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The Open Cannabis Project, an Oregon nonprofit that aimed to protect the cannabis genome from patent trolls, dissolved May 6, in response to intense backlash against its former business partner Phylos Bioscience.
The nonprofit spun off from Phylos in November 2017, but its executive director Beth Schechter says people's suspicions about Phylos, an ag-science company, continued to pop up in messages from the community.
Last month, Phylos Bioscience announced its intent to launch a breeding program to create new, better strains of cannabis and hemp. Many farmers in the industry balked at the news because they had given the company genomic data with the understanding that it would not be used to enhance a breeding program.
