This is a rather long, but interesting article on preserving cannabis strains through tissue-culturing. This Bay Area startup is preserving the world’s best pot strains This Bay Area startup is preserving the world’s best pot strains Walking into Node Labs feels more like entering a scene in “The Matrix” than a pot farm. There’s no soil here, just thousands of tiny cannabis plants growing in sealed, sterile plastic jars. But even though Node Labs doesn’t look anything like a pot farm, this small facility in Sonoma County is the engine behind some of California’s best cannabis brands. “We are looking at between 100,000 to 1 million pounds of weed originating from here, which is insane to think about,” Christopher Leavitt, the company’s chief science officer, tells me as he stands in front of an orange shelf lined with 3-inch-tall pot plants. “And that's per year.” Node Labs sells only 5,000 plants a year, according to Leavitt, so how can the company be responsible for so much cannabis? Well, these are no ordinary plants. These are tissue-cultured clones. Each plant can be copied hundreds of times, meaning a few of these plants can propagate an entire pot farm. Plant tissue culturing is a practice with more than 100 years of history and is commonly used in commercial farming, especially with plants like berries and potatoes. The technique involves taking a tiny piece of plant material that contains stem cells and then placing it in a sterile growing medium. The plants can be kept in what is essentially a permanent suspended life inside their jars until they are called upon to be divided. A Node Labs employee prepares a cannabis plant for tissue culturing. Lester Black/SFGATE Not every pot farmer is sold on this soil-free technique. Many boutique outdoor farmers still enjoy the variety of growing pot with seeds. But for some cannabis farmers, and especially large operations, tissue culturing offers incredible benefits for growing marijuana plants. That includes more stable attributes, like consistent THC and CBD ratios, reduced risk of plant disease, and the creation of a “genetic bank” where prized cannabis strains are kept safe. Some of the highest-profile brands in the country trust Node Labs with their genetics. The company has partnered with companies like Cookies and Wiz Khalifa’s Khalifa Kush, according to CEO Lauren Avenius. Facilities like Node Labs can keep their tissue-cultured plants alive indefinitely, which means it’s like backing up your family photos on a cloud server or, in Leavitt’s analogy, creating a Noah’s Ark for cannabis genetics. “We enable your favorite cultivar or strain to last for decades and be the same experiences in 2023 as 2033, which has never been done before in the history of cannabis,” Leavitt said. (snipped) Granny
Interesting concept but likely not available for the standard home grower; as an ideal, the thought of preserving strains seems encouraging but it still leaves the product in the hands of those who profit rather than those who share.
