Talk:RSC-AFG-BAL-1120180001

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Page scope

RSC-AFG-BAL-1120180001 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

Identifier

The accession identifier is RSC-AFG-BAL-1120180001, built from the holder, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country, the province segment, the month, the year and the sequence number.

Province segment BAL is for Balkh Province, which the sourcing line names.
Month 11 and year 2018 are the date of collection in the collector's note on the USDA genebank entry G 33764, 20 November 2018. The listing gives "Winter 2018".
Sequence 0001. It is the only RSC accession for this province segment, month and year; Balkhi of 2018 is RSC-AFG-BAL-0120180001.

Sourcing

The RSC listing for Tashkurgan as it stood on 27 October 2026 and its 26 versions in the Wayback Machine from August 2019 to April 2026; the Kwik Seeds listing as it stood on 26 October 2026; RSC's posts of 5 December 2019, 15 December 2022 and 6 May 2025; and the GRIN-Global entry for G 33764. Kwik Seeds is the shop RSC calls its other site (RSC, Hemp & Multipurpose).

Lots at this listing

All 26 archived versions give the winter 2018 sourcing, so one collection has been on sale. The versions from August 2019 to 19 January 2021 (six) sell it without comment; from 25 January 2021 (20) the listing says "The current stock is a reproduction of the original accession through open pollination". The collection and the reproduction are kept as separate accessions: this page and RSC-AFG-BAL-1120180001-R1.

Evidentiary scope

The collector's note on G 33764 is the only account of the gathering that gives a date, a place and a coordinate; it is reported as the note's, and the article attributes RSC's description of the farmers and of the trip. The note says the collector did not see the plants, so the field description in it ("Growing as a planted field", "no modern hybrids present in area") is the farmer's or the collector's understanding, not an observation of the crop.

Typing

Classification: Landrace, sourcing type Point of Origin, autochtonous Yes: the seed was given by a farmer from his own harvest.
Collector. Lucas Strazzeri, named in the collector's note and in RSC's posts. The other RSC accessions record Angus, the donor here.
Lot. sold, from the versions of 2019 to January 2021, which sell this seed before the reproduction.
Locality. Tashkurgan, the listing's name for the town; the collector's note spells it "Tashkurghan", and RSC gives its other name as Kholm.
Elevation. 400 metres, the collector's figure.
Branching. Strong, from the collector's "Heavily branched".
Cultivation system. Unknown: the note's "Growing as a planted field" does not say whether the field was sown with cannabis alone or with other crops.
Aroma is the collector's observation at the source, as the listing reports it.
Processing. "Charas (sieved resin)" is entered as Dry-sift.
Growing area. Balkh, which the wiki draws on the whole of Balkh Province.
Related accession. RSC-AFG-BAL-0120180001, RSC's Balkhi of the same province and year.
Conventions. Photoperiod Short-day and introgression Minimal follow the other RSC accessions; the collector's note says no modern hybrids were present, while the listing warns that the line may be affected by modern genetics.

Georeferencing

The point 36.698249, 67.689263 is the collector's, from his note on the USDA genebank entry G 33764, which records seed given by a farmer near Tashkurghan on 20 November 2018, at 400 m. It is used as published. It lies 0.9 km from OpenStreetMap's node for the town of Kholm (node 312726868), the other name RSC gives for Tashkurgan, inside Kholm district (relation 6572918); SRTM gives 449 m there, 49 m above the collector's figure. The collector states no accuracy and did not see the plants, so the uncertainty covers the town and the land near it. The entry's passport fields round the point to 36.6833, 67.6833. The growing area entered, Balkh, is drawn on the whole of Balkh Province, so it names no smaller place. Basis: holder's georeference. Uncertainty: about 5 km.

Source discrepancies

Height. RSC: "Up to approx 2 meters outdoors". Kwik Seeds: "c. 1 – 2 meters". RSC until 2025: "c. 1 – 4 meters". The collector's note: "Plant height unknown".
Hybrids. Collector's note: "Modern hybrids not present in area". RSC since 2025: the line "may possibly be affected by introduced modern genetics such as a worked Dutch-American Afghan".
Classification. RSC in August 2019 classed it, with Mazar-i-Sharif, "not as Hindu Kush but as 'Afghan Turkestani'"; the listing has not said so since December 2019.
Genetics line. RSC: "Afghan Cannabis Heirloom/ Landrace". Kwik Seeds: "Traditional Afghan Domesticate ("Landrace")".

Photographs

The infobox image is from the RSC listing, uploaded under fair use at reduced resolution. The version of August 2019 captioned it "Tashkurgan Afghan landrace strain, underwatered and well into senescence, Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan, 2018", among photographs of the trip; the caption follows those words. That version credited three neighbouring photographs, of chillum smoking and fresh charas, to Lucas Strazzeri, and gave no credit for this one. It shows plants at the source, so it is on this page. The listing's photograph titled "second generation" and its later photographs of plants beside a measuring pole are on RSC-AFG-BAL-1120180001-R1; photographs of resin and of a chillum are not used.

USDA genebank accession

The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System holds Tashkurgan seed as G 33764 (GRIN-Global entry), received on 22 August 2023 in a donation of two packets from Angus. The infobox lists it as the same lot as this accession:

the entry's passport is the collector's record of this gathering: Lucas Strazzeri, 20 November 2018, a farmer's 2018 harvest near Tashkurghan, with its point and altitude;
RSC lists no other Tashkurgan collection.

The donation was made while the listing sold the reproduction, and the entry does not say whether the packets are seed of the collection or of a later generation. The entry carries a note that it was included in the unit's 2024 field trial in New York; the article does not report it.