This story originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of sister publication Cannabis Dispensary.

From the vaping crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic, recent events have intensified the need for transparency and trust in the cannabis supply chain to ensure packaging and products are contaminant free.

Now, perhaps more than ever, supply chain partners and customers want more information about industry practices and products.

Blockchain, steadily gaining adoption in other markets, could be the next game-changing technology for the cannabis industry. Proven in mainstream food safety, pharmaceuticals and other sectors, blockchain-powered platforms offer potential benefits for everyone, from breeders with new genetics to consumers shopping dispensary shelves.

Understanding Blockchain Basics

Cannabis attorney Braden Perry, partner at Kansas City, Mo., law firm Kennyhertz Perry, helps companies implement novel and emerging technologies, including blockchain. An expert in enforcement, digital currencies, and regulatory and compliance issues, Perry suggests the easiest way to envision blockchain is to think of it as a digital ledger—one that contains a series of unchangeable records.

Rather than transaction lines found in general financial ledgers, blockchain contains information packets called “blocks.” The blocks are connected chronologically to form a chain. They store a wide range of product-specific and transactional information, including the time and date for specific actions, product origin and process steps or product inputs. For the cannabis industry, critical data in a block might include genetic information, lab results, cultivation inputs, supply chain logistics, location tracking and consumer feedback. Blockchain has endless applications and can be used to record and track anything.

A typical end user of a product doesn’t see a block, they just see a software program interface. How the information “looks” to an end user will depend on how the blockchain-powered software product they’re using presents that data to them.

Unlike traditional databases, the blockchain ledger is decentralized. The information it holds is stored across multiple locations, entered by trusted partners and synchronized by consensus of those partners, protecting data integrity. Once created, a block cannot be changed. New data, including corrections to prior entries, result in new blocks. The original block remains constant, an immutable record of what’s within.

“From a seed-to-sale perspective, especially in today’s regulatory environment in the legal marijuana industry, the recordkeeping and reporting is very complex,” Perry says. “This automated ledger ensures [information] cannot be altered from either an intentional standpoint, such as a forgery or other type of wrongdoing, or an unintentional standpoint, such as an error.”

Overcoming Misconceptions

Perry points out that many people erroneously believe that blockchain and cryptocurrency are synonymous. Larry Levy, CEO and co-founder of Lucid Green, also notes that many in the cannabis industry have struggled to separate the two concepts. While blockchain technology makes cryptocurrency possible, they are not the same. Blockchain, free from the risks and regulatory issues associated with cryptocurrencies, can just as easily power seed-to-sale tracking systems, genetic validation or transparency of lab results.

Lucid Green, a cannabis supply chain platform, launched in late 2018 with a blockchain-empowered product QR code aimed at brand-to-consumer and brand-to-budtender education and marketing—and a token-based rewards program. The platform received strong resistance from brands swayed by misconceptions about blockchain, Levy says. “It completely blew their minds,” he recalls. “They were in a high-risk industry anyway. Then here’s another thing they see as high risk.”

Now, Lucid Green keeps it simple. “We don’t bring up blockchain because [brands] are not interested in the technology,” Levy says.

The company’s private blockchain network operates as a centralized database for now. “But the minute the industry [matures] and can sustain and support decentralized, trusted actors putting data in, we’ll just switch that on,” he says.

Levy’s experience highlights another misconception, that decentralized blockchain platforms expose proprietary information to the world. With permissioned blockchain networks, you control who sees what and who creates blocks. Blockchains can be public, private or a combination of both. And, yes, separate blockchain networks can communicate.

“You can have your own enterprise blockchain where certain information is shared and other information is siloed off,” Perry says. “If you’re worried about potential intrusion or corporate espionage, private blockchains are a way to lock up the information where you only have access to it, but the reporting is secure.”

