If anything it seems to me that they bred the skunk smell out of skunk in Holland, not the other way around.
That'*s what he thinks about it
And I agree with Big Sur.
It was probably just how Skunk was back then.
It wasn't called Skunk for it's fruity terpene profile. It was called Skunk because it stank so much.
Very possible that what is today referred to as Roadkill Skunk was simply Skunk back in the day, when people selected the stinkiest phenos a lot.
With it being all underground/black market and authorities still believing they are protecting the public by hunting down home growers, the need for stealth became more important and stinky strains were a no-go because even with carbon filters, they could give your position away and result in a bust.
Big Sur believes (correct me if I'm wrong Bro), and again I tend to agree, that in that time frame, a lot of the scene was located in the Netherlands and what we have as Skunk today is likely the result of how it was worked in the Netherlands during that time.
And they likely bred it to get the strong smell out i.e. selecting for less stinky phenos and breeding with them. No doubt trying to preserve all the other "good" aspects of Skunk, just trying to get it to the point where it doesn't get you busted from the smell.
This practice was then likely continued in the US and elsewhere and that's how we ended up with "Not Roadkill Skunk" today.
Now, in theory, it should be able to select and breed current Skunk to find the super smelly one type again and re-create Roadkill Skunk.
But it seems many have tried and it could be too long gone/crossed out too much so that not even the recessive genes for Roadkill remain...
We won't know for sure I suppose.
What would always be possible is for someone to take a step back and actually try to re-create Skunk by breeding the landrace strains together again. What was it, Colombian, Thai and Afghan? Colombian, Mexican and Afghan?
So that would probably be a 5 year or more project and then one would have to still select for stinky and keep breeding so maybe 10 years all together?
Probably nobody gonna do that with the OGs and Chem genetics being all the Jazz...
I personally am quite pleased with where Skunk is today. I like smelly buds as much as the next guy but I am more of a "unique smell" kind of guy. I really have enjoyed the large range of odor profiles in the Skunk genetics I grew from MRN.
So far I had things ranging from pure camphor (really didn't smell ANYTHING like weed, would be perfect for stealth grows, somewhat funky but really couldn't distinguish it from other, classic vegetation you find in the wild almost anywhere) to super sweet, candy type smells that reminded me of "ice bonbons" that are common in central Europe.
The camphor smell, that doesn't smell anything like weed, I have discovered a couple of times since then. Unfortunately not the delicious "ice candy" smell...
But in my current round I have a very interesting G13xSkunk pheno that smelled like some type of bubblegum in late veg. It had a bit of trouble acclimating to the 5 gal pots and didn't take the transplant so well and is lagging behind in size a bit but is now stable and healthy again, flowering away. Very curious about that one.
And then you have the fruity, citrusy phenos and the like in Skunk.
All within 1 line of genetics.
The only thing that people can't seem to reliably find in Skunk are a) what they refer to as Roadkill b) "Cheese" terps and c) garlic terps.
Now as to why that is ... Maybe these terp profiles were never in the Skunk line to begin with, maybe they were and it was bottlenecked towards the terp profiles I mentioned above, maybe some people just smelled camphor and to them it smelled like cheese?
It is all so subjective and far from real Science so facts are hard to come by in this game in general ...
We need actual lab-testing, quantification of terpene profiles etc. etc. to make actual, factual claims about this or that with weed.
It is all anecdotal in the meantime and might confuse/mislead as much as hint in the right direction ...