Women hold less than one-quarter of senior positions in the global workforce. As women work to shatter the “grass ceiling” and make their mark in cannabis, three women are leading the charge, creating classes, resources, communities and offering one-on-one support to help women launch, fund and grow their businesses and succeed in the cannabis industry.

Sara Batterby, The Batterby Group

When Sara Batterby moved to Portland, Ore., to start HiFi Farms, she discovered a dearth of networking opportunities for women in cannabis. In the process of building a venture-backed cannabis brand, Batterby garnered a lot of attention for her high-profile funding efforts, which brought in $4.5 million in seed funding between 2015 and 2017.

“Raising capital in cultivation is challenging because the wholesale prices are coming down and businesses are struggling with the new market realities,” she explains. “To make this worse, cultivation is a very expensive business to build, ... [and] few people who are experts in growing cannabis have the background, network or experience to make that kind of raise an option.”

Batterby started fielding invitations to speak about cannabis fundraising from groups like NCIA Oakland, Cannabis Grand Cru and Cannabis Collaborative Conference and, through those appearances, started receiving requests from women who needed funding to launch or scale their cannabis businesses. In 2017, Batterby agreed to work with Christine De La Rosa, the co-founder and CEO of the People’s Dispensary, a retail dispensary in Portland with an emphasis on providing cannabis to marginalized communities, including LGBTQ, women, seniors, disabled and people of color.

“[De La Rosa] reached out to me, and she was very persuasive; she talked me into taking her on. I remember saying to her, ‘I don’t consult. I don’t have a consulting agreement. I have no idea how to charge for something like this. I don’t do it,’ and she said, ‘I need you to do this. I need you to help me,’” Batterby recalls.

The pair worked together once a week for three months. De La Rosa opened a seed round hoping to raise $2.2 million; investors committed $6 million within weeks of the launch. The success led Batterby to rethink her role in the cannabis industry.

“I very quickly realized that all of the networking, and the support, and the events, and the love, and the camaraderie wasn’t going to help these women … scale their companies to compete and take advantage of the market,” she says.

Batterby established The Batterby Group in January 2018 with a goal of helping startups maximize their funding success. To date, she’s completed six fully funded seed raises and helped companies generate up to $60 million in committed and closed capital. Although she works with founders in a range of industries, the Portland-based business has a special emphasis on women—including women of color—and cannabis.

The Batterby Group’s two programs are aimed at providing women with the tools to secure funding, including needs assessments, defining investment strategies, preparing financials and crafting investor engagement road maps. The Courting Angels program helps first-time fundraisers prepare to launch their first capital raise, while The Reboot supports founders who are coming back from a stalled or failed raise.

“Women build relationships. We get to know one another. We build trust. We create a connection, and then we see if there’s a deal to be made,” Batterby explains. “And I … think there’s a skill set that [women have] that allows them to use their feminine leadership strengths, and their innate and intuitive strengths around communication and connection, to make them extremely effective at fundraising.”

Batterby has made it her long-term goal to help women gain “access to capital, to build up companies and sell them,” she says, so they can become investors [to build their own wealth]. She believes that if women can succeed in cannabis fundraising, they can not only secure their place in the industry, but also make positive societal change.

“The only way we’re ever going to make change [in the industry] … [is by] giving women the economic power to be making decisions around where the money goes in cannabis and [beyond],” she says. “It’s demanding work emotionally, but it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

Kyra Reed, Kadin Academy

Although marketing and social media veteran Kyra Reed had a long history of working with entrepreneurs through her firm, Markyr Digital, she realized that women launching cannabis businesses had specific needs.

“Most women in cannabis are focused on saving the world,” she explains. “[In working with them,] I realized that there were a lot of women who wanted to make products or grow [cannabis] and had a passionate belief in what the plant can do and the opportunities to mainstream it, but that passion wasn’t always coupled with business acumen.”