Exploring Blockchain Uses

As blockchain’s benefits become better known, blockchain-empowered cannabis-related products and services will grow. Robert Galarza is CEO of TruTrace Technologies, whose blockchain-based StrainSecure program registers and tracks intellectual property (IP) in the cannabis industry. In partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s largest pharmacy chain, TruTrace is piloting blockchain-secured programs to track and trace “from genome to distribution.” Decades of enterprise technology experience fuel Galarza’s enthusiasm for blockchain’s potential.

“With blockchain, we can get all the information—even the efficacy studies and consumer feedback and all of that—put into a system that can make it readily accessible by the parties that need to access it at any time, and the information is secure,” he says. “In the supply chain, it brings an integrity to this industry that we’ve never had.”

The following are some of the ways blockchain-powered technology is already benefiting cannabis and non-cannabis businesses:

1. Rapid, real-time traceability. Blockchain’s secure technology ensures an accurate, permanent record, but it also allows rapid access to specific details within the large amounts of stored information. With blockchain, businesses can instantly get a specific product’s full history and access present and past locations in the supply chain.

A high-profile, mainstream example is Walmart’s incorporation of IBM blockchain technology following E. coli scares with romaine lettuce in 2018. Blockchain reduced the time it took supply chain tracking to locate lettuce sources from seven days to 2.2 seconds. Galarza says blockchain offers the same speed to cannabis supply chains.

2. Improved efficiency and reduced costs. Labor remains one of the largest expenses for cannabis businesses, whether they operate cultivation facilities, retail shops or both. Perry believes blockchain can streamline time-consuming tracking, reporting and auditing, and eventually reduce the need for staff and oversight related to those functions. “Obviously, upfront costs are going to be there, but in the long term, businesses will likely save,” he says.

3. Product validation and standardization. Levy suggests the greatest cannabis-related potential for blockchain’s decentralized, distributed ledger lies with genetics. As Galarza points out, cannabis has long been identified primarily by street names. Under blockchain-powered programs like the Shoppers Drug Mart pilot, genetic cultivar information is being collected, registered, tested and published through the secure, permanent infrastructure blockchain provides.

Growers can protect their IP. Researchers can identify specific genetic and chemical profiles. Medical providers and retailers can be sure they receive consistent products and verify provenance, testing results, patient outcomes and other immutable information.

4. Compliance efficiencies. For U.S. growers bound to state-mandated tracking systems, Levy expresses doubts about blockchain’s promise: “From a compliance perspective, I just don’t see the need to overcomplicate what is already a very onerous process because of the whole track-and-trace requirement that the states have decreed.”

But Perry believes that part of blockchain’s power lies in compliance and enforcement. “[Blockchain] eliminates human error and the ability for mischief along the way and really eliminates any fear that a state or a regulatory body might have that anything has not been reported properly,” he says. “Being able to provide bulletproof evidence that your compliance is complete is the biggest advantage right now.”

Galarza sees opportunities for blockchain-improved compliance by supporting systems already in place. “We don’t want to replace track-and-trace. We want to empower track-and-trace,” he stresses. “We have to be the ones to support [those systems].” He says that’s done by building tools that help bridge gaps and can touch many competing seed-to-sale platforms and push information between those systems.

5. Consumer confidence. Blockchain-powered scannable codes and other technologies can increase transparency and provide end consumers with secure, verified product identification and information to drive confidence and brand loyalty.

“With blockchain, whatever way you want to show a consumer how your product is superior to others, from seed to sale, you can prove that without having to deal with claims of bias or inaccuracy,” Perry says. “I think it’s really important from the consumer standpoint to know exactly what they’re getting and how they’re getting it.”

Galarza expands on blockchain-empowered opportunities for cultivators and dispensaries. “Through scanning a QR code or some newer packaging technology, [consumers] can know what’s in this exact product and batch, down to the more granular details if you want them to see them,” he says. “It’s just a matter of saying, ‘OK, we have full, transparent traceability.’ From a quality assurance perspective, why wouldn’t we make that accessible to individual customers and patients on the packaging?”

