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Village Farms International, Inc. recently announced the expansion of their Delta 2 greenhouse cannabis cultivation facility located in Delta, British Columbia.

Cannabis Cultivation Expanded in Delta, British Columbia by Village Farms International

Listen to Noid Factoid from Daniela Vergara, PhD, Hemp Specialist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Noid Factoid from Episode 27, Part 2

Here, we bring you our top five recent articles covering updates in Michigan, cannabis cultivation begins in Kentucky, a new cannabis education scholarship, and updates at the NCIA.

Best of the Week: July 18 – July 24, 2025

Kentucky’s’ first cannabis cultivator has begun operations in the state’s medical cannabis industry.

The First Cannabis Cultivator in Kentucky Has Started Production

Here, we bring you our top five recent articles covering veterans and medical cannabis, cannabis legalized by the Omaha tribe, low THC extracts for Rett syndrome, ICE raids at a cannabis farm, and our newest Noid Factoid.

Best of the Week: July 11 – July 17, 2025

In our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, 

 interviewed researcher and educator Anna Schwabe, PhD, Associate Lecture Professor at the University of Colorado and Chief Operating Officer of CannaGen, an online cannabis genetic marketplace for licensed breeders, nurseries, and cultivators.

In the final video clip from our interivew, Dr. Schwabe explains the organizations she is actively involved in, from genetics to laboratories to education, plus some of the past  guests from her podcast, and plans for the future.

 to read the full expert interviews, including an interview with hemp specialist 

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD explains the cannabis projects and companies she is actively involved in, her goals for the future, plus past guests on her podcast, The Dank Hour.

Current and Future Cannabis Genetics Projects: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

: What are you working on currently that you're excited about, looking ahead into the future. If you can talk about it.

I mentioned I'm working for about five different startup companies. They're all different, and they're all looking at different things. So the Agricultural Genomics Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is going to be working – it's general cannabis research. The foundation was started by 

, who's another cannabis scientist, and we're working to advance cannabis science, specifically in genetics and genomics, and also educate. We are going to be doing some seed trials with farmers and partnering with companies like Atlas Seeds to see how these plants perform in different areas, and actually get some data driven things done. Because we know that it's going to turn out different in different in different environments, so how different and what performs well where, we want to know that.

And then let's see what else. Working with Cannagen, as you mentioned, as their Chief Operating Officer, that's an online marketplace, so we're not actually going to be selling anything, but it's really important for sellers and buyers to come together. Right now you can get online and try and search for seeds, and you will get inundated with all kinds of stuff, and it's hard to know who to trust. It's just very all over the place. So we wanted to create a centralized marketplace for people to go. It's all people who are licensed. We have ways to put up your COAs and your genetic tests and your pathogen tests so everything's really transparent.

Another company that I'm working with is looking at genotyping to try and figure out some of this stuff, and then give IP to breeders. It costs a lot of money and resources to develop new strains and without any kind of protection, it's not really worth doing all that work. So that's a lot of the reason why cloning is so prevalent in the cannabis industry is because it's like, well, but then once that's gone, it's gone, right?

And then there's a company here in New Jersey. They're opening a cultivation facility up in Maine, and working on some other super secret stuff with them. And possibly opening a testing lab somewhere, and working with a university on that. So, yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff. Yeah, I got a lot of balls in the air.

: No, it's great for you. I mean, you're very impressive, did a lot of great work, and I appreciate you spending some time with us, all the limited time that you do have, to discuss this with us. I really appreciate it.

Not a problem at all. I love to talk about cannabis, and honestly, I could talk for hours honestly. If anybody wants to check out any of my work or other interviews, or I think I have a couple of blog posts on there, or just want to follow me. My website, I'm really easy to find. It's just www.annaschwabe.com and there's a research tab and all that stuff and links to my social media, so you can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

We used to have a podcast. It's kind of on hold right now. The Dank Hour, we were on every week and it was a panel of industry experts, couple PhDs, Tess Eidem, Mark Scialdone, and then a couple of legacy growers were on there. We did have extraction experts at one point, but it was an evolving panel. But we would have legit guests on, people from True Terpenes, and we had Reggie Gaudino, Daniel Vergara, Eleanor Kuntz from LeafWorks. And some of those are on my website as well. So if you're interested in watching people talk about cannabis, those are fun to watch.

: Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Videos

In this video clip, Anna Schwabe shares insights into the evolutionary traits about the plant, from how it has been cultivated, to locally adapted plants, to research into disease resistance. 

Anna Schwabe, PhD shares insights into genetic characteristics of the cannabis plant and potential research into disease resistance.

Cannabis Evolutionary Insights: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

You started with cacti, and then you moved on to cannabis, I wonder if, can you talk about what are the potential implications cannabis genetic research has on understanding of plants and other botanicals, more broadly in terms of their genetics? Is there anything that's that has been informative to you as you study cannabis to other plant areas?

 Cannabis is a really interesting plant, and that's part of the reason why I love it. I mean, I would even go as far to say that cannabis is the most interesting plant on the planet because it is dioecious for the most part, which means that it has separate male and female plants, and only 6% of flowering plants are dioecious. So that makes it interesting in and of itself, and the fact that we continuously segregate the females from the males could be an evolutionary driver in terms of the cannabis plant – all she wants to do is make seed and have babies, that's all she wants to do. That's the whole purpose of her life, and yet, we aren't letting her do that. And, as Jeff Goldblum in “Jurassic Park” says, “life, it finds a way.” So now we're seeing a lot more plants that are producing pollen-producing structures, all by themselves, and cannabis has the ability to do that. So I think that's very interesting.

Also, we've been cultivating this plant for thousands of years, ten thousand years. It's one of the earliest cultivated plants that we have, and because of that, it has a very interesting and complicated genome. There's big chunks missing, there's big chunks that have been repeated. And we don't think that there is any truly wild cannabis out there anymore. It's wind pollinated, and the pollen can travel really far. So what we've done as humans is we've picked it up and taken it everywhere that we've migrated to, and as such, cannabis is now all over the planet for the most part, and the wind is taking it everywhere. So even if there are or were isolated populations of cannabis that people haven't physically been to, there's a really good chance that pollen from our cultivated cannabis has gotten into and sort of contaminated those wild populations to the point where they're not truly wild anymore. They are showing signs of plants that have been selected for by us. So that's something that's interesting.

But we do have land races which are locally adapted cannabis plants, which is why plants in Jamaica look different from plants in China, which look different from plants in Thailand. And I think something that's really interesting that could be investigated going forward or in the future, is the secondary metabolites, the terpenes, and the other compounds that the plant produces. Are there different terpenes that are produced in these localized areas? And do they have a function in terms of what pests and predators are in those areas? Because we select for what we like. But, you know, traditionally, we think of things like terpenes being for pest resistance and things like that. So do some of these terpenes serve different functions in these different areas? And if so, what are they? What predators do they affect? Things like that. So there's so many different avenues for research in cannabis the plant – I don't generally deal with it on the people side, once it's out of the ground. I think there's a lot of really interesting research that could be done. Also with diseases, like we're seeing a lot of diseases now, powdery mildew and a lot of plants are susceptible to hop latent viroid. Are there plants that are locally adapted that have more resistance to some of these pathogens than the ones that we've been babying in our cultivated indoor facilities is another area for research. But yeah, there's lots of stuff. I don't know if that answered your question or not.

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD shares insights into genetic characteristics of the cannabis plant and potential research into disease resistance.

In this video clip, Dr. Schwabe explains the cost, services, and benefits of cannabis genotyping, providing some examples of companies that offer genotyping.

 Anna Schwabe, PhD explains cost, services, and benefits of cannabis genotyping.

Genotyping in the Cannabis Industry: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

 How common or uncommon is this kind of genotyping in the cannabis industry? Is it currently pretty rare, and what is the cost currently for most producers?

It varies widely. There really aren't that many cannabis companies doing this genotyping. And genotyping can be quite costly. It depends on what kind of tool you use. There are different ways of genotyping. Back in the day, Phylos was just doing a small set of really variable markers which gave them enough information to say, “yes, these are identical. No, these are not identical.” And they did the same sort of analysis that I used in my research, called a principal coordinates analysis, which clusters things more closely together the more closely related they are. They no longer do that service. But I think they had, I want to say it was probably more than 3000, but they had quite a few samples in their database. But it's not available anymore, because they went down a different path with their business model.

