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RESEARCH

Research

Peer-reviewed literature on landrace cannabis, each paper recorded with its authors, venue and source. Coverage spans genomics, chemotype and terroir studies, ethnobotany and the policy research that shapes conservation: 150 papers indexed, published from 1972, filterable below by discipline, type, country, year and venue.

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Thailand

Comparison of self-pollination and intercrossing for feminized seed production in Thai Hang Kra Rok cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) landrace

Tanee Sreewongchai, Pichsiri Srikul, Amonrat Mayong, Weerachai Matthayatthaworn

Agriculture and Natural Resources · 2026

Compares selfing with intercrossing for producing feminized seed from two Thai landrace accessions of Hang Kra Rok cannabis, one from Bangkok and one from Sakon Nakhon. Female cuttings were treated with colloidal silver to induce male flowers, and the progeny were grown in a plant factory with artificial lighting. Both selfed lines and the Sakon Nakhon by Bangkok cross gave 100% female plants, while the reciprocal cross produced one hermaphrodite (5.6%). Dry inflorescence weight did not differ between treatments, and the Bangkok selfed line had the highest THC content at 6.58%. The plants were grown under artificial light, so the chemistry is not field chemistry.

India

Tracing the roots of illicit Cannabis: A machine learning-assisted ATR-FTIR proof-of-concept study for geographical origin classification

Mahan Singh, Akanksha Sharma, Vishal Sharma

Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy · 2026

Tests whether ATR-FTIR spectroscopy combined with machine learning can classify the geographical origin of seized cannabis. A total of 200 female flower-top samples from four distinct regions of North India gave 1000 spectral observations, which were reduced by principal component analysis and used to train four models. An artificial neural network classified best in training and was validated on test data and on unknown data, and the third principal component, linked to holocellulose, lignin, pectin, THCA and THC, contributed most. The abstract does not name the four regions.

South Africa

Cross of Green: Substance and Value in South Africa's Shifting Cannabis Policy

Thembisa Waetjen, Andy Gray

Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa · 2025

Examines the making of South Africa's Cannabis for Private Purposes Act (Act 7 of 2024) for what it shows about the changing "commodity candidacy" of cannabis, which has moved from a dangerous drug towards what officials call green gold. The authors argue that uneven official efforts to standardise the material and molecular elements of cannabis and to define the private sit awkwardly beside competing claims about cultural freedom, national development and private profit. They note that the Act regulates adult use narrowly and leaves the terms of commercial exchange unclear.

Thailand

Standardized Curcuma longa–Cannabis sativa extract derived from a traditional Thai formulation for psoriasis: anti-inflammatory activity, keratinocyte modulation, and skin-targeted delivery

Piyaporn Thorajak, Jintana Junlatat, Tarapong Srisongkram, Sarunya Tuntiyasawasdikul

Journal of Ethnopharmacology · 2026

Evaluates a standardised combined extract of Curcuma longa rhizomes and Cannabis sativa leaves, which the authors describe as a traditional Thai topical remedy prepared in cottonseed oil. The extract was standardised by HPLC against curcuminoids, ar-turmerone and cannabidiol (35.47 mg/g), then tested for anti-inflammatory activity in macrophages, psoriasis-relevant activity in keratinocytes and skin deposition in porcine ear skin. The authors report anti-inflammatory activity and preferential skin deposition. The study itself is pharmacology.

Iran

Dynamic changes in essential oil yield and terpenoid composition across growth stages in hemp cultivars

Mahnaz Abdollahi, Fatemeh Sefidkon, Mohsen Calagari

Journal of Essential Oil Research · 2026

Measures essential oil yield and composition in four hemp cultivars at vegetative, flowering and seed-setting stages by GC and GC/MS. Two are non-native monoecious types (Fedora 17 and Fed17-2) and two are native dioecious types (Fars and Yazd). Cultivar and growth stage both affected oil yield, which was highest in Fed17-2 (0.87%) and lowest in Fedora 17 (0.54%) and generally rose with maturity. Monoterpenes ranged from 7.9% to 50.9% and sesquiterpenes from 46.6% to 86.6%, and some sesquiterpenes followed cultivar-specific patterns between the native and foreign cultivars. The abstract calls Fars and Yazd native types, not landraces, and the chemistry is essential oil, not cannabinoids.