Anticipating Blockchain’s Future

Though the cannabis industry has been slow to embrace blockchain, Levy says he anticipates rapid change: “Many of the cannatech solutions that are out there have literally grown up out of people’s basements because the big software companies didn’t want to touch a weed company.” He believes that consolidation and normalization will bring blockchain leaders into the cannabis industry. “That’s how the industry is going to grow up,” he says.

Perry agrees that mainstream blockchain platforms will enter the cannabis industry soon. “It likely will become much more enticing both to big technology as well as the industry itself,” he says. “Once one of those big companies gets a product out there, there will likely be a snowball effect. I really think it is the future of the industry from at least the supply chain and the tracking aspect.”

Galarza expects companies like Shoppers Drug Mart and Walmart will drive blockchain adoption as cannabis matures and supply chains grow more complex. “Companies need to know what they’re getting is safe before they put it in the hands of people,” he says. “I think that’s already what we’re seeing in Canada and what we’re seeing with the bigger companies in the U.S., where we’re seeing it a little bit more [on] the CBD side.”

Galarza advises cannabis businesses, from breeders to retailers, to look ahead and understand the infrastructure demanded by the food, drug and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries—that blockchain-secured technologies help provide—and then work together to see the cannabis industry thrive.

“The maturity I hope to see in the industry in the next couple of years is everyone says, ‘We love this industry. We want to see it grow.’ We have to band together and do the best we can at what we do,” he says. “And if somebody does it better, then we go back to the drawing board and work harder to make what we do better. That’s the one thing that I hope to see as we evolve.”

Jolene Hansen is a freelance writer specializing in the cannabis and horticulture industries. Reach her at jolene@lovesgarden.com.

A recurring series focusing on plant cultivation by university researchers

A wide assortment of insects and diseases, including white mold, find Cannabis sativa to be a suitable host. White mold is a disease caused by the pathogen Sclerotinia sp. While Sclerotinia sp. infections in outdoor cultivation are fairly common, incidences during indoor and greenhouse are rare.

What is white mold?

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, commonly called white mold, is a pathogen that causes crown, root and stem rot, and has a host range of more than 400 plant species, according to the 2007 article “White mold (Sclerotinia),” written by Virginia Heffer Link and Kenneth B. Johnson of Oregon State University.

White mold has been reported in cannabis propagation and could be a cause for concern in growing operations. The fungus survives between growing seasons inside infected plants or in soil residue as hard, black resting structures called sclerotia (Fig. 1). These surviving sclerotia are the primary inoculum to infect the subsequent year’s crop. In a near-saturated, cool soil environment, sclerotia germinate and release spores through cup-like structures called apothecia to infect plant tissue. According to Heffer Link and Johnson, wet foliage or plant material in growing environments with temperatures of 54 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (12 to 24 degrees Celsius) for one to two days can lead to spore germination, giving rise to infection.

11 White Mold Management Options

Many disease management strategies exist, and when these practices are combined with an integrated pest management strategy, they can provide good control of white mold. In growing operations, these cultural practices are an integral part of disease management.

1. Control moisture and humidity. These are the first steps in preventing or limiting white mold outbreaks. High humidity and moisture create a favorable environment for the pathogen and can lead to disease outbreaks.
2. Employ proper air flow and spacing between plants to decrease humidity levels.
3. Prune plants that have significant canopy growth to improve air movement.
4. Create proper spacing so that plant canopies do not overlap, which could allow for disease to spread throughout the environment.
5. Utilize drip irrigation and/or minimize the amount of overhead watering to help reduce excess moisture.
6. Develop proper sanitation practices to limit disease pressure such as sterilizing substrate and other cultivation materials, avoiding growing plants in areas with a previous history of white mold, and managing weeds.
7. Screen and clean seeds before planting to ensure that any seed-like black sclerotia are not introduced into the growing environment. The inspection process is akin to sifting through dry beans and lentils to be sure there are no stones before cooking.
8. Keep an eye on your ventilation. In the case of the white mold outbreak observed in cannabis propagation, it is thought that the sclerotia outside the growing environment produced apothecia (fruiting bodies), which then released spores that entered the environment though the vents or cool cells.
9. Implementing biological control, such as spraying Coniothyrium minitans spores on soil, has shown efficacy when used in an integrated pest management system for limiting disease. Because C. minitans is a living organism, cultivators must provide adequate time for it to establish and proliferate, and the application of this organism does not ensure that all sclerotia will be destroyed.
10. Try to catch it early. As the pathogen infects and spreads throughout the host tissue, fungicides and biocontrol options for Sclerotinia control are not registered, nor effective.
11. Discard infected plants as a primary control option. For propagation trays, also discard potentially contaminated, adjacent clones to avoid introducing the disease into your growing room or production fields.