Reed started reaching out to her network, asking women in industries ranging from law and finance to public relations and advocacy to create recorded lessons that could help female cannabis entrepreneurs succeed. Reed called the venture Kadin Academy. Members can access video lessons of PowerPoint presentations narrated by mentors like Heidi Groshelle of Ingrid Marketing, Jamie Cooper of CannaMedia, and Shabman Malek and Amanda Coley of Brand and Branch. Worksheets accompany the virtual classes, and mentors are available to answer questions.

In 2017, at the same time she launched Kadin Academy, Reed also created a private Facebook group, Women Entrepreneurs in Cannabis. The virtual community has attracted more than 4,100 members. Membership in Kadin Academy, which includes a Cannabis Business Startup Course, training videos and webinars has grown, too, attracting cultivators, distributors, dispensary owners, product manufacturers and ancillary service providers.

“It is a pretty broad group because the one galvanizing part of it is that we are here to help each other, and we are building a community,” Reed says. “What we’re building here is a new movement; we’re realizing that we don’t have to come into this male-dominated world, that we can actually do it differently.”

By offering resources tailored to women in cannabis and building a community to help them succeed, Reed hopes to shift the balance of women in the industry—but making that happen has required navigating some roadblocks.

Currently, Kadin Academy is “really focused on getting new members,” Reed says, pointing to the company’s new pricing structure, which has lowered prices from $1,000 for the Cannabis Business Startup Course to $120 per year for access to all Kadin Academy resources, in an attempt to increase enrollment.

By making the resources more accessible, Reed hopes she can help more women enter (and succeed in) the industry. Her long-term goal is to see women make up at least 50 percent of the entrepreneurs and at least 50 percent of C-suite executives in the cannabis industry.

“There is all of this data that shows that women kick ass at being entrepreneurs—then you look at the other side of the data, which is how much women are getting funded, and it’s abysmally low,” says Reed. “It’s the way that things have been going for a very long time, and we have to shift and change. It’s going to take a lot of work, and it is going to take all of us locking arms and really focus[ing] on solving this problem.”

Kadin Academy started hosting Mentor Monday, interviewing women in cannabis about hot topics in the industry, further empowering members to engage with experts, acquire knowledge and connect with each other to help grow their businesses. Wendy Kornberg of Sunnabis, Humboldt’s Full Sun Farms, and those at Arcanna Flowers are among the cultivators featured in this weekly social media broadcast.

“I created this community because I wanted women to know that there is a place for them in this industry; there are opportunities,” she says. “The one thing I most want women who are considering making the leap to cannabis or getting more involved in cannabis to know is that there is a community here for you.”

Amy Margolis, The Initiative

Oregon-based attorney Amy Margolis has been advising the cannabis industry since 2002. As the number of states legalizing medical and recreational cannabis use increased, so did the number of new ventures aiming to address a growing demand—and Margolis recognized a troubling trend.

“Cannabis went from being this alternative industry to looking like male-dominated corporate America and mirroring some of the same problems we have in corporate America,” she explains.

After returning from an industry conference in 2017, where she said she was often one of the few female attendees in the room, Margolis decided to use her connections and experience as a prominent cannabis attorney and founder of the Oregon Cannabis Association to create an accelerator program for female cannabis entrepreneurs and executives, called The Initiative. The program welcomes its first class in January 2019.

The Portland, Ore.-based business accelerator will bring together eight companies (that must have at least one female founder or chief decision maker) for three months of intensive programming that includes: business assessments, strategic decision-making, setting valuations and developing funding [needs], as well as leadership, mentoring and networking opportunities. At the end of the accelerator, women will pitch their companies to investors and, Margolis hopes, secure funding.

“Women, across the board and in the cannabis space, have a hard time raising money,” she explains. “We’re hoping to be able to fund all of the women who go through the program to prove that we can fund women-owned cannabis businesses and those businesses can be successful.”

