Episode 93: The Science of Breeding Cannabis with Ryan Lee

Welcome to the Cannabis Cultivation and Science podcast. I'm your host, Tad Hussey of KISS Organics.

This is the podcast where we discuss.

The cutting edge of growing from a science based perspective and drawn top experts from around the industry to share their wisdom and knowledge. My guest this week is Ryan Lee. Ryan is an educator, breeder and researcher specializing in the chemical and genetic diversity of the cannabis species. Ryan comes from a background in neuroscience focusing on the endocannabinoid system, but later focusing on plant breeding technologies and the study of the molecular aspects of the cannabis genome and how we can use science to shape and improve the plant. Now, now onto the show.

Hey, Ryan, thanks for coming on the podcast today.

Thanks for having me, Tad. It's a pleasure.

Absolutely. Can you tell listeners a little bit about yourself and your background?

Yeah, I'm a cannabis breeder. I've been breeding Cannabis for roughly 30 years. I've got an undergrad degree in neuroscience and I studied plant breeding and biotechnology with a post grad level. So I've really been kind of looking at cannabis from a scientific level more or less quite seriously for the last 25 plus years at least, and growing for about 30. So I've got a fair, a fair amount of experience in the space. Yeah, I've got a seed company in Europe called Chimera Genetics, which some people may know, and I operate as a consultant and genetic supplier to companies in North America, well, really Canada, and then globally through our legal export system. So that's kind of where I come from.

Yeah, I first heard you speak at Emerald Cup a few years ago now with Seth Crawford and Jeremy Plumb. And I know you and Jeremy are good friends and he said that you were the one I needed to talk to when it came to this topic. And I'm going to admit right at the beginning of the podcast, I don't know much about breeding. It's not something that I've really dived into or have any experience with. So this is just going to be an organic conversation off the cuff, just kind of talking about, talking about breeding and, you know, I kind of wanted to start with sort of a historical aspect here in terms of how cannabis has been bred and get into sort of, you know, where you see it going in the future.

Yeah, that's huge. Interesting topic. So different plants have different breeding systems. Okay. And that dictates a lot about what traits persist in the genome and what traits get purged and taken out of the genome. Cannabis is called an obligate outcrosser, which means in nature no plant will ever really self fertilize. I mean, we can talk about intersex plants to a degree, and there is a certain degree of inbreeding that happens with those plants. But the standard kind of method for breeding or for cannabis to breed in nature is a male plant has to land on a different female plant for progeny or for a seed to be made. And that natural state really designed to preserve a wide genetic diversity within the genome because things don't get purged out, you never, you know, it's just a factor of the mating system that traits kind of stick around forever and it leads to a huge variability in the population, you know, of the species as a whole. Let's, let's kind of look at it from that perspective. Um, so when, when humans really got into breeding drug cannabis, I would say seriously, you know, mid 20th century, call it 60s and 70s, people started taking plants from populations that they could get right. So you know, say you're a grower in the late 60s, you know, you're probably selecting seeds out of like Colombian or Mexican flower that's coming into the United States and being shipped all over. And you know, you would just kind of cross those plants with the seeds, you grow them and the next year you'd collect, you know, more, more seeds over the bud that you were buying and smoking of plants that were a flat of weed that was kind of exceptional or better quality and you'd breed that in to the plant next year. And so this one to one type of breeding system is very different from the way that cannabis produces in the wild. Right? In the wild you get these large stands of plants say, well, I mean it depends on the stand as the, to the number of individuals. But you say that there's like, you know, somewhere between 10 and 100 or a thousand individuals and they're kind of having this like big orgy where all the males are fertilizing all the females. And so it's just like kind of like a big shuffling of traits ongoing generation after generation. And that's good because you have genetic variability so that when you, when those seeds move from one location to another, there's usually enough built in variability that no matter the new location or the environmental conditions in the new location, there's going to be some plants in that population that will survive. So we kind of changed the script on that in the like the 60s and the 70s when we started breeding plants one to one, you know, taking one male, some grower would think, oh, I like the structure and the Habit of this male plant. And it smells good when I rub the stem. And so let's cross a little bit of that pollen to each one of our females. And then, you know, the next year they'd kind of make selections from, you know, which breeding events or breeding experiments turned out well. Right. And that, that's one way to do it, but that's not really the way that if you were a scientist, you would start, you know, measuring. You know, if you're a scientist, you're breeding wheat or corn, every little trait is considered from, from pest resistance to mold, resistance to, you know, rate of growth, yield, flavor of the plants, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it's been a little more loosey goosey the way that cannabis growers have done it. So that practice really took hold for, I would say, you know, from like, let's get, call it late 60s to late 90s. And in the late 90s, some people started breeding plants with a little bit more accuracy and scientific intention, either measuring cannabinoids or terpenoids and really going after, specifically changing the chemical profile of the plant. And you can't really do that. I mean, you can do it with smell by your nose a little bit. But the real way to do that is to use like an analytical laboratory so that you're actually analyzing the chemistry or the chemicals that are in the plant and then making breeding decisions on, on individual plants based on that lab analysis. So that's kind of like really, you know, in a short summation where we've come from in the past kind of 50 years. Now, I think that.

Can I ask you a quick question here?

So, absolutely.

So, so philosophically speaking, from an evolutionary perspective, you know, from the cannabis plants perspective, how having greater genetic versity, pollinating a whole bunch of plants with a whole bunch of different genes allows it a better chance to survive in a variety of environments someone's going to live on. That's one of the reasons as humans we have these stigmas against breeding with our close relatives in every culture. So I think of Michael Pollan's book, this idea that cannabis and some of these other crops have enslaved humans to look for these traits in their own survival. And then, so now I look at cannabis as having, as a plant, sort of used humans as a way because of the effect that it gives to breed for, you know, more specific traits. So now it may be more evolutionary advantageous to produce higher THC because of the effects it has, or higher cannabinoid content. Um, is that, I mean, I know I'm kind of rambling here, but does that make. Make sense or is that sort of something from a philosophical perspective or evolutionary perspective for the planet?

It totally makes sense. I mean, I tried not to anthropomorphize plants too much.

That's fair.

That's fair.