White mold outbreaks during propagation can introduce the disease during production. Given the long-term survivability of sclerotia, the disease can persist for several years. Thus, identification and management of the disease is the best long-term strategy.

Sarah Cochran is a master's student in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University (NCSU); Dr. Lindsey Thiessen is an assistant professor of plant pathology at NCSU; Dr. Brian Whipker is professor of floriculture, Department of Horticultural Science, NCSU; Paul Cockson is a graduate research and teaching assistant at NCSU; Patrick Veazie and David Logan are undergraduate research assistants at NCSU. 

Silicon Valley may be the undisputed capital of the tech world, but that wasn’t always the case. For decades, much of the world’s tech-startup and venture-capital activity occurred in quaint suburban office parks and low-rise office buildings along the Route 128 Beltway outside Boston. Early computer pioneers Digital Equipment Corp., Data General, and Wang Laboratories formed a “Technology Corridor” along Route 128 and made Boston a beacon of innovation in a digitizing world.

Though Silicon Valley raced ahead and ultimately won the battle for regional tech supremacy, Greater Boston is still a formidable tech hub in its own right, with influential research institutions, tech-focused venture capitalists, universities, and innovation centers. Tech companies such as Hubspot, TripAdvisor, and Dell EMC are based there, and Facebook, Twitter, and IBM have offices in the Boston metro area to take advantage of the local tech talent and innovative culture.

So, could Greater Boston become the next hub for technological innovation in cannabis?

That is one hope for the Massachusetts Cannabis Center (MCC), a purpose-built, tech-driven, eco-friendly cultivation and processing facility situated on a 52-acre parcel of land in Freetown, Mass., about an hour drive from Boston proper. The center is the flagship project of site-designer AmeriCann Inc., a publicly traded company that develops facilities for the production of cannabis, cannabis-infused products and concentrates, and the grand vision of its chief executive officer, Tim Keogh, who grew up in nearby Marion.

Keogh’s goal is to create an actual physical hub—a state-of-the-art campus where multiple licensed operators can co-locate to grow, cultivate, and process their cannabis using the most advanced technologies and cutting-edge manufacturing practices available. AmeriCann has the permits to build up to 987,000 square feet of infrastructure on the property, and Keogh hopes to attract as many as eight “tenant” partners during the next several years.

AmeriCann’s first partner? Bask Inc., a stalwart of the cannabis scene in Massachusetts’s Southcoast area. In February, Bask moved from the Southcoast town of Fairhaven into a new 30,000-square-foot home at the MCC known as “Building 1,” the first to be completed as part of AmeriCann’s project. Under a joint venture with AmeriCann, which began in 2016, Bask will operate in Building 1 for 15 years, with the option to expand its physical footprint. According to AmeriCann, Building 1 is projected to produce 7,500 pounds of dry flower annually and more than 400,000 units of infused products. As part of the partnership between the companies, AmeriCann will receive a “revenue participation fee” of 15% of gross revenue on all products produced from Building 1.

Tech at the core

“If we were going to invest millions of dollars in a cannabis-cultivation and processing facility, we had to ask ourselves some tough questions,” Keogh says, such as: How should AmeriCann design the structure? “That’s where we started really looking at ourselves like an ag-tech company.”

