We’re hosting an Ask Me Anything event today, Tuesday Sept 5th, 2017 at 11am MDT with Sean Reed from @Seshat to answer your questions about increasing cannabis yields and potency through data and science.
About Sean:
Hey guys, my name is Sean Reed, and I here representing Seshat Technologies. I am the current lab technician at Michigan State University working at the Plant Research Lab developing the MultispeQ and the PhotosynQ platform. This tool and platform are used to assist plant researchers a whole new insight into their plants, using a handheld in field device and a little bit of data analysis at the end. We have partners all over the world, supporting 500+ users in over 20 countries. Some members of the lab, such as myself, see tremendous potential in pivoting this idea to the cannabis community and that is why I am here. We aim to create a device that will offer those relevant plant health photosynthetic parameters, additional soil health parameters and finally a cannabis extension for THC and CBD potency. We are mostly computer and plant nerds, not from the cannabis community, so we need your help in creating this platform the way YOU want it in a way that YOU derive real value.
We utilize reflectence/absorbance based spectroscopy in our hardware. Basically this means we are flashing some lights, and then turning on some detectors, and we look at the waves that come back and turn this into data.
This will be a total pivot from the MultispeQ. It’s funny you mention the stapler design, because that’s what it is often referred to by the other labs around us. But oh contrary does it just measure leaves. Right now we can take that bottom clamp off and get some interesting reflectence measurements with soil, or we can insert cuvettes and do measurements with algae or small grains. On our website we had a small blog post about the new case design and board layout, read up here, basically gonna make it specialized just for cannabis! We are building an open source reflectometer… here’s why – Seshat Sensing
The MultispeQ and PhotosynQ are tied together very close. Basically you go on the website to make/analyze projects, and the data for those projects is collected through the MultispeQ hardware. But you can also use an offline chrome app to do all the same things!
If you check our MultispeQ paper, we have correlated our measurements to a extremely high degree of accuracy. Things like nailing down the PAR sensor and SPAD meter, which retail for 2k each roughly, and to combine that, plus another 50k worth of sensors into one handheld device was no small task.
Hi @Seshat!
Thank you for being a part of the community and taking some questions. One of the most important but sometimes overlooked aspects of the Cannabis industry is Phenotype Hunting. A grower is only as good as his genetics. So I was just wondering if you can give an overhead view of how your equipment would help streamline the process of Phenomics and help growers achieve better outcomes?
Thank You
We just have Android at PhotosynQ, but at Seshat if there is a big demand it’s something we can totally look into. We chose to just support Android because researchers/farmers can go out and by a usable $30 Android phone, but you cannot do that with Iphone…
I just realized… this tool might also be useful to regulators, enforcement, and compliance. Have you considered reaching out to MED’s of different states?
Pulling from our experience with the MultispeQ and PhotosynQ, you will absolutely be able to use this to improve your phenotyping process. We have a lot of interest from breeders using QTL mapping who need a high throughput method to screen offspring. We use a series of parameters collected by the device and correlate it with genomic data collected by the farmer. We had great success with bean breeders in Malawi. If it works for beans, why not for cannabis?
Yes, so we have actually been in contact with a global sustainability auditing corporation that is USDA licensed and looking to potentially branch into the cannabis industry. We would hope to provide them with a tool for standardization and a platform that will promote trust and transparency.