Really. You know, all organisms on the planet are just different forms of DNA and different expressions of DNA trying to replicate itself, right? And so it's. An organism could be said to be successful. I mean, this is one perspective. Of course, an organism could be said to be successful if it reproduces, right? And so from that perspective, anything that a plant can do to increase its chances to reproduce, to have more progeny and go on, you know, in an evolutionary context, a win. Right. And I don't think the plant really cares what it does. It's just these traits come along or they evolve, and then we as humans come in and we start reinforcing those traits. Because, you know, like, look, the plant that we found when humanity came in contact with cannabis was nothing like the plant that it came today. It was this small little kind of weedy plant that followed camps around because we would, you know, eat the seeds and stuff like that. And it probably produced very little cannabinoids and like, you know, a lot less terpenoids and volatile smell molecules than it produces now. And over generations of generations and generations of humans growing these plants, let's call it, you know, over the last. It's hard to put a time scale on it, but say 10,000 years at least, we've done. We changed the plant, right? We've selected for things in the plants or individuals that we would find in the population, plants that might suit our use. So, you know, for fiber, we look. We, for example, we took plants and used them to make cordage, right? And ropes. And so plants that had long fibers, which is a result of, like, large internode spaces, you know, that was a useful trait. And so we changed. We essentially changed these plants over time. You made a really good point when you. When you mentioned humans and how humans. Humans breed. Breed. Humans are also obligate outcrossers. Like, we can't have offspring without mating with an individual of the opposite sex. Right? And so very much like cannabis, our mating system is the same kind of way it's designed. If you look at humanity across the globe, there's this huge amount of genetic variation, not only in skin and eye color and hair color, but every conceivable trait, there's variation present in the species, right? Length of Fingers, even number of fingers. I mean, we have these like, polydacty people that have like six fingers, right? And so there's all these little weird mutations that can exist in this, in, in the species, but we don't, as humans, go in and actively breed for those traits. And certainly, like you said, we don't breed tightly within our family, right? Because we've learned probably through experimentation in the past that like, you know, when you have kids with someone that's closely related to your family, you know, there's problems that arise. And you can point to any of the royal families that have existed around the world over the last, you know, few hundred years as an example of like, you know, there's like a Spanish royal that they essentially bred the line within, within a given family to the point of sterility, right? And this also happens with cannabis when you, you start taking these very unnatural breeding programs and you self a plant, you know, say over five generations, right? You really narrow down the gene pool and you start uncovering a lot of the negative deleterious traits that are buried within the, within any, any given individual's genome. So these are, you know, these are the consequences of things that we have to think about on a very top level when we're going about, about our breeding programs. And I think that a lot of people that come into the cannabis breeding world, they come from being growers, and then they want to start to make their own plants. And the truth is, is that as much as there is an art involved in selecting plants and mating them together, there also is a science and a math behind the art. Right? And so to be truly the most effective that you can be, you combine that art and passion and love for the plants and knowledge about, you know, that you acquire about plants growing, you know, a species over, say, 10, 15 years or more, when you add in that level of science and math and plant breeding understanding, you can really make some quite significant gains, Right. Compared to what we're doing today. On the whole, I would say I don't know if that's a good answer to the question.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to decide if I want to talk a little bit then about what your selection process is, because I realize you have to pick for maybe a single trait or a small group of traits at any given time, whether that's powdery mildew resistance or it's more vigorous root growth or a particular terpene expression or cannabinoid content or thc. What's sort of the thought process behind that.

Well, you know, it's. It's really no different than, I think, the way that anybody looks at it. The, the only difference is, you know, there's, look, there's. Every time you breed a plant, there's a cost, right? There's a cost in terms of you're selecting one plant over another, but there's also, like, material cost to grow the plants. And then if you're doing either genomic or chemical analysis, those are like, extra costs that start to add up, like, really, really quick, you know, say, you know, I know in California last few years, you can get a cannabinoid and a rudimentary terpene test done for like roughly 100 bucks, right? But if you grow, if you're growing 100 individuals from a seed line and trying to really understand what's happening in the population and select for rare plants, that's a $10,000 bill, like 100 times 100 bucks, right? 100 individuals, 10 hundred bucks per test. That's a $10,000 analytical chemistry bill just from the lab for that one. And we haven't even talked about genomic selection or anything. So it's really about balancing the money that you have to spend on doing R and D with the results. I think that we're entering this world now where, you know, obviously there's these public, publicly traded companies and companies that have been invested in by even private individuals that have pretty significant budgets that understand, hey, if you're going to do, you know, when you do research, research and development, yeah, it. There is a cost, but at the end of the research and development, you. You should end up with something better, like a product that's better in the end, from which you can then make up those costs, right? Those added costs that you took on. And so this is kind of like the debate between, you know, the small farmer, home grower versus more of a corporate style of breeding, which is funded. And I've, you know, I've had the, I don't know, pleasure, but I've had the ability to do both. And I gotta tell you, after building a really high throughput lab with really sensitive analytical equipment, once you've done it that way, you really would have a hard time going back to doing it the other way without all that chemical analysis. Because the gains that you can make when you're analyzing plants and, and looking at them not only from like, the passionate perspective that we all have as growers of, you know, 20 plus years, you also get all this nerd data that tells you about, like, you Know the quant, the cannabinoid content or profile, or the terpene content and profile that influences smell and taste. You know, it's really hard to go back to less data.

Yeah, you have a huge advantage. I mean, what I'm hearing is to a certain extent that, you know, these small breeders, small farmers are just at a huge disadvantage. I mean, is it almost becoming a lottery ticket to a certain extent in that case? Yeah.

Well, I would, I would say the smaller farmers that are doing it without that kind of funding, without that kind of chemical analysis, it is a lottery. Right. You really are counting on luck and your ability as a grower or a selector to go through a population and find plants you're going to miss. Like, I'll just, you know, from my perspective, if you do it that way, you're going to miss things in the, in the mix. Because, for example, it's really hard to, you know, by organoleptics, like for example, tasting every plant and smoking every plant, it's really hard to identify not only the differences in like that top tier cannabinoid production plant, but also like it's like near impossible to find a plant that has CBD or THCV or cbdv, for example, some of these more rare cannabinoids like you. Because those things are not, they don't have a psychoactive impact on the, on the. Yeah, sorry, I don't sign up. Psychoactive can be a problem. Problematic word if it, if those compounds don't produce a high. Right. So it's really hard to quantify them or even qualify plants. Say, you know, you can't pick out a plant that has THCV or CBDV by smoking it. Right. So I would say in that shit, in that sense they are at a disadvantage. You know, the, the people that put the money into analytics be. Again, either be it chemical analysis or genomic analysis, they definitely have an advantage. You know, they've got a leg up.