To ensure every square inch of the center is used efficiently and allows for consistent, top-grade cannabis production, AmeriCann embraced automation and data analytics. The company created “Cannopy”—an umbrella term for a set of systems and equipment that it adapted and consolidated from tech vendors—which operators can avail themselves of as tenants. Keogh declined to share specifics about Cannopy but said AmeriCann is promoting the solution as one-stop and all-inclusive. Cultivators just have to show up and grow.

Making tech the center’s core feature was an easy choice, Keogh admits. As an advocate for pro-cannabis regulation in the early days of legalization, Keogh had observed firsthand how some companies adopted new technology and thrived as a result. Since then he has come to think of tech as a necessity, he says. But the decision to be tech-centric was dependent on another, perhaps more controversial one: The MCC would rely entirely on greenhouse technology.

Going Green

In Keogh’s view, the most efficient and cost-effective way to grow high-quality cannabis at scale is under the sun in modern industrial greenhouses aided by digital technologies.

Keogh did not come to this conclusion based on emotion or anecdotal evidence, he says. As a former designer of marinas and boatyards, Keogh thinks differently than the average person about where light and energy will come from, how air flows, how people will maneuver themselves and objects within the space, what is absolutely essential to the space, and what can be easily omitted.

And greenhouse technologies have also improved greatly in the past ten years: With digital tools, growers can control and automate the heating, cooling, dehumidification, fogging, lighting, airflow, ventilation, and just about every other make-or-break condition for a successful grow, Keogh says.

“With hybrid-greenhouse technology, we have most of the benefits of indoor grows,” Keogh says. “But the big advantage is that we can bring in natural sunlight when it’s available. It cuts down our carbon footprint and reduces utility costs—and it’s a lot more efficient.”

Not everyone shared Keogh’s enthusiasm for greenhouse cultivation, however. Freetown officials were skeptical, Keogh says. To get the local community comfortable with the idea of the MCC, Keogh says he took some members of the town’s council, planning board, fire department, and building department on a tour of a leafy greens greenhouse operation in New Hampshire.

“Some people have this vision of hoop houses with poly tarp draped over them like in people’s backyards,” Keogh says of the public perception of greenhouse growing.

Innovating for Efficiency

Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold enormous potential for improving how cannabis companies cultivate, process, and sell their products to customers. But some established industry players have been slower than others to adopt new technologies because, historically, there was little incentive for cannabis companies to innovate and be more efficient, Keogh says.

“Why would a company invest $20,000, $30,000, or even $100,000 on an irrigation system if they can pay a few people to water their plants and still make a profit?” he says. “… The problem is that doesn’t necessarily scale up. As you scale, any inefficiency—like the lack of an irrigation system—is going to eat into the margin.”

With this context, it’s easy to see why Bask is such a good fit for AmeriCann’s MCC. The vertically integrated company is not only Massachusetts to its core, but it operates much like a rapidly scaling tech startup, its culture imbued with equal parts tenacity and humility.

Though Bask CEO Chapman “Chappy” Dickerson jokes that he’s been “fighting technology” his whole life, he’s also quick to point out that he embraces a new technology or approach if it means “working smarter, not harder” and “getting results.”

In most technology-propelled companies, the CEO is also the chief technology booster, providing not only the resources to use new technologies, but, just as important, the permission for every employee to think and act boldly and creatively, developing an expansive view of the future. That is Dickerson.

“There’s a better way to do everything,” says Dickerson, who served in the military and worked as a commercial fisherman before leading Bask. “Just like there’s always someone tougher than you. It’s the same thing with cultivating. There’s always a better way; somebody’s always going to do it better. So you try to adapt and do it the best you can.”

