Clearing the smoke around Roadkill Skunk and other Hindu Kush Genetics

Clearing the smoke around Roadkill Skunk and other Hindu Kush genetics

Of all the varieties that I have grown, Roadkill Skunk has to be the most requested and also the least understood. Many people think it is a variety, when in reality, it is more of a description of cannabis found in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Hindu Kush mountains. 

Afghan varieties of cannabis have been common in the US since the hippies started bringing back seeds from the “Hippie Trail” that spanned from London to India. As the hippies explored, they collected seeds from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India. 

In the ’50s and early ’60s, cannabis first started being imported into the United States from tropical countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, when soldiers were coming back from Vietnam. All of these varieties were very tropical—originating from near the equator—and had very long flowering periods, most of which would not finish flowering in the not-so- tropical climate of the United States. Later into the ’60s, hippies started getting genetics from places like Colombia, Acapulco, Michoacán, Jamaica, parts of Africa and all over India, but still found difficulty in making tropical plants finish in the northern United States. 

In the ’70s, hippies started bringing back seeds from Afghanistan and Pakistan after finding the short, broad-leaf cannabis variety that had been traditionally used for hashish making. The shorter flowering time allowed the plant to acclimate to colder nights by creating denser buds that protected the seeds, unlike tropical varieties which have loose and spindly flowers that are able to rapidly displace high humidity, as found in the tropics. 

These varieties from Afghanistan and Pakistan had a rather unique scent, some people would say that it smelled like a skunk’s spray, others would describe it as urine or even shit. While Afghan varieties were not that aromatic and had a high leaf-to-bract ratio, they did add a very important element to the breeding that was happening with the tropical plants: It shortened their flowering time to a manageable eight to 10 weeks and opened up cannabis cultivation for North America, both indoors and out. 

One of the first and most popular hybrids with Afghan genetics is Skunk No. 1, which started its life as an Afghan crossed with a Colombian (which indeed smelled like a North American skunk), and then that plant was crossed with Acapulco Gold. The results were phenomenal and through Sam the Skunkman’s selective breeding. He was able to create the first modern cannabis hybrid that was two-thirds tropical, one-third Afghan, and incredibly uniform in high numbers. 

 

I once asked Sam the Skunkman how he made a true breeding variety and why that was one of his breeding goals. In the testament to his lack of ego, he quickly said that he did not make a true breeding plant, nature did. He just took the time to cross the Afghan/ Colombian plant with everything in his collection, and then to test the prodigy by breeding them together to see if their prodigy would be as consistent and uniform in high numbers. Because back in the ’70s, people wanted to start with thousands of seeds and Sam has always joked that he only sold seeds by the kilo. (And just for reference, there are on average 50,000 seeds of Skunk No. 1 and about 70,000 seeds of the more tropical Haze per kilo.) 

When he crossed the Afghan/Colombian with Acapulco Gold, he found the right combination and that became not just Skunk, but Skunk No. 1. 

In the ’70s, before clones were a thing, growers grew from seeds and they needed the seeds to be very consistent and uniform when they planted them, but most cannabis was not. Inbreeding varieties only causes more of the recessive traits to divide themselves up among the prodigy, and while it is good for phenotype selection and selective breeding, it is not a good thing for a uniform crop. Skunk No. 1 corrected that problem with a variety that harvested early, had huge flowers with a low-leaf-to-high-bract ratio, which was easily trimmed, and also contained high-myrcene terpene levels that still stand out among all the other varieties that have come along in the 45 years since Skunk No. 1 came to be. 

 

Skunk No. 1 is but one example of many varieties of cannabis that utilized Afghan genetics to create a better, more manageable variety made up mostly of tropical genetics. 

The evolution away from Afghan stink happened because most people do not go for a walk or a hike and stick their nose in a pile of shit—they prefer to smell flowers with a sweet fragrance and more a pleasant aroma than a bathroom. 

Breeders worked to improve the hybridized Afghan flowers crossed with tropical plants by selecting sweeter, more fragrant varieties that had hints of orange, lemon, tropical fruit, and incense. They also wanted flowers which were easier to manicure with less leaf and more resin-covered bracts. Slowly, the stink of Afghan was bred out of most all modern cannabis hybrids seen today.

Smokers also preferred higher THC tropical flowers with the sweeter scent and bigger buds to leafy, compared to lower THC Afghan. 

Unfortunately, after the popularization of Dutch seed companies in the ’80s, a lot of places that had indigenous cannabis, such as Jamaica, practically lost all of their uniquely acclimated varieties as they replaced them with modern hybrids in hopes of making more money in quicker time. Nowadays, it is damn near impossible to find any true Jamaican cannabis in Jamaica. 

This loss of indigenous cannabis is also true in places like Morocco, where a majority of growers have replaced traditional Moroccan cannabis with fields of modern European cannabis hybrids and those who did not still had their crops pollinated by their neighbors, so it is really hard to say what is authentic to the region anymore. 

Because of the conflicts in Afghanistan, we do not have access to the genetics that the hippies were bringing back in the early ’70s, but I believe they are still there waiting to be discovered once again. 

 

 

As published in:
Grow Magazine, Vol.5 Issue 5
November 2020