Although there was a lot of interest in participating in The Initiative (the accelerator received 70 applications for eight spots; the board of directors was tasked with selecting the finalists), attracting investors proved challenging.

“There were a lot of high net-worth individuals who wanted to be involved and wanted to help women, but there were also plenty who were ‘eh’ about the whole idea,” Margolis recalls. “Once I changed the language and started talking about [investing in an underrepresented segment of the industry] and not, ‘let’s help women be successful,’ they were interested.”

In the cultivation space, Margolis believes that investors are interested in eco-friendly operations, noting, “It’s a selling point, [so] it’s important that we focus on being green as we build bigger and bigger facilities.”

While Margolis is excited about The Initiative, she acknowledges that it’s a single program and that achieving gender equality in the cannabis industry will require a much broader effort. Her goal is to introduce programming for businesses of all sizes and stages with the aim of helping women raise funds to start or expand cannabis enterprises.

As part of her commitment to supporting the cannabis community, Margolis opened The Commune this summer. The brand-new events venue in Portland offers cannabis-friendly classrooms, meetings and event space, hosting “Tokeativity Socials,” Students for Sensible Drug Policy fundraisers and Oregon Cannabis Association events.

Margolis also launched the Hustle Hard: For Women Who Mean Business retreat in October. The three-day retreat at Brasada Ranch in Bend, Ore., brought together executives and educators—including Emily Paxhia of Poseidon Asset Management, J. Summer Rogers of Rogue Venture Partners, and Christine Smith of grön, makers of cannabis-infused chocolates—to tackle topics such as business basics, corporate governance, fundraising and deal negotiation. It was a sold-out event, attracting 150 women—and Margolis believes she could have sold twice the number of tickets if space was available.

“To impact a lot of people, we need to be in a lot of places, [and] the more female founders we can impact, the broader the reach will be in terms of diversity across the entire cannabis industry,” she says.

Jodi Helmer is a North Carolina-based freelancer who covers the intersection between agriculture and business.

Top photo: Margolis at an Oregon Cannabis Association event for women that was held at The Commune—a 4,000-square-foot, cannabis business-friendly event, office and boardroom space located in Portland. Photo courtesy of The Initiative

Infiltration

Air gaps are a major source of heat loss in many greenhouses. A 48-inch fan shutter with 1-inch gaps between blades can allow as much as 25,000 Btu per hour (Btu/hr) to escape. Inspect these areas as you walk your greenhouse’s perimeter:

1. Glazing: Secure glazing to prevent plastic failure, repair or replace torn plastic, and adjust inflation pressure to ¼-inch static pressure. Clean and lubricate inflation blowers. Remove any shading, as light is critical during winter.

2. Foundation: Seal cracks in the foundation and baseboards with foam caulk or insulation board. Weatherstrip around personnel and vehicle doors with rubber or foam.

3. Gutters: Remove leaves, twigs and trash in rain gutters and downspouts. Drainage swales should be clear so water can drain away from the foundation. Space between houses should be obstruction-free for snow storage or snow removal purposes.

Structural Integrity

Snow and wind can place significant loads on the greenhouse. Inspect inside the greenhouse for:

4. Loose Truss and Frame Connectors: Tighten bolts, cross connectors and fasteners.

5. Diagonal Frame Bracing: Check to see that cables are tight and rigid braces are secure.

6. Hoop houses: Have two-by-four posts available to be placed under the ridge if heavy snow is predicted.

7. Energy Screens: Adjust cables and check for tight end- and side-screen closure to prevent chimney effect heat loss.

Yearly Furnace and Boiler Service

Servicing your boiler is key to efficient and trouble-free operation, and maintenance can be paid for with a 2-percent increase in efficiency.

8. Clean radiators, pipes, ducts and heat exchangers for increased heat output.

9. Calibrate your thermostat/controller accuracy against a digital thermometer.

10. Chimney and flue pipes should extend 2 feet above the roof ridge for better draft.

11. Enclose outdoor fuel tanks for a warmer fuel temperature and greater vaporization of propane in the tank or fuel oil in the firebox.

