RSC says Jim of Afropips maintained the line outside Malawi for decades and used it to make Malberry, a cross with Blueberry. RSC says it obtained a selected line through a collector and that, to its knowledge, the line had not been outcrossed. Its listing calls the source a Nkhotakota landrace but gives no original collection date, site, farmer or collector.

Nigerian line

ACE Seeds says a Nigerian cultivar in the later Khalifa Genetics catalogue had belonged to Afropips. According to ACE, a collector community kept the line after the Afropips seedbank shut down, Khalifa Genetics obtained it in 2020 and the first reproduction produced a high proportion of hermaphrodites. ACE says two further controlled open pollinations improved sexual stability; its current listing labels the seed P4. These are the later sellers' accounts of their stock. The listing does not document where or when Afropips obtained the original seed.

Website and later availability

In August 2010 a CannaWeed forum participant reported that Seedsman could no longer restock Afropips Malawi Gold and that the Afropips site was down. Other participants reported a new site and renewed availability in December 2010. A Wayback Machine capture from 27 December 2010 preserves an Afropips shop with seed packs listed for sale. Forum participants described Seedsman promotions and Afropips packs they purchased in 2011.

ACE Seeds later described the seedbank as having shut down around 2010. A January 2013 capture of afropips.com shows a parked search page. These records do not establish a precise closure date or who operated the site after 2008. The source reports about the breeder and succession are set out below.

Conflicting accounts of the breeder

Forum reports disagree about a death in 2008 and the later operation of Afropips. In August 2009, CannaWeed member Adiba reproduced a message attributed to "Jimmy SNR" saying "Jimmy JNR" had died the previous September and Afropips would continue. Adiba said the report left them unsure whether the breeder or his son had died. Another member later identified the deceased as the son.

In December 2010, CannaWeed member Celebrex quoted text attributed to a new Afropips website saying that "Afroman", named there as James, had died on 1 September 2008 aged 43. Celebrex also wrote that the original breeder no longer ran the business. The quoted site text has not been independently inspected. In May 2012, ICMag member Dave Coulier said he had exchanged emails with "Afroman (Jim)" in 2010 and that the breeder's son had died in 2008. The emails are not available in the thread. In 2023, Overgrow member Roms referred to "RIP Jim" without giving a death date. The surviving accounts do not establish whether these names refer to the same people, who died in 2008 or who operated Afropips afterwards.

See also

• Malawi Gold 2019 IBL