When you come across a guru of cannabis genetics who’s been in the sector for more than 25 years, you listen. James Loud, founder and CEO of seed company James Loud Genetics and an author of a recent book on cannabis science, fills conversations with his deep knowledge of crossbreeding, crafting costly cultivars from scratch, and what makes AI the next future-friendly frontier of cannabis data sequencing.
Between tissue culture and clones, James Loud Genetics has a library of more than 1,000 cultivars and is known for strains such as Italian Apple, Dark Sunset and most recently Chocolate Runtz, the latter of which carries notes of cherry, chocolate and citrus.
He also wrote “Cannabis Breeding: The Art and Science of Crafting Distinctive Cultivars,” which breaks down how to, among other things, breed for specific desirable traits and what growers need to know about the range of propagation methods.
On top of that, Loud also hosts his own podcast, which recently aired its 131st episode.
As cannabis breeding continues to evolve and shine a spotlight on this industry, Loud spoke with Cannabis Business Times to discuss the trends rippling across the sector today and what business leaders should know about recent innovations expected to shake up how cannabis is crafted.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for style, length and clarity.
David Silverberg: Share with us how you began to get into cannabis genetics and building your own company from scratch.
James Loud: I fell in love with it right away when I first smoked cannabis, and I've had this lifelong appreciation for the flower, and a passion for the sacred plant, as I like to call it. I remember collecting High Times as a kid, and that’s when I began to see it shift into an industry – an industry I wanted to be part of.
I started breeding in the ’90s, but we didn’t have huge facilities. Just closets and garages, really.
I knew I had to have something to fall back on, so I went to culinary school, and I worked as a chef. I also took on a job at Charles Schwab, but I always follow my passions, and if I’m not into it, I’m going to quit. So I stuck with cultivation and founded our seed company.
Silverberg: You must’ve seen how breeding has shifted over the past few decades if you began in the space in the ’90s.
Loud: For sure. In the ’90s, it was really about creating an effect. It wasn't about flavor as much as it is now. Now the market is all about the nuances of flavors, and we have so many options, and these things are great, but I believe with the domestication and the commercialization of cannabis, we’ve lost some of that magic that comes from the different effects that we have. So, my breeding focus has gone back to, “OK, how does it make you feel, first and foremost?”
Silverberg: Walk us through how one of your strains comes to be, and let’s look at your recent release, Chocolate Runtz.
Loud: My version of the [sativa strain] Chocolope is this Chocolate Runtz strain that I’m doing with Ray Bama, co-founder of the iconic Runtz cannabis brand. I’ve always loved Chocolope, and now it’s a way to be very presentable to people in the candy market, but also it has this nostalgic experience for people that like chocolate. They’ll get hints of that in the phenos.
Silverberg: Speaking of strains, isn’t there a strangely named one that really appealed to you a while back?
Loud: Yeah, that’s Cat Piss. Honestly, that is the flavor transfer that made me fall in love with weed. It was funky, it was foul, it was offensive, it was ammonia and skunk, it had a traditional roadkill smell, it would burn your nostrils.
You could walk into a room after someone smoked in there and you’d think, “Yep, definitely had some Cat Piss recently.”
Silverberg: Many strains have a reputation for genetic instability. What are your strategies and technical methods for ensuring you get that genetic stability and uniformity in the lines you develop?
Loud: I was chatting with a friend at a conference, also a breeder, and he asked if I would give up strains, this one, that one, because they have a propensity for some recession in their genes. I figure that if you’re selling someone a seed pack, two or three might have those issues, but it’s still worth selling those seeds, as long as you’re transparent with people and they’re aware of it.
We try to stress test for the environment the seeds are going to be in. Also, if I’m doing pheno hunting, I start with the first clonal generation, not from seed.
Silverberg: Has that always been your approach?
Loud: We sell clones online, direct-to-consumer, so we test those indoors rigorously. We test them, we grow them out, we do at least three clonal generations of testing, and then we progress to our final selections.
Silverberg: What are some changes you’ve seen in cannabis genetics recently?
Loud: We’re actually identifying things like powdery mildew resistance, which can be found right in the genotype. Those are the types of things that will be a priority for commercial growers down the road.
Over the last decade, especially, a lot of inbreeding has happened in our industry. In Europe, they went towards the haze craze and lost a lot of diversity. We saw it in Cookies too, where they were breeding Cookies into all these different cultivars and creating what people thought were new cultivars, but they were actually inbreeding, and that means you lose diversity, you lose hybrid vigor, and what you get is uniformity. There’s potential there, but hybrid vigor is super important if you do it correctly.
But I have to admit, the future is in AI.
Silverberg: Why do you think AI has a role here?
Loud: The beauty of AI is predictive modeling, which can help breeders sort data faster, and with genomics, you can create AI programs and AI models that basically sequence the data you have. When you look at plant traits and aim to breed towards a specific goal, AI can give you that clear path. And it’ll do it at an accelerated rate.
Silverberg: The market still relies on the indica, sativa, hybrid labels, which, as you know, are scientifically simplistic. Where would you like to see the industry go in terms of that labeling?
Loud: We had to start somewhere, right? But it's not a really good identifier, because everything's a hybrid. So, it's definitely an oversimplified version of reality.
To progress forward, terpene profiles could be next. Also, we have the type one through five chemovars, and then we can look at things like, do you want something that's high in THC? Do you want something that's a one-to-one? Do you want something that's high in CBD? Do you want CBG?
Silverberg: We’ve come across other books on cultivation, so share with us what makes your new book unique or stand out from others on the shelves?
Loud: It's a college-level textbook specifically on breeding. Sure, there's a lot of books on growing, but I feel like my book is the evolution of “The Cannabis Breeder's Bible,” which was written in 2005. In my book, I have insight from dozens of experts on genomics, whether we look at tissue culture or IP law.
I see this book as bigger than myself. I’m just someone who's just trying to move the plant forward, and I think that if we can all do that, this plant’s going to be around a lot longer than any one of us, right? Deep down, I’m just hoping to make the world a better place.
David Silverberg is a freelance journalist who writes about cannabis and the cannabis industry.