So following that line of thought, like, where do you see the industry headed as we get federal legalization here in the United States, as more states come online and more of these big ag companies get into it, I mean, are we going to end up, is it going to be like when you order corn or tomatoes, are we going to lose genetic diversity?

Well, I would argue that we're already losing genetic diversity because. And we have been for the last 20 years. Right. And even like say the last 15 years since the, you know, the occurrence of like OG and these, these cushy plants. I Guess we're closer to 20 years at this point in time. That flavor profile, like you know, if you, if you do a chemical analytical survey of the plants on the market, the vast majority of plants are beta, carryophylene, mercine, limonene dominant, right? And that's, that's the Cushing market profile. That cushy market profile that everybody wants, that gassy nose is a very small subset of the plants that cannabis can produce, right? So we already are going towards a smaller genetic diversity by consumer choices, right? I don't, I don't know that big Ag is going to be, I mean look, if for these big pot companies that we see that are building right now, these MSOs, the multi state operators like Curaleaf and truly once a company becomes like a public company, it's really their only goal is to make more money, right? They want the stock to go up for their investors. And so those type of companies are not really too, too keen to put like millions of dollars into a breeding program because it's a cost, it's a cost center, right? It's something that's always going to just be costing you money all the time.

I was going to say, could one argue too that consumer, the consumer driven markets in the sense that people always are chasing the next hype strain or cultivar will keep things, you know, somewhat fresh and, and keep maybe smaller breeders in, in the running for, you know, genetics down the road or.

I think, yeah, I think that there's always going to. Well, I think that the breeding will be done by smaller companies or smaller groups. I don't think it's going to be, you know, these small, smart small farms are really going to be leading the way because like I said, it's quite hard to compete against plants that are bred, you know, for example, I mean, one of the companies I work for down in California, we had a client that we did some breeding for and they actually ended up winning the Emerald cup with a coat, with a, with a cultivator cultivar called Lemon Crush. And that year the Lemon Crush, like, you know, we used a lab to obviously to guide our selection process and our breeding process and that the Lemon Crush plant beat the competitors by like a really significant amount. Like all the people that, you know, all the judges of the Emerald crop were really quite unanimously blown away by this one plant. You know, I think, I think it had like, you know, it was like 30 to 40% or maybe it was 20 to 30% more votes than any other plant in the competition, which is like that's really quite significant. Right. It wasn't a close margin. So I think that we'll probably see less people breeding in the future. I mean, there'll be more people playing around. The flip side to the coin is that, you know, this market driven approach that always demands something new is a little bit fickle. It's not a little bit fickle, it's really fickle to the point where it's kind of ridiculous. Like, you know, the market wants something new every six months. You can't breed plants that fast to be finding new plants that quickly. Right. That are truly better plants. So I think that like the, the market height side that we have has kind of accelerated to the point where it's like, it's ridiculous at this point in time and people need to, you know, I just don't think fashions need to change that much. And really, when you look at these plants, chemically the names change, but chemically the plants aren't changing that much. Right. Like the plant that was popular six months ago or eight months ago is really no different chemically than the plant that is popular today. It just has a new fancy name.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. And when I think of other crops like tomatoes, you know, I'll see a couple new varieties maybe come out in a given year, but everyone's going back, you know. And I know I have my favorites that I order every year. I like to run a sakura red cherry tomato, for example. And I love the fact that I know exactly what I'm going to get as a gardener and I can order those seeds and they're consistent. And that's, that's really nice. Do you see something more like a traditional crop experience for gardeners down the road? Like the way we currently get a lot of our vegetable seeds?

Yeah. Well, again, like, okay, so tomato is a really interesting example because tomato is kind of the opposite breeding system of cannabis. It's not an album get across her. It's. It's called the selfing species. So self ers, once they've been bred and purged out like the negative genes which tomato has done over really the last, call it a few thousand years. They're like when you grow, if you buy an heirloom tomato seed and you save the seeds and you, you know, you rot off the. But like whatever the material is that surrounds the seeds, you kind of have to decompose it and then the seed is able to germinate. If you plant those seeds the next year and you harvest the tomato from the second generation, they look almost identical and taste almost identical to the tomatoes that you got from the year before. And also they all look identical to their cohorts in the population. Right. Like, all the brothers and sisters come up looking the same.

Yeah.

And if you again, breed it again in another generation or on for like, you know, say 20 generations, those seeds look. The fruit look and taste the same in the 20th generation as they did in the first generation. That doesn't happen with cannabis. Right. Because again, it's an obligated outcrosser. Just like you have. You have brothers and sisters or the audience members that have brothers and sisters. They know, aside from twins, that your brothers and sisters might share traits that you have, but they don't look identical to you. Right. They're not the same. And so I don't think that, like, I think really, once we have full legalization in multiple markets across the world, I really don't think that there will be much of a seed market. I think the majority of people that are growing from. Growing will grow from clone or tissue culture. And, you know, we get to that point, call it 10, 15 years down the road, then you will actually have breeding companies that put in the time and the work to make crops that are plantable from seed and uniform chemically that, you know, like in the corn analogy that we're giving before, where, you know, you talk, if you have like, you know, you want to plant an acre or 10 acres of corn, you can go out and buy corn seed and they all come up and they grow the same height and they have the same number of ears per plant, and they're all like, what I call bulletproof. They're all resistant to pests and diseases, drought, and they all have high yields and they all look same. Right. Eventually we will get there with cannabis. But I really don't think that that type of breeding is going to be done by people on a small scale. That's going to be done by companies that put work into, you know, they put resources into genetic analysis and chemical analysis. Right. And they truly create uniform plants using, like, more, let's just say, more advanced breeding technologies.

Are we at risk of Roundup ready seeds, hemp seeds, or cannabis seeds down the road?

