 Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are on site at IndieBio's Demo Day number eight. We are now talking to Siv Watkins. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Very excited to talk to you. CEO of 11 Biomics. Correct. All right. Cool. You just gave a talk on stage. What was it about? It was about a range of things. Mostly cannabis. We're a company who makes micro-based treatments for diseases on plants. Completely non-chemical, non-pesticidal. That's what we do. Okay. Micro-based treatments for diseases on plants. Okay. And typically this is on cannabis, this is the powdery mildew on cannabis. Yeah. Powdery mildew is a huge problem with cannabis. Actually, cannabis has massive issues with pests generally. Mostly because of the way it's being grown now. It's gone from being a plant that was kind of grown under wraps, and now we have these huge farms, very dense grows, throwing lots of chemicals at them to try and eliminate insects, fungal pathogens like powdery mildew. So it's getting harder to do that well. And then how do you guys help with that process? Well, I've been an environmental microbiologist for around 16 years. So we're aware that plants recruit microbes in the wild to help fight disease on their behalf. So kind of what we've done is copied that. We've spent a lot of time going through cannabis, soil biomes, isolating microbes that will fight these diseases for the plants. And then all we do is grow them up, give them back to the plants. And so how do you identify which microbes help the plants fight off? A painstaking process. We do a lot of screening. I'm a classically trained microbiologist, and I like having my hands on the microbes. So rather than go at them with molecular techniques, we first find the pathogen, and then we screen our collection of microbes to see if they will interact with the pathogen. And then which pathogens do you start with? We started doing this with fungal pathogens like botrytis and powdery mildew, because I know what to do with them. I know where I am with the fungus. And at IndieBio, we've kind of been working on the proof of concept for that treatment, and now we're moving on to insects. And eventually we'll end up with viruses. Viruses are becoming a bit of a problem with cannabis grows as well. Okay. And then you take the pathogen, and then how do you pick which microbes you think are going to work to combat it? We actually work with groups of microbes, formulations of microbes, and this is why they're so customizable. Because say you have a strain of ojikush that's growing in a greenhouse in a tub, two tubs down, the microbiome of that plant might be completely different. So we'd need to custom those microbes for each strain. It has general properties too, but that's the best way to do it really well. And what we want are microbes that will antagonize the disease. So either directly parasitize the pathogen or produce metabolites that will inhibit the growth of the pathogen. But we also need microbes that are able to grow on a leaf, or stick to a leaf, and stay around for long enough to actually do something with the disease. And there are a variety of characteristics that we select for, and that's how we make these potions. Okay. And the microbe has to paralyze the pathogen or inhibit it from further up. These are tough things. Yeah. It has to do something useful. Yeah. And stick to a leaf. It's things like that. Yeah. And then the farmers need to potentially apply this more than once. That's highly dependent on the pathogen and the plant as well. So for example, we're from New Mexico. And in New Mexico, we're really good at growing cannabis, but we haven't been doing it for as long as, say, California or Colorado. So with pathogens, we see a lot more diversity, but they're pretty easy to treat. And in comparison, when you come to somewhere like California, what we're seeing is lower levels of diversity, but the pathogens are much, much more resistant to chemical pesticides and existing biological pesticides. So it depends on the disease and where you're treating the disease. And it also depends on the plant. There's a huge range of cannabis plants that are being grown commercially at the moment. Some of these plants are very robust. Some of them are really, really wimpy. And we'll just pick up any infection that's floating around. So we can tailor our solutions and our strategies, depending on all of those factors. But our goal is, is to pre-treat plants so that they never develop a problem in the first place. Okay. Okay. Pre-treat them so they don't develop in the first place. And then this is tough, because like you said, there's so many different environmental factors that go into this. So if you take like the elevation of an area or the natural soil composition of an area, which microbes are actually there in the first place. I mean, all these things are really, yeah, really hard to figure out. So actually, do you have something that you think can work to pre-treat most cannabis that is growing? We actually have an approach based on geographical region. Okay. So like I just explained, you know, we're going to see differences in pathogen populations. And this counts for fungi. This counts for insects, viruses, whatever, depending on where you are. So in Arizona, you're going to see a different type of pathogen versus Northern California and then Florida. So we have put together formulations, collections of microbes that do a