Big Buddha Seeds became one of the most recognizable British cannabis seed companies of the 2000s by solving a problem that had frustrated growers for years: how to make the celebrated UK Cheese clone available through seed. Founder Milo Yung, widely known as Big Buddha, did not create the original Cheese clone. That plant had emerged earlier as a distinctive Skunk #1 selection within Britain’s underground cultivation scene. His achievement was obtaining the guarded clone, breeding it with Afghan material, and developing a seed family that retained much of Cheese’s pungent aroma, dense flower structure, and unmistakable old-school character.
Big Buddha Cheese won the indica category at the 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup, transforming Milo from a respected UK grower into an internationally recognized breeder. Blue Cheese, Chiesel, Buddha Haze, G-Bomb, Cheese Puffs, and numerous later hybrids expanded the catalog, but Cheese remained its organizing principle. Big Buddha Seeds moved a specifically British clone culture into the global seed trade, giving growers outside established UK networks access to one of the country’s defining cannabis profiles.
Milo Yung and the British Underground
Milo Yung, whose birth name was Michael Walong Ng, grew up in England’s West Midlands and began cultivating cannabis while still a teenager. He later recalled planting his first outdoor seed at 15 and moving into indoor cultivation from cuttings around age 18. Access to quality plants was limited, and Britain’s prohibition laws encouraged growers to protect valuable clones within small circles. Milo combined cultivation with dealing, photography, and writing for cannabis magazines, introducing him to editors, breeders, and growers who would shape his later career.
That media connection proved decisive. Milo described obtaining Cheese through Zorro, the editor of Red Eye magazine, in 2002 after years of encountering the flower without being able to secure the plant. Cheese was already famous in parts of Britain for a penetrating savory and skunky aroma that could overwhelm rooms and packaging. Once Milo finally received the clone, he recognized both its quality and its limitation: a clone can circulate only through living cuttings. Producing seeds offered a way to preserve and distribute its character internationally.
Turning a Clone Into Big Buddha Cheese
The breeding project began by pollinating the Cheese clone with an Afghan male. Milo selected offspring that most closely reflected the original mother and repeatedly crossed chosen males back to Cheese. In interviews, he described five generations of backcrossing and more than two years of growing, testing, and selection. The objective was not an exact genetic copy, which ordinary seed reproduction cannot produce, but a population in which the clone’s pungency, yield, dense flowers, and flavor appeared frequently enough to make Cheese practical as a seed line.
This distinction is essential to understanding the company’s legacy. Big Buddha Cheese was not the original clone-only Exodus Cheese, and Milo did not claim to have discovered the original Skunk phenotype. He developed one of the earliest widely distributed seed representations of it. The Afghan contribution added structure, resin, and workable breeding material, while repeated backcrossing returned the offspring toward the Cheese mother. Variation remained, as Milo acknowledged, but growers gained a realistic opportunity to find plants with the recognizable savory funk that had previously depended on private clone access.
The 2006 Cannabis Cup Breakthrough
Big Buddha Seeds gained worldwide recognition when Big Buddha Cheese won first place in the indica category at the 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. Blue Cheese also placed third in the sativa category at the same event, giving the young company exceptional exposure. Milo had already promoted his seed-grown Cheese through Amsterdam coffeeshops, allowing visitors to encounter the flower before the competition. The victory demonstrated that a British clone-derived line could compete alongside genetics from established Dutch seed banks.
The award changed the commercial status of Cheese. During the following years, the name spread across Europe as growers, dealers, seed companies, and coffeeshops adopted Cheese varieties and hybrids. Not all were connected to Milo’s work, and authenticating the category became increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, Big Buddha Cheese provided a recognizable reference point: lime-green flowers, intense skunk and savory aromas, strong resin production, and a relaxing old-school experience. The cup victory made Milo the public face of Cheese genetics even though the clone’s underground history predated his company.
Blue Cheese and the Expansion of the Family
Blue Cheese became the company’s second defining cultivar. By combining Cheese with Blueberry-related genetics, Milo introduced ripe berry, fruit, and sweetness to the savory-skunk foundation. The hybrid softened some of Cheese’s abrasive edge without erasing its identity, producing expressions that moved between pungent funk, blueberry sweetness, cream, and earth. It became one of the most recognizable cannabis names of its era and showed that Cheese could function as a versatile breeding parent rather than merely a clone to be reproduced.
