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Dr. Cannabis

Glossary

Indica

A commercial label associated with relaxing effects. Genomic evidence shows it does not reflect genetic relatedness and does not reliably predict effects.

A 2021 study in Nature Plants genotyped over 100 samples at more than 100,000 SNPs and found that indica- and sativa-labelled samples were "genetically indistinct on a genome-wide scale". Labelling instead tracked variation in a small number of terpenes, with myrcene the strongest single indica marker at about 21% of labelling variation.

The label is not useless — it weakly signals aroma chemistry. It is simply not the effect predictor the retail environment treats it as.

Also written as: indica strain.

Related terms

Sources

  1. Watts S, McElroy M, Migicovsky Z, Maassen H, van Velzen R, Myles S. Cannabis labelling is associated with genetic variation in terpene synthase genes. Nature Plants. 2021;7(10):1330-1334.(DOI 10.1038/s41477-021-01003-y)Accessed 2026-08-15.
  2. Smith CJ, Vergara D, Keegan B, Jikomes N. The phytochemical diversity of commercial Cannabis in the United States. PLOS ONE. 2022;17(5):e0267498.(DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0267498)Accessed 2026-08-15.