Fans and Vents

12. To save energy and reduce cold air drafts on plants, close fans and vents not needed for winter cooling.

13. Drain and close the evaporative cooling system.

14. Check fan belts for wear, tightness and alignment.

15. Horizontal Air Flow (HAF) fans should be cleaned and serviced to increase air flow by up to 25 percent.

Water Systems

16. Water systems need periodic service. Drain hot and cold water tanks to remove sediment and reset water pressure. Clean filters and screens.

17. Check hot water tank temperature. For most uses, 120°F is adequate. Insulate pipes with ½-inch foam insulation, at minimum, to retain heat and reduce condensation.

18. Eliminate water leaks. Sixty drops/minute wastes 113 gallons/month.

Backup Power

Backup power is a must for winter operation. Prepare by:

19. Operating the standby generator monthly. Keep extra fuel on hand.

20. Check and operate alarm system weekly.

John W. Bartok, Jr. is an agricultural engineer and an emeritus extension professor at the University of Connecticut. He is an author, consultant and certified technical service provider doing greenhouse energy audits for USDA grant programs in New England.

Top photo courtesy of John W. Bartok, Jr.

High-Volume Waste

Our industry produces a staggering amount of media waste every day. That stream is engorged by the practice of using media only once. Ongoing cost pressures will eventually drive growers to find every opportunity to reduce expenses and “one-and-done” media will be one of the first things operators look at cutting.

The good news is that the mechanical properties of peat and coco readily lend themselves to reuse. Organic nutrient soil mixtures may require more processing than peat or coco, but they are reused daily in the mainstream world. Media recycling may include root material removal, grading, blending, amending, sanitizing and recharging. If the product is to be reused, it needs to deliver a consistent performance level. Processing large volumes may require specialized machinery, but small-batch recycling may not justify the cost of automation.

Before attempting DIY recycling, seek a recycled media supplier who offers consistent and assured product performance. At the right price, such suppliers can take media off a grower’s worry list overnight.

If such suppliers are not available, growers should look at in-house media recycling options. Remember: Savings on media purchase and disposal are offset by whatever it costs to refresh media for reuse. Smaller operations may find that $200 worth of labor can process a week’s worth of media and is a more cost-efficient option than purchasing 20 bales of new media.

Composting could be a way to reduce media waste, but we usually don’t use peat or coco in composting because neither breaks down readily. Cannabis doesn’t usually produce as much foliage waste as media waste, meaning any composting system would likely require supplemental biomass to be brought in. We recommend talking to a commercial-scale compost specialist to understand space, labor and capital requirements as well as any recommended consumables to make an informed decision.

Inorganic Media

Block media: Rockwool and foam blocks/slabs are popular media and, compared to peat- and coco-based media, typically have a smaller waste stream. Block growing is so similar to container growing that most container growers can convert to block growing with little change to their table infrastructure and plant layouts. Block waste replaces container and media waste streams, so the disposal bill shrinks immediately.

While the waste volume is lower when utilizing blocks, we find roots grown into the blocks are a significant barrier to reuse processing. Sadly, our recommendation is to not attempt to recycle them. We also advise against incorporating rockwool or foam into field soil as they do not breakdown and cannot be easily removed, if at all, later.

Loose, inorganic media: Fired clay balls, perlite, gravel, crushed lava rock and similar materials are relatively easy to remove roots from, and they can be treated with heat and/or chemicals to kill pathogens, which may be the most important task in any media recycling process.

These media are typically used in ebb-and-flow or trough systems because they do not hold water. Not only is there only a small waste stream from these media, but the small volume of the root balls required in hydroponic systems (often a No. 1 or No. 2 container) means lower media costs per plant compared to a 3-gallon or 7-gallon container of soilless media. With the possibility of reusing these materials indefinitely, they are the cheapest media available...

