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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, Landrace IBL, Hybrid, Other or Unknown), 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: 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 accession's seed lots and their status, the population it belongs to with that population's field grade and holdings, 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. On the accession maps, the marker colour reflects the status of the accession's seed lot (see #Conservation priority).
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:
Regional Complex is the large physical region the accession's growing area lies in, such as the Hindu Kush Himalaya or the Mekong Basin. It is not entered on the accession: the infobox shows the regional complex of the growing area, or of the growing region where the area has none.
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
Conservation need is read for each population, not scored on the accession page. A population is every field and feral stand that passes seed or pollen between them often enough to count as one pool, whatever the village boundaries. An accession names its population in the infobox, in the Population row, where one has been set; not every accession has one yet. See Help:Populations. The wiki gives an accession no priority of its own and gives a region no status.
Two readings are kept for a population.
Field grade says how threatened the population is in the field. It is worked out on the population's own page from threat items scored one by one, such as loss of planted area over ten years, the number of households that save seed, how many growers are left and how old they are, and eradication by the authorities. The grade runs from Very high, the most threatened, through High, Moderate, Low, Very low and Near threatened to Least concern. It reads Data deficient while too few items are scored (16 of 23 for a cultivated population, 9 of 13 for a feral one) and once the evidence is more than ten years old.
Holdings says whether the population's seed is safe in someone's hands. It comes from the seed lots recorded for the population and reads Urgent, At risk, Secure or Data deficient. Only a lot of collected seed, or of seed regrown with documented isolation, counts as a verified copy. Lots held by a genebank that does not give seed to growers are not rated and do not count. A population with no seed lot recorded reads Urgent, because no verified copy is known to be held, and the page says beside it that no lot has been recorded yet.
On an accession's page, the Conservation section of the infobox shows the accession's seed lots with their status, then the population's field grade and holdings. On the accession maps, each pin takes the colour of the accession's own seed lot status: red for Urgent, orange for At risk, green for Secure, blue for a genebank lot, and grey where the lot has no data yet or too little to rate, or where no lot is recorded. An accession with several lots takes the most urgent. Help:Seed lots explains each status.
The populations are ranked on Grow-out priorities, in two lists: those with no verified copy held anywhere, which can be secured only by collecting again, and those with at least one, which can be grown out. That page also carries a map of the populations coloured by holdings.
Classification
Every accession is classified by the kind of population its material was taken from. The values are defined on Property:Has classification:
Landrace is a crop grown and kept by local people at the place the accession names. This is the primary focus of Landrace.Wiki.
Feral is a population growing outside cultivation: escaped, weedy, ruderal or wild-growing.
Landrace IBL is an inbred line stabilised from a landrace.
Hybrid is a documented cross between populations of different origin, or a line descended from one.
Other is material the evidence places outside these four classes: a plant grown in a botanic garden or a research station, a named variety, or seed sent from elsewhere.
Unknown means the evidence does not decide the class. Most herbarium sheets whose labels give no habitat or cultivation statement are Unknown.
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.