I don't. I don't think so. As long as we have the straight. The stringent chemical controls that we have on the plants. Right. I mean, I think you're in Washington, so you guys have like a pretty strict regulated system. I'm in Canada. We have a Federally regulated system. And it's very clear that you can't have more than a specific number of parts per billion of any given chemical pesticide. Right. And so really you don't want to be using chemicals on your plants because it there ends up being a trace or like even a disqualification of your crop if the chemo, if the, if the chemical burden is too high. Right. So I really don't see Roundup ready being a thing in cannabis. Right. I just, it's like you'd end up with all this Roundup in the final extract or flowers and that's just, that's not allowed by the regulations. So, you know, I think that the regulations kind of protect us from a lot of those bad or not. Not that they're bad practices, but they're necessary practices to do, you know, to do again, like 10,000 acres of corn, right. When you're in Iowa or somewhere in the Midwest and every, your neighbors are all growing either soy or corn or whatever it is, everybody's growing the same crop, right? And so pests can come in and just destroy things. And that's why you end up using these agrochemicals to essentially protect the crop from either weeds or pests.

So I know your talk or your panel, this was like probably four years ago now, maybe five years ago at Emerald cup was about CRISPR and talking about gene editing and there was a lot of concern from, in GMOs and there was a lot of concern from the organic folks in the audience of GMO cannabis. What if anything has changed in the last few years on that or what are your thoughts on that?

I come from like the opposite end of the spectrum. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm like, you know, I'm pretty hippie minded and the environment is a big deal for me. That said, I also studied like, like I said, I studied plant breeding and biotechnology at a, at a postgrad level in university. So I like, I have a pretty good grasp of like, you know, genetic mutation and how genomes change over time and even you know, you know, like for example, like there's, there's viruses and bacteria that change plants, that they create genetically modified plants and a lot of the species that we, we work with, that we as ag crops have undergone these genetic transformations naturally in the wild. Right. And so I'm like, I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in like, I don't really believe in the concept of there's a God making all these decisions for us. So when people Start talking about like, it's not the way nature intended. Like nature does all these things and we harvested these tools for genetic modification. And we're at the point now where we can, you know, we can very specifically change genetic bases in plants to make those plants have traits that we, that the plant might not have. Right. So my, anyway, my point is I'm a little bit biased and I think that a lot of people would probably disagree with me, but I think that when you get to the point where you really understand that the cannabis genomes or genomes in general are always in flux, they're always changing. And so humans using CRISPR or similar technologies to go in and very specifically and precisely edit base pairs to induce changes is not that it's not only not dangerous, it's going to be the only thing that's going to allow humanity to survive the next few hundred years with this insane global climate change situation that we've created. We're going to have mass famines, we're going to have areas, geographic areas that were crop production areas that are going to become destroyed by the changing environment. And we're going to have to adapt plants to regions that they weren't able to grow in, like really damn quickly if we're going to have any shot at all. And so you can't do that through conventional breeding. Like you have to really use all the technologies that we have learned about to get to that point. Right. So that'll probably upset some of your listeners, but that's kind of my perspective on it.

It's all good.

So you do see this as being the future with cannabis, I guess.

Yeah. And it's, listen, for me, it's not an inevitably future, it's just a technology. And like for me, technologies are tools, right. It's like, you know, I gave this analogy on a show a couple of weeks ago. It's like having a golf, it's like having a golf game, right? If you're on the golf, you don't just take your driver out every time you need to hit the ball and smack it, right? You, you learn to have a toolbox of shots that you can pull out at the time when you need it, right? So not everything is a CRISPR solution, right. Sometimes you need to make a CRISPR modification to a plant to induce a trait, but then from that point on you just classically breed. You use classical Mendelian breeding techniques to shuffle that trait around, right? And look, there's genetic modifications that you can do to plants that don't ever end up passed on into the offspring. Right. It's just something that you would use for a seed production technology. So there's a lot of ways to use these words like crispr, these technologies like crispr. And I think that like a lot of the anti, this anti GMO kind of ethos comes from people that don't really understand the science. And I think once you start to understand the science and the way that cannabis genomes are in flux already, that like, these things don't become too much of a big deal. Right.

Well, you know, I know this is totally off the cuff too, and this wasn't a topic we planned on talking about, but for me, as someone who falls on this, the organic side of things, and you're right, I don't totally understand the science behind it. I'll be the first to admit that my concern is more the corruption of these, these major agrochemical companies. I don't trust them. I don't feel that they have our best interest in mind. And I think that their bottom line is going to supersede our, our health. And I feel like our government to a certain extent is willing to push these things through, through lobbyists. And so my concern is that even if the technology is okay, there may be uses of it that could be dangerous for human health down the road. I mean, when we talk about Roundup, for example, and Roundup ready crops, there is more and more research that maybe this wasn't as safe as we thought it was. And you know, it's been used to bankrupt a lot of Indian farmers in terms of their inability to afford the seed and, and litigation around, you know, drift of, of pollen and things into other organic crops. I mean, it's become a little bit of a contentious issue. So I think that's sort of my perspective on it because you're right, I absolutely don't understand all the science behind it.

Listen, that's totally a fair perspective and I can't disagree with you there at all. But you know, it's like to me, it's like nuclear technology. We can build safe, clean thorium reactors that can safely produce nuclear energy, or we can take plutonium and make bombs out of it or hydrogen bombs. Right? Those are like, let's not confuse the tool or the technology with the use of the tool. Right. By unscrupulous people with, you know, with unscrew, unscrupulous agendas. Right. Like, there's always going to be people that take a technology and they try to develop it for their own financial interest, but that doesn't mean that you should throw the technology out because you can also use technology to benefit humanity. And I think that, you know, the points that you're making are very fair given the track records of the companies that have developed these technologies. That is, you know, Monsanto and the Roundup ready thing. You're right. We made these plants resistance to a chemical. And I think a lot of people don't realize that Monsanto was a chemical company. Right. They made chemicals. That was what they did before they got into plant breeding. And then they developed, then they found this gene and the whole company business switched because they found this gene they could put into plants. They had a patent on that genetic construction and that really gave them the ability to switch into this kind of life sciences company. Right. Or ag, big ag company. And the only, the only goal was to make these resistant plants so they could sell more chemicals. Right?

Sure, sure.

