Hunza Valley

Genetics: Karakoram Cannabis Landrace Sourcing: Landrace Genetics, Hunza Valley, Karakoram Range, 2022 Harvest Purpose: Seed （culinary）, Charas （sieved resin） Latitude: 36° N Harvest: late-September through October Height: 1 – 4 meters Aroma: Gassy mango Characteristics: Resinous, black colouration, large plants and buds Classification: Cannabis sativa subsp. indica var. afghanica x C. sativa subsp. indica var. indica Grow Type: Outdoors, greenhouse, or indoors Cannabis landrace seeds hand-selected from an outstanding black-coloured mother plant （nicknamed ‘Raat Guzni’） in the fabled Hunza Valley of the Karakoram Range. Sublimely beautiful and famed for sheer cliff faces with astonishing elevations, Hunza is situated between two of Central Asia’s most famous production centres for charas, namely the Hindu Kush and Xinjiang. In Hunza, cannabis is cultivated by farmers principally for culinary use, the seeds being an essential source of protein and fats in the mountain diet. Toasting seeds with wheat is a custom villagers in Hunza share with Chitralis and Afghans, who likewise regard cannabis seeds as imparting heat to the body, for that reason consuming them during winter. Central Asian belief in the heating quality of cannabis seeds is attested as early as the eleventh century in an agronomic text by a Sufi alchemist, Ibn Wahshiyya, who appears to have acquired much of his knowledge of cannabis from the eastern Iranian or Persianate world, where a name by which cannabis was and is known is ‘shahdanaaj’ or ‘the royal grain’. Multipurpose utilization of the cannabis crop for food and drug-production （whether medicinal, tonic, or recreational） remains the norm across Central Asia. From very large plants with large inflorescences and pungent aromas of mango, this Hunza accession will doubtless yield excellent hashish and respond rapidly to selection. Notably, when neighbouring Xinjiang was the world epicentre of hashish production, annually exporting thousands of tons o