Talk:RSC-AFG-BAL-0120190001

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Discussion for: RSC-AFG-BAL-0120190001 • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

RSC-AFG-BAL-0120190001 is about a single collection of cannabis, a seed lot or a herbarium specimen: where and when it was gathered, by whom, and what the sources say about the plants.

Data verification

Check the main page for documentation tier status. Discuss coordinate accuracy, photo quality, or collection details here.

Discussion

Evidentiary scope

The article rests on the RSC listing for Balkhi and on the Kwik Seeds listing of the same line. Kwik Seeds is the shop RSC calls its other site (RSC, Hemp & Multipurpose). Both give the sourcing as "Landrace Genetics" in Balkh, northern Afghanistan. They name no district, village or farmer. They establish that RSC distributes seed of a Balkh population and describe it. They do not establish the collection site or the current status of the source population. The conservation priority (Medium) was entered when the page was created in March 2026. No rationale was recorded. Neither listing states a threat. Éloise 23:19, 16 September 2026 (+07)

Georeferencing

No point is given. Neither listing names a place below Balkh, and RSC's latitude of about 36° N does not narrow it. RSC uses the name for the province: the version of its listing archived on 19 August 2019 captions photographs of Balkhi charas "Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan". The donor's narrative on the genebank entry G 33689 says the seed was "collected in rural Balkh province". The finest place named is Balkh Province.

An earlier version of this note kept the coordinate entered at creation, 36.758, 66.898, rounded to 36.76, 66.90, and said it marked the area of Balkh town. That is the town itself (OpenStreetMap node 312726837, 36.758, 66.898). The donor's narrative places the collection in rural Balkh, not in the town, so the point has been removed, and the same point has been removed from RSC-AFG-BAL-0120180001.

Editorial treatment

Conform pass of 16 September 2026. The article was compared with the current RSC listing and with the Kwik Seeds listing. It was rewritten so that each statement is attributed to one of them, with CS1 citations.

Province changed from Balkh to Balkh Province, the form used for provinces.
Height changed from 0.5–2 m to 1–3 m. Neither listing gives 0.5 m. RSC gives about 2 m; Kwik Seeds gives 1–3 m, the fuller range.
Leaf shape changed from Broad to Intermediate: RSC gives "medium to broad" leaflets and Kwik Seeds "medium leaflet width".
Primary purpose reduced to Recreation. Both listings give only sieved charas; medicine and religion are not mentioned.
Removed from the article: "the seeds are autochthonous to the region", "leaflets are broad", a sentence saying the population is maintained ex situ and an empty Effects section. Neither listing states these.
Kept as corpus entries: growth pattern Bushy (for "semi-dwarf, often with almost spherical architecture"), Dioecious and the chemotype summary. Photoperiod Short-day and introgression Minimal follow the other RSC accessions; neither listing states them. Éloise 23:19, 16 September 2026 (+07)

Source discrepancies

Collection year. RSC: 2019. Kwik Seeds: 2018. RSC's own listing, as the Wayback Machine archived it, read "Personally sourced by Landrace Genetics in Balkh, northern Afghanistan (2018)" from August to December 2019 and "Landrace Genetics, Balkh, Northern Afghanistan (2019)" from August 2020. Kwik Seeds reads "Landrace Genetics, Balkh, Northern Afghanistan, 2018": the later wording with the earlier year. The accession ID and collection date follow the 2019 sourcing.
Height. RSC: about 2 m. Kwik Seeds: 1–3 m.
Leaflets. RSC: medium to broad. Kwik Seeds: medium.
Genetics line. RSC: "Afghan Cannabis Landrace". Kwik Seeds: "Traditional Afghan Domesticate", with the classification C. sativa subsp. indica var. afghanica.
Mazar-i-Sharif comparison. RSC: a larger strain "known to Afghans themselves as Mazar-i-Sharif". Kwik Seeds: the "very large north Afghan strain sold by Real Seed Co as Mazar-i-Sharif". Éloise 02:50, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Archived versions

The Wayback Machine holds 21 versions of the RSC listing, from August 2019 to June 2026. The article adds detail only from versions that give the 2019 sourcing, and cites those of 5 August 2020 and 2 August 2021.