Yeah. So anyway, I just, I think people should understand, again, it is a fine discussion. I think that we have to separate the technologies from the technology and their potential good uses from bad actors using those technologies for their own profit. Right. Because we can't. You don't just throw away the baby with the bathwater because there's people doing bad stuff. Right. These technologies really can change the way that agriculture is done. We can make better, more resistance, healthier, more nutritious plants. Right. And we should be, if we have technologies to do those things, I think that we should be doing those things to make our ecological footprint on the planet lower. Right, sure.

Well, I mean, you bring up a good point. Like we may need some of these technologies just to survive as a species down the road. You know, I don't know, but I could, I could very well see that being the case. And you know, whether I like it or not, it's going to happen. And I think that's the, that's the aspect of it that I think I have to be cognizant of, is it doesn't really matter what my opinion is on it. At the end of the day, there's going to be people out there that are going to do it, whether it's whether I like it or not and.

Can it be done in a safe way that protects consumers. And I think that the science has shown at this point in time that it really can. And that's why we have. I'm not sure what the processes in the states, but I'm pretty sure that the EPA must have some say about the release of genetically modified crops. I know that In Canada, you can't just take a genetically modified organism and release it to the environment without, like millions of dollars worth of studies. Right. So there is like a big regulatory pushback on a lot of these technologies where you really do have to demonstrate that the plants are safe.

So, okay, I want to. I want to change directions on this a little bit in the sense that, you know, I see a lot of breeding happening for, you know, the retail market. Is there much breeding being done? I mean, I know there's some. But where do you see this going in terms of identifying specific compounds or effects from more medical nature, like around anti seizure or, you know, anti nausea or some of these other benefits that people are seeing in cannabis? How do we get more consistency there?

Well, yes, through breeding and product development. Right. Like, it's kind of those two aspects go hand in hand. One of the things that, with the company that I worked for in the States, they were, they owned a series of dispensaries or one of their affiliate companies owned a series of dispensaries. And so the R and D was really designed to feed, to create products that could end up in those dispensaries or could end up benefiting, you know, benefiting patients. And so we did a whole series of breeding programs using like, THCV and CBDV and CBG to like, upregulate those compounds and create new cannabinoid profiles that might have some therapeutic advantage. Right. And I think epilepsy is like one, one area where I think we made some decent gains. Some people might not know that the CBD V compound is very much like cbd, but it's got a shorter little chain on the side of the molecule. That compound is more effective for epilepsy than CBD is. And so we had bred a line that had elevated levels of cbd, cbdv. And you know, at the time we were doing all this work where we were pairing specifically cannabinoid profiles with various terpene profiles kind of to like optimize the entourage effect. Right. Or the concept of an entourage effect. So I looked into the literature and started look, figuring out, trying to figure out what terpenes and terpenoids had anti spasmodic or anti convulsive properties and realized that both beta caryophylline and linalool each have some of those properties. And so I started hybridizing our CBDV line into plants that were high in beta caryophylline and linalool. And after a couple of generations of shuffling, we ended up with plants that were essentially CBDV dominant and had terpene profiles that were dominant in beta caryophylline and linalool. And so the idea is that you've now got a plant that not only has a cannabinoid that is directed towards, you know, epilepsy or reducing seizures, but all the compounds, the, sorry, the other major compounds that are in the plant also have anticonvulsive or, you know, antispasmodic properties. With the idea being that these flowers could then be given to people that have these conditions or you would use those to make extracts. Right. That are, that are more suited to giving to like for example, kids, for example. Right. You don't want like 4 year olds to have to be smoking big fat joints. So it's better to give them an extract that they can take orally, right?

Yeah, no, that's really exciting for anyone listening that may be dealing with these sort of medical issues. Do you have any recommendations where people might be able to get their hands on genetics or reach out to companies that may be able to point them in the right direction?

Yeah, unfortunately that's the, the corporate trade off side to this whole thing. Right. It's like these companies that develop that kind of intellectual property, they don't just give it away.

I mean, can you buy the seeds even though, or can you. No, no, buy the product?

You can't. I'm not sure what the status of the products are in their dispensaries these days because again, I've been, I've been gone from that company for, you know, five years at this point in time. But yes, I don't really know what the status of their availability is. I know they filed some patents and I think that their, their business model was more about trying to find other businesses to license the technology to and license those plants to rather than give them out with patients, which is a bummer. But I mean it's, it's kind of the way that things are done. Again, if you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars building these labs and running breeding programs to fill, you know, we're talking like tens of thousands of samples going to the lab. That's a pretty hefty bill, right? A lab bill. And they want, they obviously want to keep a return on their investment. So handing out seeds to some growers in Humboldt that are going to multiply them and hand them out for free isn't really part of their business model.

Yeah, I was just curious if they were even selling clones or offering the Final, you know, end product in a form that people could purchase if that was something that, I mean, at the.

End of the day, we're kind of. Yeah, I mean, look, we're still stumbling out of fucking prohibition, right? And I think that, you know, give it like, let's call it 20 years. I mean, that's pretty far out. But even 15 to 20 years after legalization, people are going to have, you know, the United States and Canada as well, will have really good systems for protecting the ownership of plants. For breeders that actually develop new plants, you'll be able to register it and those things when they're propagated or sold through nurseries, the breeders will get, you know, little bits of royalty, right, that come back to them. And as those systems develop, I think that we'll see a much more robust legal clone sales, right. So that growers don't have to buy seeds and search through to find winter, winter plants. Like, you'll be able to go in to any nursery and select from probably, I would say 100 to 300 different genetic types, right, that have been selected for either specific cannabinoid profile or specific terpene profile or flavor.

So are you talking tissue culture now at this point?

Yeah, I would say a lot of that stuff, they might not be the plants that you buy might not be from tissue culture, but hopefully the moms went through tissue culture. Right. I think all of these systems that we use in cannabis, including, including nurseries, like, I think growing plants, mother plants not using tissue culture, those days are pretty much done or they're, you know, we're, we're seeing the beginning of that, the extinction of that process. I think mother plants should be fed from tissue culture. They should be certified past and virus and viroid free. And then those clones get turned into moms. Like, you know, and mothers are probably going to be replaced. Like mother plants will be replaced either every three or six months. Right. And you wouldn't run them that much longer. You're constantly, you should constantly reproducing your, your mother stock with new tissue culture plants of that same genetic type.