The wider catalog explored Cheese in several directions. Chiesel crossed Big Buddha Cheese with a New York City Diesel male supplied through Soma, combining sour citrus and fuel with British funk. Sour Chiesel pushed the formula further toward Diesel, while Cheese Puffs, BadAzz Cheese, Black Cheese, California Orange Cheese, and autoflowering versions extended the family into newer markets. Buddha Haze, G-Bomb, and other non-Cheese releases demonstrated broader ambitions, but the company’s strongest identity continued to come from treating Cheese as a flexible genetic foundation.
A Breeding Philosophy Based on Selection
Milo’s public comments emphasized that breeding required sizeable populations, patience, and repeated evaluation. An impressive pedigree could not guarantee useful offspring because every seed recombined parental characteristics differently. His Cheese project depended on identifying males that carried qualities associated with a female clone that could not provide pollen through conventional breeding. Progress came from raising successive generations, comparing aroma and structure, testing mature flowers, and returning the strongest candidates to the original mother.
His method was practical rather than purely academic. Milo selected for the qualities consumers remembered from Cheese—pungency, dense flowers, yield, resin, and a distinctive experience—while making the plants accessible to ordinary growers. The seeds were not perfectly uniform, but complete uniformity was not the only objective. A successful population needed to preserve the sensory identity of the clone while possessing enough vigor and reproductive stability to survive beyond one protected mother room. This approach helped establish clone-to-seed breeding as an important strategy within the modern seed industry.
Spain, Collaboration, and a New Company
As legal pressure increased around people close to him in Britain, Milo relocated to Spain, where he had greater freedom to continue breeding and participating in the cannabis industry. After approximately 12 years with Big Buddha Seeds, he created The Original Big Buddha Family Farms as a separate project. Its stated purpose was to work with breeders and connoisseurs in the United Kingdom, Spain, and the United States while returning attention to classic Cheese genetics and limited collaborative releases.
The separation means the modern Big Buddha story includes two connected but distinct brands. Big Buddha Seeds continues operating a storefront carrying Big Buddha Cheese, Blue Cheese, Buddha Haze, Chiesel, and a broad catalog. The Original Big Buddha Family Farms identifies itself as Milo’s later project and offers Original Cheese, Original Blue Cheese, and collaborative genetics. Growers researching his legacy should distinguish the company he originally founded from the family-farm label he established after leaving it.
Milo Yung’s Death and the Continuation of His Work
Milo died unexpectedly in April 2023 at the age of 51. Tributes from breeders, retailers, journalists, and growers emphasized his friendliness, enthusiasm, and willingness to share cannabis culture with people across national and professional boundaries. His death occurred shortly after an appearance at Spannabis, where newer Original Big Buddha Family Farms releases were presented alongside the Cheese genetics that had defined his career.
Both Big Buddha Seeds and The Original Big Buddha Family Farms remained publicly active in 2026. The latter explicitly presents its work as preserving Milo’s legacy and lists Original Cheese and Original Blue Cheese among its offerings, while Big Buddha Seeds continues selling a larger collection through its established website. The existence of two businesses can create confusion, but it also demonstrates how deeply the Big Buddha name and Cheese family became embedded in the international seed market.
The Legacy of Big Buddha Seeds
Big Buddha Seeds mattered because it gave a regional British clone an international reproductive future. The original Cheese selection was already an underground classic, but living clones remain vulnerable to raids, disease, accidents, and broken personal connections. Milo’s Afghan outcross and repeated backcrosses converted that private plant into a population capable of traveling through mail-order catalogs, Amsterdam shops, and gardens around the world. Big Buddha Cheese did not replace Exodus Cheese; it preserved and reinterpreted its defining qualities in a more accessible form.
The company also helped establish the United Kingdom as a source of internationally important cannabis genetics rather than merely a consumer of Dutch and American varieties. Blue Cheese became a global name, Chiesel connected British funk with Amsterdam Diesel breeding, and numerous later Cheese hybrids followed the path Milo helped open. His enduring achievement was not inventing Cheese from nothing. It was recognizing that a guarded clone deserved a broader life and investing the time required to make that life possible through seed.
