A perfect marriage: Serious Seeds and Magus Genetics have united!

Text and Photos: Lux Cool

Hot news from the seed business – The Dutch seed bank Magus Genetics has gone under the roof of Serious Seeds, four of the former Magus strains have been taken over by Serious.

Simon from Serious Seeds says about this spectacular coup: “We regard this as a perfect marriage of two small, but outstanding Dutch high-quality seed banks with fine selections of unique and highly individual cannabis seed strains.

Magus Genetics’ six superb strains do wonderfully fit into our menu.

Indeed, our two companies do share the same philosophy which is to produce and offer only a handful of selected high-grade strains that are very homogeneous and extraordinary in terms of potency and aroma, yielding something really special and charismatic.

So for Serious Seeds and Magus Genetics, less is more when it comes to seed strain breeding. Throughout our whole existence, our companies have strictly sticked to the rule that we’d only release a new seed strain to the market if we are 100% convinced of its overall quality – in contrast to most of our competitors who use to permanently pump new “strains” into the market that are merely simple crosses of their own or other seed banks’ strains in fact.

Making quick money unfortunately seems to be the determining breeding motivation for many seed banks today. Almost all of them also do instantly follow any new genetic hype on the market, hastily throwing respective “strains” onto the market. But every time Serious Seeds and Magus Genetics bring or brought out a new strain once in a while, the customers do know it’s something precious that is going to persist for years, even decades.“

But how did it come that Gerrit, the owner and breeder of Magus Genetics, sold his company? Already for a longer while, he did have difficult private problems, amongst other things, a severe case of illness within his family, giving him a very tough time.

When that all became too much for him, he decided to take a timeout from the seed business.

But in doing so he had to make sure his precious Magus strains would persist in the future – while somebody else would have to take care of this then. Gerrit contacted his longtime friend Simon who didn’t have to think twice, assuring Gerrit of preserving his extraordinary strains, what made Gerrit feel very happy and relieved.

However, for two of the six Magus strains it was too late unfortunately, the mother plants of both Exile and Biddy’s Sister had gone lost at Magus Genetics so that these strains won’t be available any longer from Serious Seeds, while the Magus classics Warlock, Biddy Early, Double Dutch and Motavation will supplement and enrich the portfolio of Serious Seeds.

These strains can already be ordered from Serious Seeds. There also is a remainder of 2000 Exile seeds that will be offered for sale on the Serious website, as well as a small remainder of Biddy’s Sister seeds that shall be given away as freebies on the English market (status quo of beginning of July).

Warlock, Biddy Early, Double Dutch and Motavation are true cannabis strain classics with a loyal worldwide following that have been proving their excellence in practice for many years.

A German circle of growers for example, to which amongst others Mr. Power-Planter and Ellis D. are belonging, right from the beginning had observed the range of strains offered by Magus Genetics and checked their quality in several cultivation tests. Mr. Power-Planter: „Warlock alone – the strain with whichit all began at Magus Genetics back then – is a legendary variety straight out of Gerrit’s genetic treasure chest for which Simon’s competitors will envy him.“ She ranks amongst the most potent strains worldwide available – Gerrit once reported that some DEA guys in America had measured the THC content of confiscated Warlock plants at unbelievable 29%, this is not a representative figure though, while Warlock regularly has a THC con-tent of at least 20%.

In addition, she gives off one of the strongest odours there are in both her living and dried form, incredibly stinky, if one opens a box with Warlock buds inside, the whole room instantly gets filled with a pungent Warlock aroma cloud.

Mr. Power-Planter put Warlock (mostly indica) to the cultivation test in both its regular and feminised form, and in both cases the results were extraordinary, just as described above. And also the rich harvest of big bulbous buds made him very happy. Mr. Power-Planter tested the Motavation strain, too.

The high of this mostly indica strain turned out to be extremely strong and narcotic, like a “thick wad of cotton wool“ (Mr. Power-Planter) wrapping itself around the brain cells. Motavation also has strong medical effects – when she was still under development,

Gerrit gave a few test seeds to an Austrian grower who had asked for something indica with medical potential. Some months later he replied that he was very happy with the results, that he had named it “Medizin Power” and that it had become pretty popular among his circle of friends, medical marijuana patients. So Gerrit himself used to call the strain “Medizin Power” at that stage of development. Double Dutch (also mostly indica), a cross of Serious Seeds’ Chronic and Magus Genetics’ Warlock strain, is the yield miracle from Gerrit’s genetic inheritance, heavily laden with thick tight buds, Double Dutch produces huge massive flower chunks that sometimes need to be staked to due their big weight.

Gerrit formerly reported about plants he had cultivated that delivered yields of up to 140 grams, and Ellis D. managed to achieve similar dimensions in his own grow room. The other special thing about Double Dutch is her captivatingly sweet aroma that reminds of honey-sweet wildflowers, thanks to the Chronic parent that managed to leave its trademark aroma stamp on this strain. But of course Double Dutch also achieved high scores for superb potency and resin content. It also was

A Perfect Marriage…

Ellis D. who quickly became an ardent lover of Biddy Early (mostly sativa) which, to his mind, belongs to the best outdoors strains worldwide available. Over night, she became the shooting star of the High Times Cannabis Cup 2003.

Totally unknown to the seed market before, Biddy Early scored a great coup at first go: It was the only outdoor-grown weed in the sativa category, and as such it took second place, leaving many high-bred indoor strains behind! Biddy Early`s extreme citrus aroma and astoundingly strong potency hit the judges by surprise and did the same with Ellis D. in the following autumn of 2004 who had cultivated a small late-start Biddy Early plant on his balcony that yielded 115 grams of premium outdoor buds.

All these four former Magus strains are now sold under the label of Serious Seeds, and there also is a newly designed uniform packaging for both the classic Serious and former Magus strains, with a small book-let, plant photo and an individual product number.

The Magus Genetics logo will not be used any longer, but in the respective strain descriptions there is a hint that the strains were developed by Magus Genetics. Instead of previously ten, there are now eleven seeds contained in one package of former Magus strains so that their price has decreased a little bit under the roof of Serious Seeds.

Being asked whether it may be conceivable that Gerrit at a certain point will return as a player in the seed business, Simon replied: “Nothing is impossible, however, from my point of view, it’s rather unlikely. But in case that Gerrit should like to act as a cannabis breeder again with full power, he would probably join the Serious team.”

Gerrit has allowed Serious Seeds by the way to use his genetics for new breeding experiments so that the global grower com-munity can look forward to new exciting strains from Serious Seeds that will breathe the spirit of Magus Genetics! Simon dampens expectations though: “So far it is nothing else than dreams of the future.“

With Double Dutch, however, there already is a strain that did result from a cooperation between Magus Genetics and Serious Seeds, from today’s perspective having sort of anticipated the marriage of these two companies.