Right.

And that just helps me.

Let's talk about that a little bit. So for growers with mother plants, from a genetic perspective perspective, you know, if you're, what's best practice here. So we have some people that will keep a mother plant for, let's say, six months. You'll have others that will every crop start a new mother plant as they take more cuttings. Now, I, I am aware that mutations can be more likely to occur due to plant stress of any type, which could affect your next crop. But in theory, you know, your, your clone is a clone of the prior plant. What are the, what would be best practice or what are the risks associated with either model?

Good question. So I think one of the risks with tissue culture is again, just to say not all tissue culture labs are the same. A lot of tissue culture labs use hormones to ramp up multiplication rates or plant growth rates. Those same hormones that have all those properties that are beneficial for tissue culture, like for example, phi diazeron. One of the negative traits with that one, which is very often used in cannabis tissue culture, is that it increases the mutation rate. And so there is the opportunity that your plant is going to change genetically as a result of going through the process. And good tissue culture companies, they monitor the gentleman genetic stability of plants going through culture to make sure that they're not creating a whole bunch of off types. You know, this stuff also happens in outside of the tissue culture lab too. Plants undergo natural mutation rates. All eukaryotic organisms have a natural rate of mutation. I like to use the Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc example. Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are just, they're white and pink grapes that actually derive. They're actually clone copies of Pinot Noir, which is a purple grape. Right. It's just that through natural mutation of cells dividing, some clump of cells lost the ability to produce that purple pigment, and therefore the grapes on that branch grew white. Right. And somebody was walking through a vineyard at some point in time, probably harvesting the grapes, and realized that this one branch of a vine had a, had a white grape. And so they, they took that branch off and cloned it and you know, started making mother Earth, started that plant to be more or less a mother donor plant, and propagated a whole army of those plants. Right. So the point anyway, the point is, is that like mutations are a natural part of life. They happen anyway. They're, they're happening all the time. Yeah. So I don't know, like, I think that, like, you know, if you think about all the other negative stuff that can happen when you're just using mother plants, like obviously the huge pest burden and viruses and viroids, like we've seen with the hot plate and biroid, if you're not maintaining like really good sterility practices and like making sure that you don't cut more than one plant with same razor blade or scissors or like, you know, pruning shears or whatever, that's how those viruses and viroids are passed around. Right. So I think that there's obviously benefits to be with tissue culture and monitoring the health of your tissue culture plants with molecular biology tools to make sure that you are virus free. Right. There's a huge benefit to that. So I think that that model is probably going to change. Like I think it's already starting to change. In the next five years, most people will be buying plants that came from. They're either tissue culture plants or more likely the tissue culture plants were feeding like the tissue culture process was feeding mother rooms which were then being propagated for say three to six months to make clones. And then that whole process just starts over again.

So as a seed producer, you don't see that as a viable industry. Down the road, you think everyone's going to be moving to tissue culture and cloning.

We're going to go through phases. I think we already, already are moving to tissue culture. Now seed production, I mean, look, it depends on the crop, right. If you're growing CBD distillate, it doesn't matter if the plants all look the same or not. It would be better if they did. Right. But I don't think that you're going to spend the money to buy tissue culture plants to plant in a field when like cheap hemp seeds that all that all produce CBD anyway are just being, you know, co extracted to make a CBD distillate. Right?

Yeah.

So for different parts, the different parts of the market, like different strategies will prevail. But I think that like flower producers will probably have mothers. It'll go through phases. Right. Like the current next phase is going to be tissue culture and then call it 10, 15, 20 years down the road. Once real breeders have really had a chance to like get into towards stabilizing lines, then we'll probably see crops being planted from seed. Right. Again. But until we get the level of uniformity that you can expect from a clone crop, I don't think that we'll end up seeing flower crops grown from seed until we have that like level of breeding. Right.

And the price of seeds will have to come down too. I would think as well.

You'd be surprised, man. Like for example, like you know, Monsanto, you know, you're looking at like depending on the seed and the seed supply, you're looking at like 50 to 25% of the revenue from the crop goes back to the seed supplier. And the reason that they play, they pay that amount is that like I said, the farmer knows that They've got a bulletproof crop. And so if you're growing 100 acres of corn and 25% is going to go to the seed supplier, or 25% of costs are going to go to the seed supplier, you'll just plant an extra 25 acres. Right. Because when you're planting corn, it's really not that much work. You've got one of those, you know, GPS guided John Deere tractors that you just essentially plug the data into an iPad and it go, it goes and does the work. Right, sure. So I think there will be like a premium cost or premium seed. But usually those things are scaled to make sense in, you know, they're scaled to make sense to the operator. Right.

Sometimes provided government's still subsidizing corn and all that other nonsense. But I don't want to gain industrial ag. But I hear your point. So you're saying there's a value there for the farmer that would still allow for higher seed prices, essentially.

Exactly. That's a better way to say it.

So real quick, what about this idea of genetic drift or genetic degradation of clones over time, beyond stress or random mutation? Are we really looking at there being any issues? And then I've also heard people say, oh, you just need to take your indoor plant and grow it outdoors and then that sort of restores the vigor of the plant. Can you kind of touch on those, those topics?