Medicinal Genomics did genotyping. You can see the Cannapedia database, but it's not very user friendly in the information that's given. And then there's my Flora DNA, which now does genotyping, but they give you your genetic information. It's not out for public display. And then LeafWorks is another company. They have an awesome service. It's a little bit expensive, but they give you a lot. I think it's like $6000. They genotype it, they also do the chemotyping for you. They ask for a plant sample, so they actually do a herbarium specimen, so they have physical traits on file. And all of that information gives the person who submitted the sample some intellectual property. So there's a paper trail there saying, “This is mine, and all of this, that and the other.” And really when people are looking at IP, you want to protect your invention, and that's only as good as your lawyer, generally speaking. But if you have genetic data to show that this is mine, then that's good.

So those are the big companies that I know that are doing genetic testing, and depending on the depth of the genotyping, it can be thousands of dollars. The cheaper tools, like what Phylos was doing with just a small set of super variable markers, I think they were charging about $300 per sample. So it can really vary depending on the tool that you choose. And I'm actually working with a company who will be doing that sort of work in the near future.

 What do you think the cannabis industry needs to incentivize more genetic testing? Do you think there needs to be more public pressure from regulators? Should we have a public database that should be required? What is your opinion on that?

I don't think there should be anything that's required. I see it more as like, when you go to the store and you buy vitamins, there's the generic vitamins, great value, but then there's the gold seal, and you have more faith in some of those supplements than others, and you're willing to pay a higher price because you know that those have been tested, and it's not just a capsule full of sawdust. I think that it's up to the person if they want to get it genotyped. It just creates more transparency and more validity to the folks who have who have gotten a genotype and can say, “Yeah, I do have what I have.” I do think also that cannabis is super plastic in that it can be very, very different depending on who grows it. The premise of the grow off, you can start with the same thing. But I guarantee you that if I grow something, and you grow something, yours is going to be far superior than mine, because all of those environmental inputs, as I said, the external input – your nutrients, your water, your soil – all those things are going to play into the final phenotype. So even if you have the same genotype, you can end up with very different phenotypes and chemo types. On the flip side, you can have different genotypes, and you might end up with very similar phenotypes. So I don't think genotyping is the end all be all and everybody should do it, but it could be used in conjunction with something like the phenotype and chemotype to say, if you have this genotype, the potential to get this phenotype is much higher than if you start with something that isn't even that, right? So that's the way I see it. But I don't think it's necessary to make it required.

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD exlains the cost, services, and benefits of cannabis genotyping.

In this video clip, Dr. Schwabe shares insights into complications to accurate labeling of cannabis strains in the industry, comparing it with other industries, and explaining the role of genotyping in the solution of this issue. 

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD explains mislabeling and record-keeping in the industry.

Challenges in Cannabis Genetic Labeling: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

 That's fascinating. Yeah, the lab shopping, for sure, definitely has incredible implications for industry. But I wonder if you can elaborate a bit about the genetic variation between, specific branded products – what are the implications there for the industry? What do you hope your research will do for growers and manufacturers?

So this not a problem that's unique to the cannabis industry. People are all up in arms, and maybe it's just because I'm in this industry, we don't notice, but you may have seen other headlines where fish at the supermarket is not as labeled. So there was a fish study, and they found something like 30% of the fish in the grocery store is not the fish it is. And the thing about it is, when you buy fish, you don't buy a whole fish. You don't see the whole fish usually. It's already fileted, you just see the flesh. So if it says tilapia, or if it says, I don't know, another fish, white fish, or something, you just assume, unless you're a fish expert, that it is what it says on the label, right? Same thing with cannabis, right? You assume that what you're purchasing is as it's labeled. But that's not always the case. With fish, I think it's something more nefarious. Somebody caught that fish, somebody knew what that fish was, and somebody made a conscious decision to relabel it.

With cannabis, I think it's a little bit of a different situation, because unlike other plants that are legal, we don't have a way to really register cultivars when they're developed. We don't really have a whole lot of record keeping, at least going back in the past, before it became legal. So I think this problem was established a while back, and it could be poor record keeping. Everyone was doing it under the radar. So, you get a cutting from a friend, you don't remember what they said it was called, so you just go with what you think you remember, or you rename it. And this used to happen with things like grapes and olives. The grape industry was all over the place, until they brought in genetic testing to say, Okay, this grape is the same as this one, and we're going to call it this one, because we've got better records or whatever. Or actually, your grapes are named the same thing, but they're completely different, so go ahead and name this grape because it's different and we don't know what it is.

