The Role Genetics Play in Determining the Terpene Profile of A Cultivar: Interview with Zacariah Hildenbrand and Adam Jacques

In this interview, Zacariah Hildenbrand, PhD, partner of Medusa Analytical, LLC Adam Jacques, Geneticist and Cultivator of Big Earth Consulting, discuss how terpenes are affected by cannabis genetics.

Transcript:

Madeline Colli: Beyond cannabinoids, what is the role genetics and determining the terpene profile of a cultivar?

Adam Jacques: Terpenes are going to be based on where they come from in the world originally, and when you get into polyhybrids and breeding for those things, you can really mix and match the terpenes and change things. Breeding terpenes into a plant is not terribly difficult. But generally, the smells that they're going to be putting off during different times of flower are going to be stressors. Something in the environment is causing the plant stress, so it's putting off a signal smell to attract in, either beneficials, or to detract the bugs away from the plant. As you get closer to the end of the road, they start sending out signals to draw on pollinators. And so you're going to have smells that mimic the smells in the area that attract pollinators already. And so a lot of terpenes in the natural world, that's why they exist on plants. Not now because we've probably hybridized them like crazy, but originally, the terpenes, you can look at a map and kind of place, what terpenes came from, where in the world that exists in the cannabis plant. They're mimics, and they kind of took on the terpenes of the plants around them.

Zacariah Hildenbrand: Genetics play a major role, but we also found with the environmental factors, that you can really play with the terpene expression based on light exposure. What we had found is that when you play with different spectra of light, mainly red light below 670 nanometers, you can really focus in on specific terpenes. If you give it a more of a broader spectrum of light, you're going to get more expression, but maybe in lower levels. So again, there's all these different genetic and environmental factors that you can kind of pull these levers and do unique things with the plant. That's the beautiful thing about this, is once you know what you want to create, you can then just go back and reverse engineer it with your genetics and your cultivation environment.

Jacques: That's why, if you give somebody, and I've seen it done multiple times now, you give 30 different farmers each a clone off of a mother plant, and you have them, take those clones home, grow them at their house, and then everybody brings them together and has them tested. Terpenes are goint to be all over the place, even though it's an exact genetic clone.

Hildenbrand: Yep, and most of that will be laying in the soil, I think.

Colli: That's really interesting to learn. I didn't think environmental would be as impactful towards that.

Jacques: So the plant is talking, right? And how does the plant, how does the plant speak? Through terpenes. And so when you put a environmental stressor or change of environment into the plant's life, it's going to express that, it's going to say something and I know this sounds all very mystical or whatever, but I'm just using easy words. It's going to talk to you, or it's going to talk to the plants around it, that's what it does and how does it talk? With smells, with terpenes. That's how it it says "I'm angry and covered in spider mites," or it says "I'm very happy," or whatever it expresses itself to you is in terpenes and flavanoids. Once you know how to listen to it, then you figure out how to change things, to make the environment that it wants the most or the environment that expresses what you're looking for the most. It may not be its favorite thing.

Hildenbrand: Yeah, I think the plant wizard here said it best. I mean, this is basically how they communicate, is going to be through the expression of these chemicals.