Growing Media-less

…except, of course, outside of using no media at all. By setting plant roots in troughs that nutrient solution is run down, the need for media is eliminated along with a huge volume of waste and supply costs.

As opposed to the relative ease of changing from container to block growing, trough systems are different than traditional container systems and have more infrastructure. The payoff is gaining additional space from media storage, handling, clean-up and disposal areas that media may have occupied, and it is an easy system to keep clean.

One difference is that no media means plants can’t stand upright, so they must be supported on a vertical or horizontal trellis. If canopy area is maintained, yields can be expected to compete with upright plant production.

Fertilizer Disposal

Unlike media, we can’t offer alternatives that reduce fertilizer use to nothing, but it can be made simple. A big plus of peat and organic media is that they hold significant amounts of moisture and can be controlled to limit nutrient solution runoff, resulting in practically zero fertilizer disposal.

Alternatively, trough, deep aquaculture and ebb-and-flow systems involve nutrient solutions being pumped around and used repeatedly. Solutions may be amended to bring them back into specification, but, eventually, the grower must dispose of high quantities of nutrient solution. Fertilizers are regulated in all states and localities. Disposal of a high-EC nutrient solution into a municipal sewer should be done only after confirming it’s legal. Don’t guess or assume, get confirmation of what can and cannot be poured down the drain.

Concentration and dilution are two effective fertilizer disposal strategies. Evaporating waste fertilizer solutions produces a low volume of solid residual salts. Local regulations may allow sufficiently diluted nutrient solutions to be released back into watersheds. Again, check local regulations first.

Leaves, Flowers and Stems: Regulated Waste

Fresh cannabis biomass waste is viewed as regulated material, meaning it requires special handling to keep it from being diverted outside the operation. This includes keeping an audit trail of the regulated material from the moment it is removed from the flower room until it’s disposed. That tracking is a common requirement in legalized states, and while it places a heavy cost on operators to maintain the records, it is a condition of obtaining a license. So, for now, this is a waste cost no one can escape.

Regulated cannabis biomass waste may be disposed of by composting or rendering it inconsumable before disposal in a public landfill. Rendering material unusable is a simple process. Grinding biomass and mixing with media, trash, food waste or other materials turns the regulated material into commercial trash than can go straight into a dumpster. But until then, it is regulated waste and must be securely stored. It may be waste, but it’s special waste, and that means it costs more to dispose of.

Pesticides

Pesticide waste is regulated at federal and state levels. We recommend not looking for cost savings here. In fact, get staff to regimentally follow the label’s disposal directions, and no one needs to worry about pesticide violations or worker grievances for unsafe handling practices.

Log pesticide use. Being able to demonstrate proper and controlled pesticide use is one of the ABCs of cultivation. And when it comes to cannabis, cultivators need to be ready to hand over proof of compliance from Day One.

Waste is not a glamorous topic, but if it is on the expense or regulatory radar, it is worth delving into. Doing so may yield significant savings, avoidance of regulatory issues or even a whole new way to grow plants.

Kerrie & Kurt Badertscher are co-owners of Otoké Horticulture, LLC and authors of “Cannabis for Capitalists.” info@otokehort.com

Top photo courtesy of Eric Limon | Adobe Stock

Based in Portland, Ore., Pruf operates as part cultivation business and part research and development (R&D) lab. It benefits from being a subsidiary of GroundWorks Industries, a vertically integrated company with investments in production (Pruf Cultivar), retail (Serra, Electric Lettuce and Farma), distribution (GW Distribution), processing (GW Processing, GW Workshop) and services (GW Services).

Being part of the vertically integrated business guarantees shelf space for Pruf’s products in Oregon’s competitive market. More importantly, though, says Groundworks Industries COO Karlee Eichenberger, “it’s something that helps us provide the right amount of depth to the conversation we’re trying to have [with customers].”

