Central Tuvan Basin
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| Central Tuvan Basin | |
|---|---|
| Центрально-Тувинская котловина | |
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Russia |
| Province/State | Tuva |
| Coordinates | 51.47, 93.65 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 86,500 km² |
| Terrain | Approximately eleven kozhuuns (districts) of Tuva north of the Tannu-Ola, with Kyzyl and Ak-Dovurak |
| Growing history | |
| Dated accessions | 1946 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 1 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
The Central Tuvan Basin is a cannabis growing area in Tuva, Russia, in the basin of the upper Yenisei and its tributary the Khemchik. Weedy hemp, Cannabis ruderalis, grows in patches over large parts of Tuva that were once under the crops and farms of Soviet collective and state farms. The large patches lie mainly in the Central Tuvan basin, near settlements, livestock farms and herders' camps and on abandoned fields.[1] In 2024 the municipalities of the republic reported about 2,460 hectares of wild-growing hemp.[2]
Geography
The area is drawn on whole administrative units of Tuva: the Ulug-Khem, Chaa-Khol, Chedi-Khol, Dzun-Khemchik, Barun-Khemchik, Bai-Taiga, Sut-Khol, Tandinsky, Kyzylsky, Kaa-Khem and Pii-Khem kozhuuns (districts), with the capital, Kyzyl, and the town of Ak-Dovurak. It lies north of the Tannu-Ola range and covers about 86,500 km². Besides the floor of the basin along the Yenisei and the Khemchik, with the towns of Shagonar and Chadan, it takes in the mountain slopes around it: the Western Sayan to the north and the mountains of Kaa-Khem District to the east. Tes-Khem District, south of the Tannu-Ola, and the north-east, the south and the south-west of the republic lie outside it.
Hemp as a crop
Russian settlers grew hemp in Tuva, then known as the Uryankhai Krai, before the First World War. Around 1910 the village of Turan had 75 households and 437 inhabitants. Each household worked on average 17 desyatinas of land, sown with oats, rye, wheat, buckwheat, hemp, flax, cabbage, potatoes and cucumbers.[3]
Wild stands
On 6 July 1946 A. I. Shreter, gathering the plants of Central Tuva, collected ruderal hemp among chiy grass on the site of an old herders' camp at the eastern foot of Mount Khayyrakan in Ulug-Khem District (Shreter 2312 (1946)).[4] On 25 July 1975 M. Lomonosova and T. Grushevskaya gathered it on a fallow in the valley of the Erbek, on the southern slope of the Uyuk range.[5]
On the abandoned fields of Central Tuva the first, weedy stage of the return to steppe is dominated by thistle, wormwood and hemp. Some fallows are taken over by a single one of them, and hemp fallows and wormwood fallows are the stage's native communities. A. V. Oorzhak and N. G. Dubrovsky, who described these fallows in 2012, found that the weeds grow in mass in the third and fourth years after a field is left.[6] In 2009 the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, noted that the arable land of Tuva had shrunk more than tenfold since 1992, from 257,800 to 24,800 hectares, and that wild-growing hemp there covered at least 30,000 hectares.[7] The republic's agriculture ministry tied the spread of hemp onto arable land above all to the sharp fall in the sown area during the years of perestroika.[8]
M. M. Ondar of Tuvan State University surveyed the stands on foot in the Chaa-Khol, Ulug-Khem and Barun-Khemchik districts. She describes the weedy hemp of Tuva as short, with bluish leaves divided into narrower lobes and with smaller, more numerous flowers. In the stands it covers 40 to 60 per cent of the ground, with 14 to 20 species to 100 m², and it shares dominance with the wormwoods Artemisia scoparia and A. sieversiana. It also grows along roads on meadow pastures, where the plants are smaller than in the stands at livestock farms and reach 60 cm. Ondar notes the view that hemp came to Tuva in 1956 at the start of the virgin-land campaign, its seed brought in with the seed of crops, and that the fields were abandoned when farming declined after perestroika.[1]
Extent and destruction
In September 2001 the agriculture ministry put the land under hemp in the republic at 16,737 hectares. The largest areas were in Dzun-Khemchik, Kaa-Khem and Ulug-Khem, the smallest in Sut-Khol, with 120 hectares.[9] In May 2004 young hemp was sprayed with herbicides on 1,020 hectares in Pii-Khem as a trial.[10] In August 2004 the need to fight the stands was holding up haymaking in many districts; in Ulug-Khem District 1,000 hectares were sprayed with the help of 12 tractors.[11] In 2007 the Federal Drug Control Service counted Tuva, with Buryatia and Chita Oblast, among the most infested territories of Siberia.[12] In 2009 Ivanov counted 222 patches of wild hemp in the republic; 2,204 tonnes had been destroyed there the year before.[7] In 2009 the ministry's specialists estimated that hemp covered 29,000 hectares, far more than the area under grain.[8]
A first survey in May 2012 found 5,060 hectares infested, against 11,462 the year before; in Dzun-Khemchik the area had fallen from 3,800 to 620 hectares. The deputy agriculture minister, Sergei Ondar, put the fall down to a larger sown area and warned that a survey made when the plants were only coming up could be wrong.[13] In 2017 wild hemp was found in 12 districts of the republic, with the largest areas in Ulug-Khem, Dzun-Khemchik, Tandinsky, Kaa-Khem and Barun-Khemchik; 816 hectares of infested land in Bai-Taiga, Dzun-Khemchik, Pii-Khem, Ulug-Khem and Chaa-Khol were sown with fodder grasses.[14]