India

Cannabis in India: Combining Technology and Tradition for Medicinal Use

Saumya Krishna

SSRN · 2026

An unrefereed overview of cannabis in India, which the author calls ganja or bhang in several regional languages. It follows the plant through the ancient scriptures, including the Vedas and the Atharvaveda, its place in religious ceremony and Ayurvedic practice, its association with the worship of Lord Shiva, and current scientific and socio-political discussion of its use. The paper is unrefereed.

India

Ethnobotanical wealth of the Indian Himalaya: a synthesis of useful species, traditional knowledge and conservation priorities

Bhawana Dangwal, Dhani Arya, Indra Dutt Bhatt, Suresh Kumar Rana

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine · 2026

A PRISMA systematic review of useful species reported from the Indian Himalaya, documenting 5,404 species, of which 96.4% were medicinal. Among the medicinal plants, the authors give the highest use values to Acorus calamus, Centella asiatica, Phyllanthus emblica, Cannabis sativa and Picrorhiza kurroa. Cannabis is one species among thousands in this synthesis, and the use values are drawn from the literature, not from the authors' own fieldwork.

Indonesia

An Integrated Legal Framework for Marijuana Cultivation on State Land: Criminal Law, Land Administration, and Restorative Justice

Budi Rizky Husin, Deni Achmad, Ninin Ernawati

Vifada Assumption Journal of Law · 2026

A normative legal study of cannabis cultivation on state land in Indonesia, using legislation, institutional documents and selected data from the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The authors treat the problem as one of criminal liability, uncertain land tenure and weak natural resource governance, and find that existing responses remain predominantly punitive. They propose a framework that joins criminal enforcement, land administration and restorative justice, with stronger inter-agency coordination. The abstract does not name the provinces covered.

Thailand

Factors influencing hemp cultivation practices among farmers in northern Thailand

Ritdeach Suta, Juthathip Chalermphol, Rut Sirisunyaluk, Budsara Limnirunkul

The Proceedings of the 64th Kasetsart University Annual Conference: Plants, Animals, Veterinary Medicine, Fisheries, Agricultural Extension and Home Economics · 2026

A questionnaire survey of 336 registered hemp farmers in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Tak provinces in northern Thailand, analysed by multiple linear regression. Most respondents were full-time farmers with small households and limited cultivation areas. Positions in farmer groups, access to cultivation information, training participation and province significantly influenced cultivation practices, while some socioeconomic factors were not significant. The authors conclude that stronger farmer organisations, extension services and training could support sustainable hemp cultivation in the region. The paper is a conference paper (pp. 181-190 of the proceedings).

South Africa

Establishing Cottage Industries to Manufacture Hemp Fabric and Traditional Attire in Rural Areas in Kwazulu-Natal and Eastern Cape for Job Creation and Poverty Alleviation

Moses Mbendela Mlangeni, Lorraine Greyling, Devi Datt Tewari

Empowering Communities (Emerald Publishing) · 2026

A development proposal for cottage hemp industries in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, using villages known for illegal cannabis cultivation in Bergville (KwaZulu-Natal) and Lusikisiki (Eastern Cape) as case studies. The authors present a model in which 15 cooperatives process hemp grown on 50 hectares into 15,000 traditional clothing items, and that, with Bergville and Lusikisiki as case studies, 405 permanent jobs can be created across the entire value chain. They say the government may need to subsidise hemp farming and processing because start-up costs are high. The figures are projections from the model, not fieldwork results.