Height. "1 to 3 metres" or "1 – 3 metres" from August 2019 to April 2021, "c. 2 metres" from August 2021 to March 2024 and "Approx. 2 metres" from January 2025. The infobox keeps 1 to 3 m, which the 2020 and early 2021 versions and Kwik Seeds give.
Leaflets. The characteristics line read "medium leaflet width" while the listing offered the 2018 seed, as Kwik Seeds still does, and "medium to broad leaflets" from August 2020. Until April 2021 the body also said "Leaflet-width can also vary from broad through to narrow". Intermediate stays, resting on the 2019 wording and that range.
Classification. "C. sativa subsp. indica var. afghanica x C. sativa subsp. indica var. indica" from August 2020 to April 2021, then "C. sativa subsp. indica var. afghanica (x C. sativa subsp. indica var. indica ?)" until January 2023. No version from June 2023 on has a classification line.
THC note. From December 2019 to March 2024 the listing carried a note on a test of "three exceptional plants from a small grow of this accession in New England".
- Until April 2021 it reported "THC levels ranging from 14% to 24%", called that highly unusual for a first-generation landrace and gave introduced hybrids as one possible explanation. It called an exceptionally potent Afghan landrace unlikely but not impossible.
- From August 2021 it called the levels "alleged" and named an unreliable lab as the most likely explanation. It kept introduced hybrids as a possibility and called an exceptionally potent Afghan domesticate more likely than hybrids.

The note first appeared while the listing offered the 2018 seed and never said which lot the tested plants came from, so it stays out of the article. Its mention of introduced hybrids bears on the introgression value, which follows the corpus convention and which neither listing states. Éloise 02:50, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Photographs

The infobox image is now the photograph that RSC's listing captioned "Balkhi landrace outdoors in Balkh, summer 2019" from August to December 2019. Its file name dates it to 24 July 2019. It shows the source area in the accession's year.

The earlier infobox image, Balkhi-555-3.jpg, moves to the gallery. In late 2019 the listing titled it "Balkhi Afghan landrace early October, East Coast USA" and captioned two other photographs of the same series as grown by 555 Genetics. It was on the listing by October 2019, when the listing offered the 2018 seed and before any 2019 seed could have been grown out, so it shows an earlier lot. Its caption gives the place and season. The indoor photographs are dated the same way: RSC captioned the one at 42 days in August 2019 and the one at 70 days by October 2019. Their captions carry the date so that they are not read as the 2019 lot.

The other two gallery photographs have no caption on the listing. RSC's blog post of 4 October 2019 (New Hindu Kush and Iranian landrace accessions) uses the first of them, RSC Balkhi 2.jpg, as its image and says it shows Kushman, the collector it credits with its first Iranian accession and the Waziri and Tora Bora lines, "on the road in Balkh, northern Afghanistan, 2019". Its caption now says so; the post does not say which accession the plant belongs to. The other photograph has no caption from RSC, so its caption says only what it shows. RSC masked the faces of the people in both. Two screenshots added to the listing in 2024 are not used. The new images were uploaded under fair use at reduced resolution. Éloise 13:51, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Earlier lot has its own accession

The 2018 stock this listing sold until at least December 2019 is now Balkhi General Population 2018. It is a separate collection from the same province, and the two are linked as same-population accessions; the link is entered on the 2018 page and shows on both.

The Archived versions section above continues to record what changed in the listing's wording. What is new is that the earlier collection is now an accession in its own right rather than a note here. Éloise 04:02, 18 September 2026 (+07)

USDA genebank accession

The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System holds this seed as G 33689 (GRIN-Global entry), received on 22 August 2023 in a donation from Angus. The infobox lists it as the same lot as this accession:

the donor's passport on the entry, "Date of Collection: 2019. Location: Balkh, Afghanistan", gives the year RSC's listing gives (Kwik Seeds says 2018) and the province;
the wiki holds the 2018 lot separately, as RSC-AFG-BAL-0120180001, and the entry's 2019 matches this lot;
RSC lists no other 2019 Balkh lot.

The entry's collector field is not used as evidence. GRIN enters Angus as collector on every accession of this donation, including lines whose narratives name another collector or none. The entry's narrative adds that the seed came from a farmer in rural Balkh known for his charas, which the article does not report. The entry carries measurements from the unit's 2024 field trial in New York; the article does not report them. Éloise 05:57, 4 October 2026 (+07)