That conversation is quite advanced: Pruf’s product labels and in-store information cards go beyond strain names and THC content to include extended terpene and minor cannabinoid details—a point of pride for Pruf’s Director of Production Science Jeremy Plumb.

A long-time cannabis activist and researcher whom Willamette Weekly once qualified as “the smartest guy in the room,” Plumb leads Pruf’s R&D projects. He is most passionate about the cultivation environment’s impact on a cultivar’s cannabinoid and terpene profile (aka phytochemistry). “I live to find correlation between changing environmental conditions and various phytochemical outcomes,” he says. “To make the connection between genotypes and chemical phenotypes is just as exciting as it gets.”

Plumb’s passion for discovering, creating and expressing exotic phytochemical profiles stems from his past experiences. He was a patient advocate in the ’90s, when the AIDS epidemic was ravaging California communities. Having already been inspired by the work of cannabis pioneer’s such as Chris Conrad, Mikki Norris, Lester Grinspoon and many others, he eventually had the opportunity to watch Dennis Peron interact with patients at his famed San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club. Seeing patients receive the standard of care offered by that collective, as well as by Women Advocates for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in Santa Cruz, galvanized Plumb to study cannabis.

When he moved to Portland in 2000, he became involved with the medical cannabis program. After a subsequent encounter with Sunrise Analytical founder Pat Marshall, he began conducting chemical analyses of his own plants and other medical patients’ crops. “I had years of data to look at up to 64 compounds from the plant,” he says. “As the data became clearer, I recognized that the phenotypic range of cannabis is profound, and that you can take a single genotype and change conditions in the environment and see pretty [distinct] results in the chemical phenotype.”

Plumb identifies three pillars to what he calls Pruf’s Innovation Lab: 1) advanced organic crop production methodology; 2) photobiology; and 3) efforts to improve genetics via phenotype discovery coupled with a hybridization program populated with a deeply curated selection of plants. He credits the research in these areas for the company’s advancements in product quality.

Growing Organic

One of Plumb’s first major decisions after joining Pruf Cultivar in 2017 was to “rip out” the mineral salt fertilizer system and to move toward an organic substrate and fertilizers. Many reasons spurred this change, including ecological value and product purity.

“Having the diverse organic rhizosphere dynamics makes it a lot more complicated than simply running a mineral-salt fertilizer program,” Plumb says. “But [what] I have seen in my early observational studies, [is] … a general trend toward more chemo-diverse sets of profiles from organically produced cannabis in my gardens, as opposed to more chemo-intensive cannabis produced in my mineral salt fertilizer-driven gardens.” In other words, his analytical results point to organic-crop production as better suited to express a broader array of compounds in targeted profiles (Pruf’s ultimate goal), while mineral salt-produced crops generally showed absence of other compounds and higher levels of only certain terpenes.

The switch from mineral salts to organic crop production was an interesting challenge for Lee Nye, Pruf’s head grower, especially considering her background as an ornamental plant grower for Pleasant View Gardens and D.S. Cole Growers in New Hampshire.

“We have clean rooms that are safe, … we can minimize pests coming in,” she says. However, when “we add the biology of the plants and the soil and organic fertilizer, … then [it’s about] learning how to build that ecosystem in a clean room.” Despite the challenges, she says the change to organic methods and the subsequent Clean Green certification were necessary, adding that “most of our competitors are Clean Green [Certified], so it’s an expectation [in the market].”

Implementing organic production also caused Pruf to adjust how it watered its crops. “With your organic soil, you have things like worm castings—things [that] are being broken down by microbes, and there’s always a good chance that you’re going to have something like a fungal pathogen or any kind of bacteria” being brought in, says Kylie Mendonca, a plant health specialist (PHS) at Pruf, who previously studied applied agriculture science at the University of California-Davis and obtained a master’s degree in horticulture crop science from California Polytechnic State University.