Yeah, for sure. So genetic drift is like the wrong word to use to describe that. And I know that everybody in the cannabis industry, or a lot of people in the cannabis usually use that word. Genetic drift really means like a change in the genetic frequencies of a population from one generation to the next. And so that's really the definition of genetic drift. I've heard what you're talking about. Use that word you're talking about or the concept that you're talking about be described by clonal drift, which is really just, you know, somatic mutations building up. There was a research paper that came out in the last couple of months that showed, well, it purported to show huge levels of genetic mutation. They actually, they took a mother plant from a Canadian facility and it was this big, unhealthy mom that had been grown for, you know, well over a year. And they took clones from the top of the plant and they took clones from the bottom of the plant and they took clones from the middle of the plant and they sequenced those clones all individually. And the research, their, their paper showed that there was all these accumulating mutations in, in mother plants. I think there was actually some flaws in their data because, like, it just, it doesn't ring true to me that there would be that degree of mutation. I've grown, I've had plants in my library that I've had for 20 plus years, you know, approaching 30 years, and they haven't changed. Right. Like they, I tell you, they look and taste and smell and grow the same way they did like when I selected them from their seeds. Right. So I just, those two pieces of data just don't go together with me if we're having this huge rate of selection. And there's another genomics company out of Boston that was, that's been doing a lot of work in cannabis and he said that he thinks there's some flaws in the study. So the point is, is I don't think we have a conclusive answer to the question, the question you're answering. But it is important to know that all plant species and even animal species, like, you know, as your skin cells are dividing, you look down at your wrist or your hand, you know, the skin around those wrists, it might get a mutation, genetic mutation in humans, a genetic mutation in your skin cells is never going to get passed on, you know, especially if it's in your hand that has no way of getting passed on to your offspring. Right. But plants, especially cannabis, don't really operate that way. Like a plant. If a branch has a genetic mutation that say, destroys a THC gene or a pathogen resistance gene or even a terpene flavor gene, that can be passed on if that branch is then cut and used to make mother plant. Right. So yeah, I don't know if that answers the question.

So essentially there are some level of just natural mutations that occur, but stress, plant stress can lead to more mutations. So it's very important to keep healthy mothers and clone off of healthy plants. Short answer, does that, does that kind of summarize?

Yeah, more or less. Like when people say like stress causes mutations, I don't think that we necessarily know that to be true. But for example, you know. Well, I mean, what do you define a stress change in ph, like high temperatures, you know, like, definitely, like pests are vectors for viruses and stuff and viruses cause genetic changes or can cause genetic changes. Right. So I would say that like the, in theory, the practice is true. I don't know that, like what. I don't think we really know what stresses induce mutations because we just haven't really done those kinds of studies in cannabis. Right, sure.

I was just thinking environmental stress, whether that's Pest, cold, heat, water. You know, this idea of cloning off of a unhealthy plant, you're more likely to have mutations is that, I mean, and maybe I'm wrong. Like I said, this is not my area.

Mutations is probably not the best word there. I think that the concept that you're talking about is called epigenetics.

Okay.

And epigenetics just means like EPI means above. So it's like a level of genetic regulation that happens above or on top of the genetic level. And it's something called DNA methylation that happens on the genome. And it really, like you can think of it like, you know, DNA comes in like these big bundled up coils and we have these proteins that regulate that winding or the compression of the DNA so that it gets coiled up and is efficient to package. Right. And then when genes need to be transcribed, machinery will come along and, and unravel that piece of the genome so that the DNA can be read. And so DNA, when it's coiled, can have these little methylation sites added to it which tell the machinery, you know, transcribe this gene more or less. Right. And those things are actually heritable, or they can be heritable, but it's not actually a genetic change. It's a change.

Is it a change like a deleterious expression of the genetic of the genetics?

Sometimes, but sometimes it might be beneficial. Okay, Right. So, yeah, it's hard to make those kind of those like, hard and fast rules about genetics. Right. Like, you know, for example, somebody was saying the other day, like, all genetic mutations are negative. Well, shit, if you're, if you're trying to find a plant that has CBG in it, you want a plant that has a broken or mutated THC gene so that that THC gene can't turn the CBG precursor into thc. Right. And when you have that mutation, what happens is CBG backs up. Right. And so sometimes we want to destroy a gene. Right. Like, for example, there's another. We were talking about powdery mildew earlier on. They've just showed this genetic sequence that we have a susceptibility gene to powdery mildew. So if you have this gene, then the plant is more susceptible to powdery mildew infection. It's like, has to do with like a docking protein of how powdery mildew, like actually attaches to the plant. And so if you can break that gene in the plant, you kind of destroy the docking mechanism. And it makes it. So in that, in that example, destroying a gene makes A plant more resistant to powdery mildew. Right. And so this idea that, like. Yeah, there's. People got to kind of get rid of the idea that, like, broken genes are bad things, because sometimes a broken gene might have a phenotype that we actually like. Right. That is beneficial for us as humans. Right.

Are you referencing the paper from Dewey Scientific that came out a little while ago? Because I actually had someone on the podcast recently, Jordan Zagar, talking about a paper directly relating to the. That powdery mildew gene.

No, this is. So that's the other side of the equation. So there's. They found two genes in powdery mildew. One group in Canada found this S gene, which is the susceptibility gene. And then cess group, working with Dewey out of Washington, they found a resistance gene.

Oh.

And so it's like there's two. So those are like two separate independent genetic factors, one that causes resistance, the other. And so you want the resistance gene, but the other gene causes susceptibility and you don't want that gene. Right. So you can stack the R gene with the broken S gene, then you're kind of off to the races. Right.

Yeah. So what about.

You're in a better position.

Yeah. I wanted to come back to this idea of taking a long cloned plant and growing it outdoors is some way of restoring vigor to it. Have you heard this?

Yeah, we've seen it, we've done it. And actually, to a degree, it works. Right. Like, I think what happens is a lot of times people have these plants in these libraries and they're either growing in them. Like you said past, they got pests or low light conditions or whatever, and there seems to be something about putting these plants out in the intense summer allows that plant to, like, get back to traditional health. I don't think there's. Again, I don't think there's been any studies in cannabis, but it might be that, like, you know, intense, real sun is able to rip some of that methylation off the DNA. Again, that's just pure speculation, but there is definitely something going on with certain plants that, like, whether it's the soil or being held in these compact root systems or it's the light or it's like all those things over a year. You know, when you take that plant back out and put it back outside in nature where it evolved, it seems to bump back into optimal health. Right.

That's really interesting. So there is something potentially to. That you would hypothesize, but we don't have the research yet to really identify exactly what that might be.

Yeah, I've seen plants go from like, weird kind of fucked up, like, you know, not gutted in the viroid sense, but like just not performing very well. And then you take them outside and you put them in the sun and they like kind of kick back into hell. So I don't, I don't know what it is. I don't think that's like a solution to every problem, but it does seem to work on some plants that are suffering a little bit for, for some reason. Right?

Yeah. Fascinating. Well, we've been talking for a while now. Is there anything else you'd like to share with listeners before we end the call? I know we kind of jumped around quite a bit.