China

Genomic variation in 271 diverse accessions of Cannabis sativa L. in China

Baishi Wang, Shan Gao, Xue Wang, Quanzheng Yun, Hao Nie, Ning Li, Yonggang Li, Deri Feng, Linsen Li, Tianye Li, Xu Lu, Jingjing Liu, Xuge Wei, Yanhong Mu, Qiqi Wu, Jinyuan Hu, Fangru Liu, Rui Feng, Jianyu Yin, Qikun Zhang, Ying Zhang, Fu Ren

BMC Plant Biology · 2026

Reports whole-genome resequencing of 271 accessions of Cannabis sativa from 29 populations in 12 Chinese provinces, calling 2,699,120 SNPs and 42,201 InDels against the reference assembly. The authors resolve five genetic clusters whose relatedness follows geographic origin, and run selective sweep scans between northern and southern Xinjiang, across the Xinjiang-Xizang divergence and between southwestern and northeastern populations. A genome-wide association study points to CBDAS as a candidate gene for CBD content, while no candidate gene could be assigned to THC. The abstract does not say how many accessions are landraces, wild collections or breeding lines.

Colombia

Knowledge translation and evidence use in medicinal cannabis policy: An evidence brief on regulation, effectiveness, safety and stakeholder support in Colombia

Pamela Velásquez-Salazar, David García, Isabel Cristina Marín, Claudia Yaneth Campuzano-Giraldo, Viviana Vélez-Marín, Claudia Marcela Vélez, Juan Carlos Velásquez, Paola Andrea Ramírez, Daniel Felipe Patiño-Lugo

Health Research Policy and Systems · 2026

A knowledge-translation study from the Unit of Evidence and Deliberation for Decision Making at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, reporting how an evidence brief on the regulation, effectiveness, safety and stakeholder support of medicinal cannabis was assembled and put before Colombia's Ministry of Health. Its interest for the corpus is procedural rather than botanical: it documents how research evidence and stakeholder opinion were marshalled into a national cannabis regulatory process, in a producer country whose policy record the wiki otherwise holds through enforcement reporting.

Thailand

Mekong Risk Monitor, Issue No. 3 (August 2026): Thailand's cannabis boom has become a pipeline for illicit exports

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Mekong Risk Monitor, Mekong Network to Counter Transnational Crimes (MNET-CTC) · 2026

The first story of the third Mekong Risk Monitor issue (pages 4 to 7 of the PDF), on smuggling from Thailand's legal cannabis market. It sets the sector's legal history from the 2019 medical amendment to the Ministry of Public Health's announcement on 1 April 2026 that dispensaries have three years to become medical clinics. It reports 786 trafficking cases (4,598 kilograms) in 2024 against 3,135 cases (34,719 kilograms) in 2025, and a task force at the main airports that recorded 789 attempted smuggling cases between February and December 2025. The monitor also reports seizures of Thai cannabis in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, and says that many smaller producers supply illegal overseas markets. The issue names no authors; this entry covers the first story only.

CannSelect: A High-Quality Genotyping Platform for Cannabis sativa

Dustin G. Wilkerson, George M. Stack, Craig H. Carlson, Michael A. Quade, Caroline A. Dowling, Jacob A. Toth, Maylin J. Murdock, Jean Jasinski, Zachary J. Stansell, John K. McKay, Lawrence B. Smart

bioRxiv · 2026

Introduces CannSelect, a targeted genotyping platform for Cannabis sativa designed for diversity analyses and trait mapping. Probe targets were chosen from four genotyped diversity panels and a curated gene list. The authors used the platform to map day-neutrality in a segregating population to the Autoflower1 locus, with average capture efficiencies of 88.5%, and describe the design of CannSelect v1.0 and its performance in diverse genome assemblies. The paper is a method preprint.