Assuming a constant pest outbreak threat forces Mendonca and Pruf’s other PHSs “to really tightly control the environment” and inputs. For example, says Mendonca, “we had to make sure we weren’t over-watering to create an environment that a fungus would like.”

A custom-designed, fully automated Dosatron fertigation system helps Nye and the PHS team avoid watering and feeding issues, and nutrient recipes can be fine-tuned to a specific cultivar and its current growth stage. (These recipes are based on Plumb’s past research and have been tweaked by Nye and the PHS team to maximize each cultivar’s expressions.) It also allows the PHS team to spend more time on trials, Mendonca says.

“Everyone’s got their side projects where we’re testing different fertilizers, or we’re trying out different soil mixes or … light regimens. It takes a lot of time for the plant health specialists to … pursue these little projects that are ultimately going to move our growing practices forward,” she says.

During trials, environment data collection is aided by Pruf’s custom-made environmental control system (ECS),o called PrufOS. In addition to tracking all the factors relating to plant growth, as any good ECS would, “we’ve tuned it up with a proprietary machine-learning platform,” Plumb says. “It can look at multi-variable equations and, in a lot of ways, make me obsolete in time.”

Pruf’s system can analyze genotype data created by partner labs, detailed environmental data (thanks to an array of sensors in every cultivation area), as well as high-resolution phytochemistry data—which Plumb says helps the cultivation team come up with targeted approaches toward revolutionary phytochemical solutions.

For example, when Pruf observed that the parts of the canopy that received the most light (the top) had higher levels of cannabinoids and terpenes compared to sections with less light (the bottom), the team decided to move from 5-gallon pots to 2-gallon pots. While plants wouldn’t grow as big, the smaller pots mean more plants can fit in a grow space, ultimately leading to more flower area being hit by light and increasing the cannabinoid and terpene content in those crop sections. Pruf is currently transitioning from roughly 14,000, 5-gallon pots to 24,000, 2-gallon pots, and expects that transition to be completed by Q1 2019.

Photobiology

With photobiology (the study of light’s effects on living organisms) being another of the company’s main building blocks, Pruf made another change to its cultivation practices to truly test lighting’s impact on plant development by switching from high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps to LEDs.

“With the advent of LEDs, we found the ability to control wavelength and output, and beam angle and deficiencies in levels that [were] never remotely possible with a high-intensity discharge system,” Plumb explains. “Using LEDs allows for us to open the door to proper photobiology research where we can use a single wavelength at a particular stage of development, and greatly influence plant morphology to manipulate and optimize the expression of phytochemical production.”

Pruf is on its fourth lighting trial using LED fixtures. In one flower room, the company is testing how LEDs set at a photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) of more than 1,600 µmols affect plants, compared to a double-ended high-pressure sodium (HPS) fixture set at 800 µmols (which are still in use in a few of Pruf’s flower rooms). So far, Plumb has seen increased phytochemical diversity and biomass (yield) in that trial—mostly thanks to the increased PPFD and wavelength without the corresponding heat load increase that comes with non-LED fixtures.

Lighting trials, along with the conversion to LED technology, have enabled and pushed Pruf to adopt different technologies, including vertical racking systems. “We’ve been able to do things that are just absolutely remarkable, partly because we’ve decoupled radiant heat from the fixture; high-intensity discharge fixtures are notorious for building huge thermal loads,” Plumb says.

In its vegetation room, Pruf installed a three-tier vertical racking system with two rows of racks for a total of six shelves, Nye says. “Each one of those tiers has dimmable lighting [comprising 12 lighting zones], so that we can actually have different crops in there at the same time getting the light that they need, and not try to compromise between all of the crops.” In addition to the 12 lighting zones, there are 16 different fertigation zones in the veg room, allowing the Pruf team to feed each cultivar exactly what it needs and granting cultivation staff even more crop control.