The willingness to embrace technology and change started with Bask’s manufacturing process. Before Bask relocated its operations to the MCC, AmeriCann’s team worked with Dickerson’s team to streamline every aspect of the cultivation and processing operation. As Keogh put it, AmeriCann “took the stopwatches out.” It wanted to understand where the slack was in the system, and if Bask could do things better and faster. So Bask shifted to a lean manufacturing model, where workers execute a variety of production tasks, take responsibility for product quality, and are encouraged to find ways to improve the production process.

One specific change was to move to an “everyday production model,” in which the same task—whether that’s cloning, transplanting, feeding, trimming, or other growing tasks—is performed every day by each worker. With more predictability built into processes, workers can focus more of their attentions on improvements and creative problem-solving.

“They came in and said, ‘Hey Chappy, you’re doing a great job, but you’re doing it all wrong,’” Dickerson jokes about AmeriCann. “I don’t need to be biggest, but I want to be the best I can be.”

Working With, And Alongside, The Machine

The continued spread of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has stoked fears of machines and algorithms running the world. Many employees worry they will soon report to robots—or be replaced by them.

At Bask, you see a more encouraging picture in which people and machines are not rivals fighting for jobs but rather are close collaborators, each taking advantage of the other’s complementary strengths.

From climate-control equipment to inventory tracking systems, almost everything in Bask’s operation is now online-enabled, in the cloud, on hard drives, or on a tablet computer. When something breaks down or fails to perform as expected, growers can’t afford to stop everything, track down a user’s manual and spend the rest of the day troubleshooting. As Dickerson says, “I can’t Google my way through fixing everything.” This is where AmeriCann’s tech system control comes to the rescue.

Armed with a tablet and an app feeding him real-time data about the growing conditions in the greenhouse, Christian Powers, Bask’s head of cultivation, has more time and mental energy to make strategic and tactical decisions to optimize grow operations and think bigger picture about the business.

“It’s really the brains of our whole operation,” Powers says of the app. “If a computer [senses] a mistake, it sends us an alarm. If I make a mistake, an alarm doesn’t get sent out ... I have to tell everyone that I just made a big mistake.”

“If I die tomorrow, the business still runs,” Dickerson adds. By having all this critical data integrated into one analytics interface, Bask can see how its systems work together and what it can change going forward. “By next March we can really see what works well [with a year of data-collection],” Dickerson says.

Becoming the Hub

As the Massachusetts market continues to evolve, Keogh hopes the MCC will serve as the state’s industry’s hub.

In-state demand already is encouraging. According to the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (MCCC), the state’s recreational dispensaries sold more than $157 million worth of cannabis so far in 2020.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on adult-use stores, which were not deemed “essential businesses” like their medical counterparts and were forced to close until at least May 4 (as of press time), remains to be seen. According to the MCCC, from March 23 to April 1, 2020, after it was announced that adult-use stores would shut down March 24, 1,308 people registered under the medical program, a 158 percent increase from the period 10 days before.

“The licenses held in AmeriCann’s project are both medical licenses—medical cultivation, medical processing—so from that standpoint nothing has changed,” Keogh said in a follow-up interview at the end of March. He said Bask’s Fairhaven dispensary saw an uptick in sales as customers stockpiled product in March before Gov. Charlie Baker’s stay-at-home order, and continue to come in.

With Bask operations humming and Dickerson already thinking about expansion, AmeriCann is optimistic about the future.

The next step for AmeriCann? Become an operator.

“From AmeriCann’s standpoint, we’re going to have a handful of companies here each with about 100,000 or more of square feet to themselves. And so we said, ‘Why not us as well?’” Keogh says.

The company established a new subsidiary, AmeriCann Brands, to cultivate and process cannabis on site at the MCC, and is seeking the requisite approvals to do so. As a potential multi-state operator, AmeriCann Brands would take advantage of the same technology solutions, systems, and innovations the parent corporation developed for companies like Bask.

This raises some issues about data use. As the creator and owner of the Cannopy system, AmeriCann the parent company and its newly created AmeriCann Brands could theoretically have the leg up on its tenant competitors and potentially have access to new rivals’ data and trade secrets. But Keogh says AmeriCann sees MCC occupants as partners. The way the deal between Bask and AmeriCann is structured, AmeriCann benefits financially if Bask succeeds.