Korea

Evaluating the Industrial Potential of Domestic Hemp Cultivars for Medical Production

Gwonjeong Bok, Seungyong Hahm, Byungjun Kim, Jongseok Park

Horticultural Science and Technology · 2026

Grows five hemp cultivars for 15 weeks in a closed-type growth chamber in Korea, two domestic (V1 and V4) and three foreign (Cherry Blossom, Hot Blonde and Queen Dream), and compares morphology, antioxidant activity and cannabinoids. The domestic cultivars followed a high-biomass strategy, with V4 the tallest at 78.0 cm, while the foreign cultivars reached higher cannabidiolic and tetrahydrocannabinolic acid levels in mid-flowering. The domestic cultivars kept total THC below the 0.3% regulatory threshold, which the authors present as a compliance buffer. The abstract calls them domestic cultivars and does not describe them as landraces.

South Africa

Mapping pathways to an inclusive and competitive cannabis industry in South Africa through systems thinking and systems dynamics modelling

Siphokazi Ngcinela, Sibongile S. Tekana

Journal of Environmental Management · 2026

Applies systems thinking and system dynamics modelling to South Africa's National Cannabis Master Plan. Using policy documents and comparative international experience, the authors find that implementation has been "fragmented and exclusionary", particularly for smallholder, rural and traditional cultivators, and identify centralised licensing, limited access to finance and weak institutional coordination as barriers. They test five policy scenarios over ten years: decentralised licensing, access to finance and cooperative support give higher smallholder participation than the status quo, and export facilitation gives larger gains in cultivated area than in participation.

Morocco · Rif Mountains

The expansion of cannabis cultivation and the problem of natural resource degradation in the south-central Rif: the Taounate circle

Mohammed Hini, Mohammed Errafik, Fatima Zahra Boujaddi

Géomatique et Gestion des Territoires · 2026

Studies the spread of cannabis cultivation in the Taounate circle of the south-central Rif since the 1990s, using a questionnaire of 200 farmers, bibliographic work and mapping. The authors say cannabis drew farmers in for its rent value and high returns, especially after the hybrid varieties Khardala and Tritika arrived. They report cannabis taking land from cereals and pulses, a decline in livestock keeping, loss of forest cover, more erodible soils and greater pressure on water, alongside better incomes for cannabis growers and sharper conflict over land and water. Taounate lies outside the historic kif core, so the paper documents an expansion zone.

Colombia

When Effective Implementation Meets Paradigmatic Failure: Evaluating Colombia's Medical Cannabis Policy

Luis Rivera-Vélez

International Review of Public Policy · 2026

Evaluates Colombia's medical cannabis reform by separating paradigmatic failure from implementation failure and policy design failure, on the basis of 25 semi-structured interviews with public officials, entrepreneurs and civil society actors. The author finds the pharmaceutical model largely successful in implementation, with regulations adopted swiftly, a licensing system established and a small export-oriented industry emerging. However, "overregulation, the exclusion of small producers, and limited domestic access" show a growing misalignment between the policy's assumptions and the realities it governs.

A small number of major QTL clusters underpin cannabinoid and monoterpene diversity in Cannabis sativa

Rekhamani Das, Erwin Tandayu, Razlin Azman Halimi, Nicolas Dimopoulos, Paolo Miguel Siazon, Jos Cornelis Mieog, Tobias Kretzschmar

SSRN · 2026

Maps quantitative trait loci for major cannabinoids and terpenes in an F2 population of 155 female plants from a cross between a CBD-dominant and a THC-dominant landrace with contrasting monoterpene compositions. The plants were propagated clonally and phenotyped in two protected cropping environments. Four major cannabinoids were controlled by a single locus on chromosome 7 and six abundant monoterpenes by a single locus on chromosome 5, and expression analysis of glandular trichomes from both parents pointed to cannabinoid and terpene synthase candidate genes near the peak markers. The abstract does not name the two landraces.