So genetic testing has really helped to iron out some of those wrinkles in other industries, and I think that's where we're at with cannabis. So I don't think people are doing it on purpose, although there are probably cases where people are re-labeling things to get it off the shelves quicker. But I think most of the time misspelling, just inputting records wrong, writing things down wrong, you know, humans are good at or not good at these things sometimes. So I don't think it's anything that we can point fingers at, to anybody for. But when you expect when you order seeds, if you order Chem Dog seeds, you're expecting to get those Chem Dog seeds, you're going to call it Chem Dog, you're going to sell it as Chem Dog. Is it Chem Dog? Well, I don't know. Where did that seed producer get their Chem Dog from? Was it Chem Dog when they got it? So I think at multiple points in the supply chain, going back years, decades, there could have been mistakes that were made, and it's now showing up. But there's definitely a way to figure it all out, and it can start with genotyping and making genotyping affordable so that people can verify what they have and say, Okay, I've had this genotyped. It does look like the vast majority of Durban Poisons out there. So yes, we can go ahead and say that we are selling Durbin Poison and have it verified through a genetic test.

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD explains mislabeling and record-keeping in the industry. 

Challenges in Cannabis Labeling: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

In this video clip, Dr. Schwabe shares details from various studies comparing cannabis DNA from various sample of strains and the impact in the industry. One study aimed to see if the different genetics each smelled different.

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD  explains her research on variations in cannabis genetics and their significance.

Analyzing Cannabis DNA: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

What did you find once you started exploring the DNA of the cannabis plant?

 So that's a really good question. I started with the “is Blue Dream, Blue Dream everywhere you go?” question. And that led into another project, which led into another project, and it all just like snowballed. But is Blue Dream Blue Dream, no matter where you purchase it? I got in my car, drove around multiple states – there were three states that I covered – buying at dispensaries. I didn't tell them who I was, I didn't tell them I'm a researcher, I didn't tell them I'm going to be doing genetic testing on your consumable cannabis flower that I'm purchasing, and I ended up with 122 samples that spanned 30 different strains. Some strains had nine or 10 samples, other strains just had two. But really, the question that I was asking is, “are they identical? Are they genetically identical or highly similar genetically within strains?” So, if I have eight samples of Blue Dream from different places, do they all look the same genetically? And the answer generally is no. Blue Dream was one of the better ones. There were, I think, seven that were genetically pretty much identical, but there was one that was completely different. And that was true for 27 of the 30 strains that I had. The three that were genetically cohesive, there was only two or three samples in those three strains. So if you expanded that out, I would assume that we'd find things that didn't belong. It was really just “one of these things is not like the other,” and sometimes they were all different from each other. It just depended on the strength, like Girl Scout Cookies was all over the place.

After I did that, I had an undergraduate student approached me, and he was a double major chemistry and biology. He was working in the chemistry lab on THC and CBD, but he also wanted to do some biology stuff, some genetic stuff. So I devised a project for him where we had a bunch of samples that didn't go into that genetic identity study. And I was like, well, let's just see what we've got, because we've got some wild cultivated, what we assume to be hemp. We've got some cultivated hemp. We've got some CBD dominant stuff. We've got indica, hybrid, sativa. And then we had these two samples from the University of Mississippi, which had been provided under their research program, called “research grade marijuana,” and we just wanted to see where that that fit in the genetic spectrum of cannabis. And so the undergraduate, he did all the work for that. He did all the DNA extractions, he helped with analyzing the data, he even helped with making figures and things like that, and then we did publish that. So kudos to Connor, because that was a super fun project and really exciting for an undergrad to do, right? It's out there to read, but basically, we found that the University of Mississippi was providing material that really isn't close to anything you can find on the retail marijuana side, which was an interesting thing to find.

Then we wanted to know, so when we know that there is something that's genetically not the same as other things, like, if we had five Blue Dreams and one of them was genetically different, would it also smell different? Would people be able to pick up on that, or do they all smell the same? So maybe that's why it got labeled as Blue Dream, because it seems to be the same. We did some organoleptic study where we had people sniffing cannabis, which was a really interesting study, because yes, people could smell the genetic difference. They did smell different, but also there was a huge amount of variation for even the ones that were genetically identical, which is really important to know, because, it's not just the genotype that makes up a phenotype, which is the physical characteristics of any organism. It's also the environment that feeds into how – and we know this through twin studies, right? You're a unique individual, and even when you share a genotype, you're not going to express all the same things, because the environment plays a lot into that. So anyway, so that was a fun one, too.