No, just keep growing seeds. I mean, I, you know, I think people should always be growing seeds, even if it's just like a few, you know, in their gardens. You can't find anything new. We can't ever move the species forward unless we're making seeds. Right. And growing seeds. So don't ever stop growing seeds. It might have to be like a small little patch that you do on the side just to keep things normal. But yeah, I'd like to see us getting back into growing more seeds because, and I think we are, as we see legalization coming, you can see more people, like in California, like, you know, 5ish years ago, they really was really this like seed growing, like explosion, right. And people stopped really leaning on clones. Clones are fine. Great for uniformity. And you can do all these interesting things when you have, you know, a ton of biomass to make like specific flavor profile extracts. But you're never going to find that next profile without going back to seed. So I, I, you know, I always like when people grow, feed.

So even with all the disadvantages for that small home grower that wants to play around with breeding, you'd still encourage them to do it. At the end of the day, they might come up with something really novel and exciting or that works really well for them.

Yeah, well, it's just, you know, it's like, listen, they might not find and create the perfect plant, but it's like you've probably seen this freak show plant, right? The plant with the weird serrations. The leaves kind of look like ferns. Yeah, it's like that was stumbled across by a small home grower and it might turn out that that trait has some kind of advantage, right? Like maybe, maybe that plant is less susceptible to powdery mildew again because like, you know, the powdery mildew just can't grow across the leaf like it would normally. Or maybe it allows more air through the leaf. Right. And so again, it's like, it doesn't mean that the people that are discovering the new thing are going to build the bulletproof plant, but it's like it takes, you know, it takes a whole community of people, people growing all this different stuff and just randomly some dudes gonna find something new, right? And then hopefully that gets shared with the community and these things kind of get passed around and integrated and optimized, right?

Yeah. See, I speculated that we were at a level in the last five, 10 years of the greatest diversity in this plant, genetic diversity, because of all the legal that's happened and how many more people are growing it, that we would have seen more diversity. But you think we've already sort of limited or funneled down that diversity towards a very specific range.

Well, there's two forces right at play. Like one of them, like you said, we got more people growing more seeds. But also the market, there's a fashion in the market, right? And that fashion is for gas, right? And so like you go into a dispensary, and I've seen it in California and I've also seen it in Canada into a dispensary and there's like 20 different cultivar names on the menu. But really when you go through and you look at the plants from chemistry, it's like 18 of them all have the same chemical profile. Right? So it's like even though there probably is genetic diversity across the population, it doesn't really make it to the marketplace. Right?

Yeah. Well, is this where the skill of the grower comes into play in terms of bringing out certain aspects of those genetics through the way that they grow the plant? Because I mean, obviously your genetic expression is going to be tied to how the plant's cultivated.

It is. But there's also plants that just don't like, you know, there's plants that are like, for example, I have this really equatorial plant. So a hybrid that I had made and we ran through the lab and it came back to have like high levels of pinene and limonene and almost nothing else, which is a relatively rare terpene profile. It's really like associated with what people would call a classic haze plant. So we're talking like, you know, 13, 14 week flowering time to grow it indoors. I think we had like three plants of it and it produced like quarter pound total.

Right.

And we're talking like three, three, three foot plants. That's like, it really didn't yield shit.

Yeah.

But the flower was exceptional. And the rosin that came back at a very low rate was even better than the flour. Right. But it's like you need to grow acres, an acre that's of that stuff to have enough material to make an extract. So it's like some plants just don't produce enough.

So the genetics are still the driver, in your opinion? And, you know, we can pull some levers on the cultivation side, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to good genetics.

Yeah, the genetic. I think the genetics are really the key to diversified products in the marketplace. Right. Like, you know, if you're going to build a rosin brand, it's fine and dandy to have gas, but, like, everybody's got gas, right? And so, like, if you want to build like a unique brand, you might want something like with a really ripe garlic smell or like a really floral kind of little, like a real flowery kind of smell to it, Right? Because I think those are the things that are really going to have. Those are the things that are really going to be able to get traction in the market. Right. Or like we said before with the epilepsy plant, right? Like, you want, like having a specific plant that produces a specific chemical profile that's therapeutic for, you know, a whole segment of the population. Like, it's the genetic that allows that product to exist. Right. So I think, you know, again, I'm biased as a plant breeder, geneticist, but like, I really do think that the genetic diversity is a lot, is what allows product differentiation on the market. It's, you know, it's not like, I don't think the growers, if everybody has the same plants, I don't think one grower is going to be better than everybody else. Right. But if that one grower has a unique genetic, they might be able to fill a market niche that nobody else can. Right?

I mean, yes and no. Coming from the cultivation side, I would say that given, you know, the same genetics to different growers, you could see different plant structure, different expression, different quality of flower just based off of the ability of the grower. And not just the ability the grower, but the environment which I tie to the grower, the light spectrum that the plant's given, the light. Light intensity. You know, we're able to manipulate plants quite a bit on that side. But I don't think that discounts, like, what you're saying and the fact that at the end of the day, it's really the genetics that are. Are going to drive a lot of your. Of how that plant is going to finish.

Yeah, I would feel like I'm a grower. Chi. Don't. Don't let me sound like I'm discounting the role of the grower and the creation of a great product. Right. It definitely is a huge role. And we know this from wine and we know this from food. Right. Like, the grower has definitely an impact on the outcome of the quality. But without that diversity in genetics, you know, you can have an excellent grower and a shitty genetic, and that grower is not going to be successful commercially. Right. But if you had an excellent grower, even a good genetic, like, they might be successful, and if you hand that grower a really interesting or unique genetic, then they're really going to be able to set themselves apart. The marketplace.

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. I like that. That's a fair, fair analysis. I'll give you that one. Well, Ryan, thanks again for your time today. I had no idea where this conversation was go, but I learned a lot and really enjoyed it and hopefully we can talk again soon.

For sure. Thanks for having me, Dad. I appreciate it, man. It was nice to chat with you. Finally. We'll get some time to actually hang next time at one of these events.

That would be great, man. I'd appreciate it. All right, have a great day.

You too. Take care, dude. Cheers.

That was Ryan Lee. And you are listening to the Cannabis Cultivation and Science podcast. I'm your host, Tad Hussey. If you like the podcast, please leave us a rating and review. I do read them all. Thanks for listening.