Morocco · Rif Mountains

Terroir-driven phenolic chemotypes and antioxidant/antimicrobial activities of Beldia (Cannabis sativa L.) seed extracts

Oumayma Boussetta, Oussama Khibech, Abdessadek Essadek, Shehdeh Jodeh, Meryem Idrissi Yahyaoui, Abdeslam Asehraou, Chin-Hung Lai, Mohammed Ramdani

Journal of Cannabis Research · 2026

Compares the phenolic composition of defatted seed extracts from the Moroccan Beldia landrace collected at three localities in the Rif: Ketama, Taounate and Ouazzane. HPLC-DAD profiling separated the localities, with Ouazzane samples highest in total phenolics and flavonoids, Ketama samples showing the strongest DPPH radical scavenging and Taounate samples shifted towards vanillic acid against a general dominance of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid. The authors attribute the variation to Moroccan terroir. The study concerns seed chemistry rather than resin, so it does not speak to hashish composition. Its three localities correspond to documented Rif growing areas and it sits alongside the other Moroccan terroir records in this corpus.

Thailand

From Cultural Heritage to Emerging Economic Crop: State Agricultural Policy and Local Hemp Development in Khiri Rat Subdistrict, Phop Phra District, Tak Province, Thailand

Wasan Pounpunwong

Journal of Thai Studies · 2026

A qualitative case study of hemp policy in Khiri Rat subdistrict, Tak Province, where the author describes hemp as part of the cultural heritage, domestic economy and textile practice of Hmong communities. It analyses policy documents and fieldwork from April to July 2025, with thirteen participants drawn from policy and institutions, community enterprises and hemp growers. The author finds that the 2023 to 2027 hemp action plan is a developmental and coordinating approach, and that implementation is held back by complex licensing, uneven access to technical and regulatory knowledge, limited processing infrastructure and unstable markets, despite favourable geography and longstanding Hmong expertise.

Screening Diverse Cannabis sativa Germplasm for Resistance to Golovinomyces ambrosiae

Lucia Vignale, Jocelyn A. Schwartz, Zachary Stansell, Tyler Gordon, Christine D. Smart, Lawrence B. Smart

Plant Disease · 2026

Screens between 70 and 98 Cannabis sativa entries for resistance to Golovinomyces ambrosiae, the cause of powdery mildew, over two growing seasons. The panel combines accessions from the USDA-ARS germplasm repository with breeding lines and commercial cultivars spanning different geographic origins. Several entries showed consistently low disease severity across both years. The authors present the data as broadening the public phenotypic record available to users of germplasm collections.

Cannabis Sativa, religion and society: Historical, medicinal, legal, and sacramental perspectives

Norman Nyazema, Jo Nel

Acta Theologica · 2026

Traces the origins and cultural diffusion of Cannabis sativa, its introduction to Southern Africa and its historical medicinal use, alongside the history of its criminalisation and its place in several religious traditions. The article takes sacramental and legal framings together and complements the Southern African historical records already in this corpus.

South Africa

Value capture in the emerging medical cannabis global value chain: insights from South Africa

Andrew Bowman

International Journal of Drug Policy · 2026

Analyses the legal medical Cannabis global value chain in South Africa through 34 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2021 and 2024 with cultivators, brokers, consultants and civil society. Cultivators reported regulatory complexity, intensifying competition, imbalances in bargaining power and quality conventions requiring both artisanal sensory character and pharmaceutical rigour. The author argues that barriers to entry and the capital cost of upgrading push suppliers towards commoditisation and price volatility. The conclusion is that medical Cannabis export is unlikely to serve as inclusive development for small-scale growers in the Global South without substantial policy support.

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Contributing to Research

Research indexes the peer-reviewed and grey literature that documents landrace cannabis populations, their genetics, chemistry, cultivation and governance. One record per paper.

1. Create a Research Item page
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Every field must match the canonical record. A DOI alone is not enough.

3. Summarise, do not argue
State what the paper reports and attribute its claims to it.

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Add Country and Growing Region when the paper studies a named population.

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