Mazar

Soft Secrets
23 Jun 2014

Mazar remains a Dutch Passion best-seller, decades after it was first developed.


Mazar remains a Dutch Passion best-seller, decades after it was first developed.

For many growers, Mazar is a must-try variety, offering a great combination of quality, potency and taste. Of course, Mazar is most famous for being a top quality smoke. It is one of the few varieties that we offer in regular, feminized and auto-flowering seeds. Our customers love these original genetics and we are often asked for more information about Mazar, so please enjoy the read!

The story of Mazar should start at the beginning. Back in the 1970s, Holland began to get the first imports of Cannabis from places such as Thailand, Afghanistan, South America and India. Any of the original Dutch pot specialists will tell you that there was both good Cannabis and some very poor quality stuff being imported into Amsterdam in those days. One of the first varieties that really made a good impression was the Afghani Cannabis from the Mazar region - the potency was consistently superb and this was combined with a special 'feel-good' effect. Of all the international Cannabis genetics that were the first to reach Amsterdam, it was the Cannabis from Mazar that really had the connoisseurs excited and wanting more.

A present-day view of Nowruz in the Mazar-i-Sharif region of Afghanistan [Credit: Peretz Partensky via WikiMedia Commons]

In those days, it was possible to get safely around certain parts of Afghanistan; in fact, there were quite a number of European stoners traveling and even living in Afghanistan. These days, of course, travel is impossible due to the military problems in the region; however, in the early 1980s it was safe to travel in certain parts of the country and one of our friends did just that.

The goal was to return from the region with the best Mazar genetics from the valleys that produced the best pot. It was a risky trip - the most difficult issue was the need to travel between the different tribes asking the elders about the best quality Cannabis and getting permission to travel to the next valley. Eventually, with some help from the friendly Mazari natives, we were very kindly given some seeds from an elder responsible for overseeing the Cannabis harvests in the Mazar-i-Sharif region. The seeds were from his own personal collection and it was these very seeds that were used to create Mazar. 'Mazar-i-Sharif' means 'holy shrine' and it is interesting that many Mazar fans tell us that the intense high from Mazar Cannabis also has some spiritual qualities to it.

The seeds were brought back to Holland and we started growing them. A few hundred of the original seeds are still kept safely in deep-freeze, in two separate locations across Holland. Our goal was to retain the original connoisseur quality of Mazar that had caused so much original excitement. We loved the thick, heavy clouds of smoke and the intensely sweet and sticky aroma, but more than anything we knew that we had to retain that sensational, heavy Mazar stone that is strong enough to give users a euphoric, 'up' high and heavy enough to force you to sit down on the sofa because you are so stoned.

[Credit: Dutch Passion]

Initially, we selected the strongest female Mazar, which retained the authentic qualities. The breeding was done indoors, although the variety will grow well outdoors in warm South American climates. At a certain point in the breeding process, a small amount of genetics from an elite Dutch Passion Skunk variety was introduced and the results were assessed. The purpose of the Skunk was not to change the authentic smoke quality - it was to allow extra yield potential, a slightly sweeter taste and consistency. The work was done carefully in order to retain the aroma and strong indica stone. When we were happy with the result, which took several years, we back-crossed the Mazar/Skunk with the original Mazar. This allowed us to increase the Mazar content back to original levels, but it also allowed us to keep a hint of Skunk genetics, allowing for a sweeter smoke, better yields and a consistency that would prove to be very popular with our customers.

The Dutch Passion smoke-test team was gathered and they were blown away with the result: Dutch Passion Mazar was born, and initial feedback told us that this was going to be popular.

Light up a joint of Mazar and it instantly fills the room with dense clouds of smoke with that unmistakable aroma of rich Afghani hash. The pulse races; colors become more vivid; music takes on a new dimension. The sofa becomes too comfortable to leave and you get the desire for some food. Medical users report that the strong indica stone is great for reducing pain, assisting sleep and delivering a sense of well-being.

For some repeat customers, this is their favorite; the presence of so many repeat customers is always a sign that Mazar is a special strain. The popularity of Mazar makes us feel that the hard work was worth the result. As a breeder, you wonder whether people will appreciate the time you spent trying to deliver the best effect, the best aroma, the heavy resin production. In the case of Mazar it gives us a great deal of satisfaction to see so many happy customers.

At the time, we knew that we had a very special new variety but to be honest we did not appreciate just how popular Mazar would be. The mother plant was established and several cuttings were taken and given secure new homes across Europe. The original mother plants are kept safe and occasionally cuttings were taken and kept by trusted people in secure places. That way, we still had genetically-identical backup plants, in case the mother plant died. In the early days of Mazar, feminized seed technology had not yet been invented, so we only supplied regular seeds.

Later, in the 1990s, we began to experiment with feminized seed technology. We took some mature female plants and left them one to two months beyond their normal harvest date - much later than anyone would normally leave a plant. We noticed that male flowers would form on some females, so we collected the pollen, although we were unsure why these late male flowers appeared on old female plants.

When we used this pollen, we found that it created seeds that would only grow into female plants; we called this 'female pollen' and it was a breakthrough moment in the world of Cannabis breeding. Feminized seeds had been discovered, even though everyone said at the time that feminized Cannabis seeds were impossible to create.

When we started supplying feminized seeds, we realized that we needed a way to produce significantly higher amounts of 'female pollen' and initially Gibberellic acid was used. Later, we found that silver compounds could be used to provide more reliable results and today most seed banks use silver to create 'female pollen', although the precise methods used for feminized seed production tend to be kept secret.

The key to creating a variety like Mazar is to follow two key rules:

1) Use the very best genetics that you can. Select 'elite' mothers that offer only the very best quality 'high'. These plants can take years to find and stabilize, but if you can find the elite genetics you will have a best-seller.

2) Build consistency into the genetics if you want a variety to remain popular for decades. With Mazar, we had the built-in genetic stability that came from thousands of years of true-breeding Cannabis genetics that had evolved to grow in the Mazar region. To this, we added a very small amount of a stabilized Skunk line.

Today, our Mazar seeds are produced in three ways. We use a cutting that came from the original mother, and of course we have back-up, genetically-identical mother plants to guarantee that the exact genetic line is preserved. Regular seeds are produced the old -fashioned way. Feminized seeds and feminized automatic ('auto-fem') seeds are more difficult to make, but these days that is what people want to use.

And that is the story of Mazar. We do not claim that Mazar is the best yielding variety in the world, but it is a variety that delivers one of the best quality smokes we have ever come across. Mazar is also a variety that has withstood the test of time and satisfied thousands of customers. We love Mazar and hope that you will, too.

 

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Soft Secrets