Keogh says AmeriCann collects results, productivity, and efficiency data from its agricultural technology and building systems to be as efficient as possible. “We have been transparent about the data with our existing partners and inquiring future partners,” he says.

AmeriCann has already taken steps to draw clear lines of demarcation—every operator must have its own security staff and take responsibility for maintaining its own infrastructure. Despite the potential for competitive tensions, Keogh says he believes one selling feature of the MCC is that it’s a turn-key property. Licensed operators can come in and get right to work. And AmeriCann has an enviable vantage point to see what works and what doesn’t.

Paul Barbagallo is a Boston-based writer and a former senior editor for Bloomberg News and beat reporter for Bloomberg BNA.

Galenas, an Akron-based Level II cultivator in Ohio’s medical cannabis program, operates in a state-of-the-art facility with a highly controllable environment. We’ve made many improvements toward our goal to produce the highest-quality cannabis in Ohio.

Now we are in a place where we can run experiments, and one aspect we are tinkering with is a technique to increase secondary metabolites (e.g., cannabinoids, terpenoids) in our cultivars. Here’s what we’ve learned in our early research and the studies that inspired the tests.

1. Consider growth-promoting rhizobacteria to increase plant growth and metabolite production.

A study published in June 2018, titled, “Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) in Cannabis sativa ‘Finola’ cultivation: An alternative fertilization strategy to improve plant growth and quality characteristics,” has shown that plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, or PGPRs (not to be confused with plant growth regulators (PGRs)), had positive effects on the cannabinoid content of a low-psychoactive industrial hemp cultivar. Two different PGPR inoculum concentrations demonstrated that combinations of several species of rhizobacteria effectively enhanced plant growth and development, while also increasing the accumulation of secondary metabolites. This is promising research for organic growers who work to protect and augment microbial diversity in their substrates.

2. Avoid excessive organic fertilization during flowering.

Dr. Deron Caplan, director of research and development for The Flowr Corporation and formerly with the University of Guelph, published several peer-reviewed articles on cannabis production that have relevant information for cultivators interested in enhancing secondary metabolites. One, titled, “Optimal rate of organic fertilizer during the flowering stage for cannabis grown in two coir-based substances,” describes an experiment where researchers tested a medical cannabis strain with five rates of organic fertilizer, and found that increasing the fertilizer rate led to improved growth and larger yield, but also caused a dilution of THC, THCa and CBGa. The study concluded that to maximize secondary metabolite concentrations, applying excessive organic fertilizer should be avoided during flowering.

3. Test controlled drought stress.

In another study by Dr. Caplan, titled, “Increasing inflorescence dry weight and cannabinoid content in medical cannabis using controlled drought stress,” one controlled application of drought stress showed increased secondary metabolite concentrations. To evaluate the effect of drought on cannabis, the researchers withheld fertigation during week 7 in the flowering stage, when cannabinoid concentrations were peaking. They kept this up until plants reached the drought-stress threshold, which in this specific cultivar correlated with wilt, at 11 days without fertigation. They found that upon harvest, the drought-stressed plants had increased concentrations of THCa by 12% and CBDa by 13% compared to the control.

Coming from mainstream agriculture, I noticed this in my work with various culinary herbs that produce essential oils and will be testing this further in cannabis at Galenas. For those who are interested in experimenting themselves, keep in mind that certain cultivars will sustain permanent damage by the time they show wilt, so this is not always a safe reference point. Plants grown indoors already experience significant stress from an artificial environment, often combined with insect and/or disease pressure, so when inducing any type of stress, keep all other variables optimal. Be very cautious when playing with stress or running any experiments. Start with small tests and scale up slowly if results are positive. And, of course, make sure you are accurately recording and interpreting all data.

Christine DeJesus is director of cultivation at Galenas.