"The importance of cannabis genetics is often overlooked"

"Genetics are the cornerstone of any cannabis production facility and increasingly the cornerstone of brand development. If you don't have access to solid, stable genetics that are in demand in the market, then you're never going to be able to succeed," says Tim Oates of Delta Tetra and TreeHouse at one of the panels at the CB Expo in Dortmund. "From a legacy market position and adult-use through to medical markets, each requires a different consideration. However, the importance of genetics is often overlooked by management teams in cannabis companies. They assume they'll have 5 or 6 strains that they can run for the next 10 years, and that's pretty much all they're going to need. Yet whether you like it or not, consumer demands change more frequently than that."

Defining your market
According to Gavin George of Puregene AG, it's important to know the market you're breeding for, but that's a challenging task. "We're all trying to look at what the future market is going to be so that we can cater to that because breeding takes so much time. What we need to do is get up to a system that can supply to a global market. At the moment, there are a lot of barriers holding back the industry. But as those barriers break down, it's going to become a much more homogeneous market, which we can all hopefully cater to."

Yet, finding the purpose of what you're breeding for can be a challenge. "Hemp is an 'everything' plant, there are so many purposes for it. How do you breed for everything? So you've got to define the markets and then cater to them."

Ravi Dronkers of Sensi Seeds adds that because of all the challenges in the industry, it's important to work together. "As global legalization continues, there are a lot of hurdles and reinventing the wheel. We've seen this in the past, there's a lot of money that's evaporated in cannabis in the last few years. We're all in this industry, but at the same time, we don't share our secrets. It's important to work together for the industry to thrive."

Swiss genetics
Gavin explains that breeding for the Swiss market was a challenge. "For the Swiss pilot projects, it has to be a good quality product that competes with the black market, but also under organic conditions and mostly outdoors. These are not very easy parameters to marry into a breeding program. However, we were able to develop the varieties and get them to the market, and they were well received. But it's important to note that it wasn't just us. We had to rely on our production partners and regulators to work with us and open the right doors for us to take the right steps. In the end, it was a really big cooperative effort," Gavin says.

Macedonian genetics
Anthony Shevlin of DéWarrior Unlimited has been working in Macedonia. "The Balkans are a bit special when it comes to growing medicinal cannabis. There are a lot of issues and wait times when importing equipment and genetics into the country. We've found lots of different ways to overcome these challenges and basically do all the genetics in-house instead. Also, because the facility is 800 meters elevated, so we have an altitude difference. There are not a lot of nurseries supplying clones that are made for that kind of climate. So we had to find solutions for that by doing a massive selection in the mountains to find the perfect strains for what we're doing in Macedonia."

Click here to listen to the full panel discussion.