Then I wanted to look at, okay, well, so people can smell it. What do the actual chemicals look like? So we measured the terpenes and the cannabinoids and found that there's a ton of variation in that. So here's the cannabinoids, and the samples that we tested, they were coming back around 13% or 15% and I don't remember buying anything that was this low in THC. This is kind of weird. So I gathered all of my packaging and figured out the average of the THC of the 15 samples that we use for the smell study was 13.3%. But on the packaging, it was saying things like, 22%, 25%, 28%, even 31% and I was like, these are different. So then that prompted me to go and buy more, test more, and did another study and found that, on average, the THC that's printed on a label is approximately 30% higher than what's in the package. Not 30% total, it wouldn't be 15% plus 30%. It's 30% of what is reported. So 15% plus another 30% of that on top of it. That's really interesting in that, as we all know, it has blown up with lab shopping and THC inflation. I noticed that in 2018, so it's been a while. It's problematic because for most people, it might just equal not having expected effects. But there are people who make their own medicine that use those numbers to get the right dose. Also, it means that we've got a problem in the industry, that we're lying to consumers about stuff. Is it just THC, or is it more? Are we lying about yeast and mold counts? Are we lying about heavy metals? Are we lying about pesticides? And it creates distrust from consumers when we're not generating accurate results for them to make their purchasing decisions off of. So it is a little bit of a big deal. So that's kind of how the whole pathway went down my PhD route.

In this video clip, Dr. Schwabe discusses her educational background and what led her to in-depth research on cannabis genetics and more.

Anna Schwabe, PhD shares her educational background in plant genetics

Road to Cannabis Research: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

 Hello everyone, I'm Sebastian Krawiec, Managing Editor of 

, and we are joined today by Dr. Anna Schwabe, a leading expert in cannabis genetics and biology. Dr Schwabe holds her bachelor's, master's and doctorate's degrees from the University of Northern Colorado, where she received the Graduate Dean Citation for Excellence and the Dean's Award for Outstanding Dissertation for her research on cannabis variation. She has been published extensively on topics that include THC potency, cannabis strains, genetics, and olfactory discrimination, and is an accomplished botanical illustrator and educator. Dr. Schwabe is currently Associate Lecture Professor at the University of Colorado, where she co-developed and teaches multiple cannabis science courses and is Principal Research Director for the Agricultural Genomics Foundation. Most recently, she became Chief Operating Officer of CannaGen, an online cannabis genetic marketplace for licensed breeders, nurseries, and cultivators. Thank you so much for joining us today.

: It's a pleasure. To start off, could you to tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in cannabis?

: Like many people, I was introduced to cannabis in high school and again in college. My first stint was at Colorado State University and I took a lot of Drugs in the Human Body courses, my major was anatomy and physiology, so I really interested in that sort of stuff. So, there was a lot of cannabis dabbling, not necessarily partaking in, but learning about it, researching it, that kind of thing, reading books like the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and those kind of hippie movement literature books. So that was where it started. I did not graduate from Colorado State, but I did take a lot of courses there. I took some time off and worked in the pizza industry for a while, and then after about 10, 15 years doing that, I wanted to go back to college. I finished my bachelor's degree and my emphasis was in cellular and molecular biology. 

During that time, we had a new faculty member who joined UNC, and he was teaching plant systematics and all the boring plant classes that I totally didn't want to take, but the Animal Behavior class was full, so I needed an upper level biology course, and the only one that had seats left was this plant taxonomy class, Plant Systematics. I took it because otherwise I would have had to go another semester to get all the credits that I needed. So I took it and didn't particularly enjoy it – it was interesting, it was new, the professor was super young, very excited about teaching about plants. I learned a lot about all kinds of stuff, but it still wasn't my bag of things that I was super interested in, but we got to do some drawing of plants, which I really enjoyed, and that pushed me towards getting that botanical illustration certification. I also ended up having to take some capstone credits, which, if you haven't been in academia, you have to do bench work where you learn lab skills, or you do a project where you turn in a big paper or something to get you ready for the job world where you have to do more than just read books and take quizzes. So, I ended up working in Mitt’s lab – he was the professor for the systematics class. I had to do six credits of capstone work, which was quite a lot. It was like 100 hours or so in the course of a semester to graduate on that timeline that I had given myself. The project that he tasked me with was extracting DNA from cacti, and this was a project that was in collaboration with the Denver Botanic Gardens and the Bureau of Land Management, which was great. I graduated with that degree, went and got my botanical illustration certification, and then I was like, I kind of want to keep doing this. I asked Mitt if I could do my master’s and carry on that same project. So that's my background in population genetics, that started with this cactus project. So I got my master’s in that, which was looking at the hybridization of these two closely related cacti that grow in the same area. The Bureau of Land Management wanted to know, are they hybridizing? Because if they're hybridizing, then they don't really warrant protection. And I promise the story is going somewhere, it does land on cannabis.