In December 2020 the head of the republic, Sholban Kara-ool, recalled that 15 years earlier the wild hemp of Tuva had been put at about 30,000 hectares. The deputy agriculture minister, Aelita Kuular, said the area had since fallen tenfold, to no more than 2,177 hectares. One of the republic's leading agronomists remarked that much of the fall had come about naturally: in places the hemp had grown so dense that it harmed its own population.[15] The ministry's figures for 2021, published by Ondar, total 2,178 hectares on the land of Kyzyl and 12 districts. They name the villages: 160 hectares at Chadan, 135 at Torgalyg in Ulug-Khem, 73.5 at Kara-Khaak and 70.3 at Tselinnoye in Kyzylsky District, and 80 at Chaa-Khol.[1] In 2021 the police ordered officials to destroy patches found in Kyzyl and Ak-Dovurak, in the settlement of Kaa-Khem and in the Pii-Khem, Barun-Khemchik, Tandinsky and Kaa-Khem districts. In Kyzyl they grew in the Youth Park and on 6 hectares of city land near a children's camp.[16]
In 2022 the largest infested areas were in Ulug-Khem, Kaa-Khem and Dzun-Khemchik, and in Ulug-Khem, Kaa-Khem and Barun-Khemchik the plant had spread further than the year before. More than half of the infested land, 1,175 hectares, was treated with herbicides, and a further 500 hectares that had not been recorded were found in several municipalities.[17] In June 2026 the mayor's office of Kyzyl began spraying city land with herbicides against wild-growing hemp.[18]
| District | 2021[1] | 2022[17] |
|---|---|---|
| Ulug-Khem | 575 | 608 |
| Kaa-Khem | 203.3 | 328 |
| Dzun-Khemchik | 270 | 250 |
| Kyzylsky | 235.5 | 226 |
| Barun-Khemchik | 131 | 150 |
| Pii-Khem | 221 | 131 |
| Chaa-Khol | 100 | not given |
| Chedi-Khol | 68 | not given |
| Sut-Khol | 66 | not given |
| Bai-Taiga | 60 | not given |
| Tandinsky | 47 | not given |
| Kyzyl (city) | 21 | not given |
For 2022 the source gives only the six largest districts. Tes-Khem District, outside the area, had 75 hectares in 2021.[1]
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected | Locality | Classification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shreter 2312 (1946) | Shreter 2312 herbarium specimen, Khayyrakan, Ulug-Khem, Tuva, Russia (1946) | Among chiy grass on the site of an old encampment, eastern foot of Mount Khayyrakan, Ulug-Khem raion | Feral |
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Ondar, M.M. (2022). "Мониторинг произрастания конопли сорной (Cannabis ruderalis L.) в Туве". Вестник Тувинского государственного университета. Естественные и сельскохозяйственные науки (in русский) (3 (97)).
- ↑ "В Туве отмечено сокращение площади территории, занятой дикорастущей коноплей". Официальный портал Республики Тыва (in русский). 24 March 2025. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Ryazantsev, S.V.; Smirnov, A.V. (2022). "Из истории заселения русскими Урянхайского края". Oriental Studies (in русский). 15 (5): 979–992. doi:10.22162/2619-0990-2022-63-5-979-992.
- ↑ "Specimen MW0062827: Cannabis ruderalis". Moscow Digital Herbarium. Moscow State University. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ "Specimen MW0062826: Cannabis ruderalis". Moscow Digital Herbarium. Moscow State University. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Oorzhak, A.V.; Dubrovsky, N.G. (2012). "Бурьянистые залежи Центральной Тувы". Вестник Тувинского государственного университета. Естественные и сельскохозяйственные науки (in русский) (2).
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Ivanov, V.P. (2009). "Остановим катастрофу – спасем будущее страны". Государственная служба (in русский) (3).
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Тува намерена извлечь доход из борьбы с дикорастущей коноплей". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). 21 March 2009. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Монгуш, Саяна (12 September 2001). "Борьба с коноплей". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Оюн, Дина (3 August 2004). "Результаты эксперимента по уничтожению дикорастущей конопли оказались положительными". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Заросли конопли мешают проведению сенокоса". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). ГТРК «Тыва». 19 August 2004. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Засоренность земель дикорастущей коноплей в Сибири составляет более 100 тысяч га" (in русский). ИА Амител. 30 May 2007. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Булытова, Чечена (27 June 2012). "Предварительное обследование территории показало снижение конопляных зарослей в Туве". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Усиление мер по уничтожению дикорастущей конопли обсудили на антинаркотической комиссии в Туве". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). 16 November 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Чимит, Алтынай (11 December 2020). "В Туве борьба с наркопреступностью на 2-м месте по СФО и на 10-м по России". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "В Туве уничтожают дикорастущую коноплю". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). 1 July 2021. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 "В Туве уничтожено более двух тысяч гектаров дикорастущей конопли". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). 23 September 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "В Кызыле приступили к сезонному уничтожению дикорастущей конопли". Тува-Онлайн (in русский). 18 June 2026. Retrieved 20 October 2026.