Sacred Seeds

**Sacred Seeds** is one of the most foundational and legendary cannabis seed banks in history, operating from the late 1970s until its closure in the early 1990s. Founded by **Neville Schoenmaker** in the United States, it is widely considered the world's first commercial cannabis seed company. Schoenmaker, a Dutch-Australian, initially operated from California before relocating his pioneering operation to Amsterdam in the mid-1980s, a move that helped establish the city as the global epicenter of cannabis breeding. **Contributions & Legacy:** * **Genetic Preservation & Proliferation:** Sacred Seeds was instrumental in collecting, preserving, and distributing landrace genetics from across the globe (e.g., Thailand, Colombia, Afghanistan, India) before many of these pure strains were lost or hybridized. This genetic library became the cornerstone for modern cannabis breeding. * **Creation of Foundational Strains:** The company bred and released several of the most influential strains of all time, most notably **Haze** (a sativa-dominant hybrid of Colombian, Mexican, Thai, and South Indian genetics) and **Northern Lights #5** (a potent indica from Afghani genetics). These cultivars became primary building blocks for thousands of subsequent hybrids. * **The Neville Connection:** After Sacred Seeds ceased operations, Neville Schoenmaker's work and genetics were carried forward by **The Seed Bank of Holland** (later Sensi Seeds). Breeders like **Shantibaba** (Mr. Nice Seedbank) and **Howard Marks** also played roles in preserving and working with the original Sacred Seeds genetics, particularly the Haze lines. **Philosophy:** Sacred Seeds operated with a mission of **genetic preservation and refinement**. Schoenmaker's approach combined a collector's passion for rare landraces with a breeder's desire to stabilize and improve them for cultivation. The philosophy was less about marketing and more about archiving the planet's cannabis biodiversity and creating stable, reliable cultivars from these treasures. Their work transitioned cannabis from a scattered collection of regional landraces to a defined catalog of reproducible, seed-based strains, setting the standard for the entire industry.