After I graduated with my master’s, I went and worked at the Denver Botanic Gardens, working on multiple projects, looking at population and genetic relationships within and among closely related species. I started working there in 2012. In 2012 is when Colorado voted on adult use cannabis, so it was during that time that cannabis was really starting to take off in Colorado, people were getting interested. Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational use for adults, so there was a lot of conversations going on. I had a volunteer in my lab who was getting into the industry, and I thought it was really interesting. There were conversations that were popping up, there were questions that were popping up in the community among consumers, like, how come when I buy Blue Dream from this dispensary, it's not the same as when I buy it from this other dispensary? So I thought, with my background in population genetics and specifically looking at genetic relationships within and among species or groups, I had the perfect background to be able to answer some of those questions. I approached Mitt again and said, “Hey, I've got this idea.” Cannabis is newly legal. We don't know anything about it. There's really not a lot of research that has been done on it, because it's been illegal for the better part of a century, and certainly in terms of, since we've had genetic tools, and especially in terms of a marketplace and the retail arena, there really wasn't any research that had been done to answer some of these questions. Yeah, there was research on THC and what THC does to the brain, but that's not really what I was interested in, right? Mitt said, “No, we're not doing weed. This is a conservation population genetics lab.” But he did change his tune, and he was like, “You know what? This really is an interesting question, and we can build on this, and someone's going to do it. So, yeah, let's go ahead and do this.” He went to the school lawyer, the dean, the provost, and the president, and they all said, “yeah, she can totally work on cannabis, as long as she's not bringing smokeable material onto campus. Yeah, we can do that.” I just needed the DNA. Getting the DNA out of the plant and into the lab was really what I needed to do. So that's where it all started.

Updated on May 15, 2025 at 7:30PM EST to include video transcription.

In this interview clip from our Women in Grow: Leadership in Cannabis Genetics and Cultivation supplement, Anna Schwabe, PhD shares her educational background in plant genetics.


The Road to Cannabis Research: Interview with Anna Schwabe, PhD

, we will cover various factors in efficiency in indoor cannabis cultivation.

In this video excerpt of our interview with Nadia Sabeh, PhD, founder and president of Dr. Greenhouse, we discuss water usage and conservation in indoor cultivation.

 with Zacarariah Hildenbrand, PhD on the role of lightning in energy-efficient indoor cannabis cultivation.

In this interview, Nadia Sabeh, PhD, discusses the water usage and conservation in indoor cannabis cultivation.

Indoor Cannabis Cultivation Efficiency: Water Usage

In this video excerpt of our interview with Zacariah Hildenbrand, PhD, partner of Medusa Analytical, and a director of the Curtis Mathes Corporation (OTC:CMCZ), we discuss how lighting is used in cultivation. 

In this interview, Zacariah Hildenbrand, PhD discusses the role of lightning in energy-efficient indoor cannabis cultivation.

Energy Efficiency in Indoor Cannabis Cultivation: Optimizing Light

Does light spectrum impact energy efficiency for indoor cultivation?

 Light spectrum and light intensity are single handedly the two most important variables in cultivation in general. They drive a wide array of biological processes, and so it stands reason if you don't have enough light, enough intensity, your plants are not going to thrive, and maybe they don't even survive. If you have too much intensity, you could get photobleaching, so you have to have a healthy balance there. In the context of indoor cultivation, you're looking at putting your lights the appropriate distance from your plants at the various stages of cultivation.