Plant Health Specialists are each in charge of three to four flowering rooms, but the veg room is granted one dedicated staffer, Charlie Smith. Smith can oversee up to eight varieties in that one room alone, Nye says, a complicated task due to the variety of cultivars the company offers and the amount of data Pruf collects for each crop—such as rooting times and plant health.

To help with the veg room work, Pruf purchased a robot the team affectionately calls Clarence. Resembling a forklift on tracks, Clarence can be directed to any tier, pull trays and bring them to the staffer who can then work with the plants at a comfortable height. The robot also increases employee safety, as team members don’t have to use cherry-pickers or ladders to inspect elevated plants. (Editor’s note: See Clarence in action at: bit.ly/pruf-clarence.)

Pheno Disco

As a co-founder of the Open Cannabis Project, an organization dedicated to building the world’s largest public domain of cannabis genetics, Plumb understands the central role genetics are going to play in this industry’s future. That is why Pruf is amidst its first round of its phenotype discovery program: a period dedicated to seed-popping that staff refers to as “Pheno Disco.”

“We just started our first lot of a thousand [seeds from 100 different cultivars] for a phenotype discovery program that will take really high-resolution genetic data from every single cultivar that is germinated,” Plumb says. Pheno Disco is currently taking place in multiple rooms: the veg room is where seed germination and early growth happen. From there, the cuttings from that vegetative tissue go into a propagation environment. After that, plants mature enough to be flowered go into an all-LED bloom environment. Additionally, every environmental variable during Pheno Disco is tracked through the PrufOS system and correlated to a cultivar’s progress and chemistry.

Offering different products with different chemical compositions than the competition is an obvious reason why the company is working so hard to find unique genetics and expressions. But for the director of production science, having different chemical compositions also means better serving the diverse needs of patients and consumers. Plumb imagines a world in which cannabis plays a central role in people’s health and well-being—whether they are (re)introducing themselves to cannabis as a health and wellness supplement, seeking options without the “medicated” feeling or looking for an intense cerebral experience.

“We’re in a post-THC and -CBD world,” Plumb says. “We’re in a chemical fingerprinting world, which goes beyond the cannabinoids and terpenes … and we have to start to lean into this unbelievable complexity, knowing full well this is really the most phytochemically complex plant to interact with.”

Germinating seeds is far from the last stop in Pruf’s hunt for new chemovars. Once interesting specimens (i.e. those with exotic cannabinoid and terpene contents) are identified, they will be brought into one of Pruf’s three mother rooms to have cuttings sampled for further study and hybridization, which in turn will yield even more genetic diversity.

“We [at Pruf] see ourselves as adventurers on the path to imagining how to both wield that phytochemistry for the good of the whole and to consistently be able to reproduce it,” Plumb says.

A Company of the Future

For Eichenberger, investing heavily in R&D comes with risks. Balancing R&D with financial solvability, she says, “is a struggle that I can’t pretend we’ve mastered perfectly. ... [However,] that innovation is part of our core values.”

For example, companies might forgo Pheno Disco and only cultivate from purchased clones because it takes longer to grow from seed. But, the COO says, “I think that when we pause and ask ourselves why we’re doing it, we always agree that it’s important.”

What balances those costs is the company’s dedication to being part of the cannabis industry for the long-term. In five years, Eichenberger would like GroundWorks Industries, and Pruf Cultivar, to be known throughout the U.S. for genetic innovation and for pushing forward all that is possible with this plant.

The cultivation team is confident in being able to achieve those lofty goals. “It’s like we’re constantly at the edge of discovery,” Plumb says. “There’s always an opportunity to gain insight right now. There’s so much low-hanging fruit because of the fact that, despite all of the passion … for this plant, it has simply not been worked with in a way that allowed for a mature expression of research and development.”

Brian MacIver is the associate editor for Cannabis Business Times.

Top photo: Left: Jeremy Plumb, Director of Production Science. Right: Karlee Eichenberger, Chief Operating Officer