pretty good job in these sort of localized spots. And you want to then see if your collection of microbes can combat both the mildew as well as insects and viruses, all of those things. Yeah. We're really, we're really aiming for integrated pest management here. Completely. Pest management. Eliminate the need to throw those kind of gnarly chemicals at the plants. And then if I am to, to consume the cannabis afterward, after its 11 biomics has done it the pre-treatment process even before the cannabis has grown, then am I okay then? Can we do, like where does 11 biomics sit with the difference between having microbes of your company be with the plants versus any of the originally pesticides that are being used in comparison for health-wise and that type of stuff? Well, I mean, the obvious answer to that is that all of the microbes that we give to the plants have come from the plants themselves. So whenever we're adding something, it's because we've been able to isolate that microbe from the plant to begin with. So what we're just doing is giving these specific microbes a nudge so that the plant can use them when it needs to use them. And then they go back down to background levels. And if you compare that to, so one of the popular methods for dealing with fungal disease in cannabis growers is dipping in hydrogen peroxide. So in contrast, it's, you know, we're not really presenting much of an issue, but at the moment you'll see things like hydrogen peroxide. A lot of people are using sulfur bombs. And again, even biological pesticides, they're generic strains of bacteria. So they could have come from a tomato plant. They could have come from, you know, a swamp. You're going and taking these micro-compositions from the actual cannabis plants themselves. Okay. And then you're kind of like giving the, you're boosting their ability to combat the sex viruses. It's kind of like the best analogy I can come up with is, you know, when somebody starts drinking kombucha or something like that to try and shore up their own defenses or encourage the development of a healthy microbiome. It's kind of like that, but we're doing it in a much more direct way. It mimics a style of grow that some cannabis growers will do called regenerative grow, which is when they will grow a crop, then they will leave the land to settle for a while, let some natural processes take place, get some worms in there. So everything kind of builds up its own natural defenses. And we're just kind of condensing that into a much shorter time frame. And then after cannabis, there's likely lots of farmers that would like you to find certain things from tomatoes or from corn and be able to leverage those microbes that are native to those plants to combat insects and viruses and fungi, right? Is this kind of the trajectory that you're looking to go up? Yeah, we started working with cannabis and hemp because we had existing ties to the industry in New Mexico. My business partner is a therapist by training, so he's worked a lot with medical marijuana and folks who are dealing with addiction and things like that. So that's how we started with cannabis and hemp. But yeah, really, you know, I would love to be in a position to say that one day we could see the end of chemical pesticides. And that's a really big problem now with asals and food security and public health. At some point, we're going to have to start thinking very, very carefully about what we're going to do when we run out of these chemicals. Yeah, and the way full circling, so then you're going to take from corn or tomato or wherever that you're going to take these native microbes from them and you're going to bring them into the lab to test against the pathogens. And that's going to be your process for figuring out which ones you can then put back as microbes and boost those on those plants to combat the insects. Cool, that's a great cycle. It's so much fun. The last four months at Indie Buyer has been huge amount of fun for me. I've just been in the lab elbow deep in soil tinkering around. It's been great. Nice. And then the commercialization of this as you're looking to get into within cannabis farms as soon as possible. Where are you at? How close are you at? Yeah, we actually have collaborators already who really love what we're doing and are really excited. So we're working with folks in New Mexico at the moment. We are also hoping to, once we've developed our more general line of products that I just mentioned, to become registered as a product for treating hemp. Hemp is a new crop. It doesn't have that much regulation in the field at the moment. So that's the next stage. And once we have that under our belt, we can start thinking about other crops too. And you're taking current farmers on board? Yes, absolutely. For a little bit. Awesome. Good. Awesome, Steve. Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. Everyone, thanks for watching. We'd love for you to give us your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Also, check out the links below to 11Biomics. If you guys want to get signed up, get signed up and reach out. Also, support the artist entrepreneurs, the different scientists in your communities. Support them. Help them grow. Help simulation, our show grow as well. Do check out any bios, links in the bio below as well. And go and build the future. Everyone manifest those dreams into the world. We love you so much. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.