Spectra is an interesting one. For the longest time, we had people using ceramic metal halides and also high pressure sodium lights. So you're trying to get all of the photons within the photosynthetic range of 400 to 700 nanometers, the broad spectrum of colors. It's just like anything in life: all the colors make things beautiful. So what would happen, traditionally, is you have your ceramic metal halide, which is on the lower end of 400 or 500 for your blues and greens and then that would be used in veg. Then people would switch over to the high-pressure sodium and more of your oranges, ambers, and reds to closer to 600 or 700 and that's where you would flip into flower. From there, we now have full spectrum LED lights, which cover the full spectrum of light, so you don't have to mess around with different lights and different bulbs at different times. It kind of simplifies things for everyone. Also, a nice little benefit of LEDs, they're incredibly efficient, so you don't produce as much waste heat, which comes out at 850 nanometers. Managing heat is a big factor in cultivation. It's a big cost that people have to account for. And so if you can reduce your heat production while producing as many photosynthetic photons as you can, and a wider range of them, not just red and blue, like we initially saw that came out with LEDs, where it was like, “the phytochromes just absorb in red and blue, and so that's all you need.” No, you need the full spectrum of photons here. So yeah, fortunately, we've made a lot of technological advancements in that realm.

 sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. Here we present a clip from this interview.

Watch the clip for insights into the importance of soil health, read the transcript below, and 

Cannabis Science and Technology sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. 

Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation: The Importance of Soil Health

On a scale of 1 to 10, how does soil health rank in importance of cannabis cultivation?

: How important is your soil? 10. But there's levels, right? There's multiple different levels to what somebody would consider soil health. Is healthy soil to you, bagged soil from the hardware store, or is healthy soil to you “no till, living soil completely amended out”? It's completely different levels of how important, and then how important is soil in comparison to hydroponics, aeroponics? Because then you're looking at the difference between – it's like anything grown in soil is like a sit down, fancy dinner and aeroponics, hydroponics is like McDonald's. So, there's levels, but if your soil health isn't right, other than having, let's say, no light, it's the most detrimental thing that can happen to your grow. 

Obviously, when anyone's trying to grow the best plants they possibly can, you want to get the best genetics, you want to get the most efficacious lighting, you want to use the best water, and you want to get the healthiest soil. With the plant being so effective at a process called bioremediation, it can uptake a lot of metals and minerals out of the soil that if you start with a soil laden with arsenic, or lead, or any kind of additives that you don't want in there, there's a chance that that could migrate into your plant tissue, and then you have a negative impact. So even if you're using the world's best genetics from Adam Jacques, and you have the world's best LED lighting, if you have bad soil that doesn't have the right nutrients or the right structure or the right microbes or is laden with heavy metals, you're setting yourself up for failure.

As we prepare to publish our full Back to Basics: Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation interview, let’s revisit some of the tips and insights from our cultivation experts, Adam Jacques, a world-renowned cannabis geneticist and Zacariah L. Hildenbrand, a research Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

 sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. Here we present a clip from this interview.

Watch the clip below for insights into mold and pest issues in soil, read the transcript below, and 

let’s revisit some of the tips and insights from our cultivation experts, Adam Jacques, a world-renowned cannabis geneticist and Zacariah L. Hildenbrand, a research Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation: Mold and Pest Issues

Are certain types of soil more prone to mold and pest issues?

: Types of soil, yes. Additives in the soil can cause issues. A lot of people put bark chip on the soil, which I would now recommend. Then it matters what you're doing with your soils. No till soil will build up heavy metals and a big one right now is Aspergillus, which people are getting in their living soils, no till style. So that is just bad input building up over time and then bioremediating into the plants. I would say that that's not great.

As far as like issues go, if you get a bag of soil, a lot of what I see is bagged soil companies are using municipal compost, which is fine as a thing, but generally municipal compost comes with all the problems of that area. Generally, that's fungus gnats. So when you use a bagged soil, especially indoors, you're going to see an influx of fungus gnats into your space. For us, we are constantly bioremediating with predator insects, so it's not a huge deal for us, but a lot of people bring bagged soil home, and all of a sudden they have an insect infestation of some sort. It's coming out of the bag from the municipal compost. So that can be an issue.

: Honestly, a healthy plant does better against pests and pathogens than an unhealthy plant. If you have this kind of crappy soil which has been amended with all this stuff – I just look at it as like the human body. If you eat garbage food, you don't exercise, you live a sedentary lifestyle, you just take all these pills to kind of maintain your health, you're still susceptible to getting sick. But if you eat properly and you exercise, you do all the right things, then you don't need to have all these additives. Even if you have propensity for some of these things based on the soil quality, if the plants are healthy because they're eating right and they're getting the right light, and there's proper drainage and all these other things, then they're going to be able to fight those infestations off much more readily than you know, a sickly plant.

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