Fascinating! in your opinion, are there any terpenes that are showing special promise for preventing or relieving specific ailments?
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Cannabis is being exploited at an ever increasing rate, and the preservation of stabilized cultivars, heirlooms, landraces becomes more and more important - especially for future research. What are some ways for us as a community to help preserve these rarities? Or can we just trust that the corporate world will take care of all that for us?
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@Herbert_Ashe the corporate world will if we are within the corporate world enough to guide it.
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This is a great question. Unfortunately, until there is a single oversight committee like the USDA or FDA, and each State is doing itâs own thing, i think we are a ways off. Once that does happen, it will likely be fairly quickly as the USDA and the FDA, have a lot of experience in this. But even then a true âFINALâ set of regs will like take 3-5 years.
One thing is for certain, Microbial testing is going to be a really big topic. The reality is that no micro regulations actually address âinfectious doseâ. Salmonella rarely causes symptoms if 1 cell, or even 10 cells gets in your gut. Healthy people take 100 or more cells.
So, more realistic thresholds are needed, and not just for Micro. Regulations must reflect public and environmental safety for EVERY aspect of cannabis testing, because we currently have the most Stringent testing regulations of any plant material, and even some pharmceuticals
.
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The onset of CRISPER makes me think the average Joe could have a huge say in genetics in the future. Is there a chance the average grower will be able to genetically modify in the future maybe ?
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I think that there will be a narrowing of patent scope, and fairly quickly. I think there will not be any other patents like the ones already issued to the BIotech Institute, LCC, and there will be a need for better strain documentation, and even possibly chemometric and genetic data. It is necessary because the plant is very response to the environment and so, without specifying growth conditions the same genetics can produce different chemotypes. So in a very real sense, Cannabis is a plant whose cultivars can produce multiple chemovars/chemotypes.
This will have to change, so that everyone can coexist. THis means no more broadly defined patents based strictly on chemical output with no other backing data.
And yes the industry is FAR behind the normal Ag industry⌠in many ways.
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what do you think about Phylos https://phylos.bio coming in and putting utility patents on plants and having what they claim is 4 years of the most scientific data on any species collected Phylos Galaxy is what they call it.
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I think we already do what we should. I have spoken to many who do nothing bit store old genetics in mother houses. I know many who are now going into tissue culture to preserve older mothers. Seed increases, by back-crossing and inter-crossing with landraces all help. One thing that might be worth doing is taking some of these various cultivars and putting them in underground frozen seed banks, but i think once we become mainstream, that will happen as well.
There are many out there who are VERY focused on preservation of Cannabis diversity.
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⌠itâs an interesting world, no?
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Average Joe already does that that, by selective breeding. CRISPR has itâs place, but we havenât even scratched the surface of what can be done with more traditional tools like marker assisted breeding. CRISPR causes one to âmiss the forest, for the treeâ. It also requires full on lab, transformation, tissue culture, etc. So, chances are Average Joe wonât be so Average if they have all that.
It will have a place in the future, but there is still a lot we can do with just a better understanding of the genome, development of markers for breeding, and optimizing growth by RNA expression analaysis
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What genetic tools do we have at our disposal to help propel the cannabis industry to a playing field commensurate with Big Ag? What do you think it will take to get us to that level?
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phylos takes the process of genomic identification and takes weeks off of the process to speed up the trait selection earlier in mass crops for breeding.
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Phylos wasnât the first, BioTech Institute, LLC was, and so, if there is to be blame, it shouldnât be placed on Phylos. And the Phylos Galaxy has itâs place, it certainly isnât the most scientific data on any species. And I would say that while useful for some things, itâs not useful for other things.
People have to learn to separate hype from reality.
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@reggie Thank you for clarifying that issue I think they were making some claims that made them seem like the one and only and they were 4 years ahead of the field. I found that hard to believe.
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do they?
thatâs interesting. I have a different take on what their data means.
you can do a lot of things with genetics, and what you can do all depends on what portion of the genome and the depth at which you look at it
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yes, they stated they can find out the sex only a couple of weeks after germination and put mass amounts of plants into flower and select trait eliminating the traits they donât want. Corn has been developed for 40 or so years and phylos thinks they can accomplish what the corn industry did in 15 or less years,
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Marker assisted breeding, and fingerprinting can already be done, and help identify and follow genes, traits, and lineages. Some of it requires sequencing, some of it only requires amplification of a genomic segment and no real sequencing, so people can jump into the water to the depth they choose.
These are tools that allow rapid generational cycling, focus on specific traits, and reduced expenditure of resources on lineages that donât go where you want. So with just some basic âBig Agâ tools, you can get a lot done, increase # of generations per year, to get to stabilized genomes, AND actually allows you to carry more projects forward at the same time because of the reduced need for space and resources
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With technology like Marker Assisted Breeding the average Joe can be in a powerful breeding position.
I also wonder about what are the limitations or shortcomings of DNA sequencing. Most people treat it like itâs a total cure all, but I sort of think of it like digital music compared to live music. Can you speak to some of the limitations of DNA sequencing?
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@reggie That is what Phylos goal and motive is.
He sounds very confident in his statements Phylos Bioscience Presentation On cannabis
identifying genetic trait markers at the seedling stage
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So, Phylos wasnât the first to release a sex test, my company, Steep Hill was. Phylos wasnât the first to release a CBD dominance test, my company Steep Hill was. So, stop blaming Phylos.
So the process - sexing, identifying traits wasnât their idea. This is how the plant biotech industry has advanced in general. This is how agriculture has evolved and allowed us to be much more efficient.
The corn industry took 37 years, 33 labs employing 150+ people and 400 million dollars to get where they are now. But withthe tools now available this is likely to be done much quicker and maybe 15 years is a good estimate. But Phylos canât do it by itself and itâs arguable, that Steep Hill and Medcinal Genomics have just as much if not more information in their databases.
Again itâs time to learn to separate business hype from reality. There may in fact be things that people should be upset with Phylos about, but those things are not the things i see people being upset about.
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