 Welcome to Reader Syndicate 3.0, the next evolution of the look into counterculture that is canna. My name is Matthew, owner of Riot Seeds, and this started as a one-man mission for strain history and breeding science. Over time, it's evolved into something bigger, better, and more of a team effort. We will be joined by members of the Canna Luminati and other friends throughout the seasons to hear their takes on grow techniques, breeding science, strain history, and more. Our mission is to combat the narrative that corporate cannabis and seed posters are obfuscating for their own financial benefit. Welcome to the Underground. We are The Syndicate. Resume where our conversation started. Thank you. I'll keep going on some of the current work, if that's okay, because I've got something to ask you about. Yeah, the NiCAP Exotic of Season 2, we just did a run in the Arizona facility. It was one of the first actual seed pop runs that we did. We selected a really beautiful plant from that, so super excited for her. And then I have her in new pollinations. The other ones that are notable that I've done recently is the Blue Tint, which is the Blue Dream Dilemma Cushman. It's just more blueberry. It's less haze, less musk. There's a little bit of it in there, but it really goes back to the true blueberry flavor. And then the Lemon Cushman just kind of compacted things a little bit, made it tighter and gives a little more bling. There's a nice color element to it as well. And the ones I like the best, I'm finding the Blue Berry Up Front and then a really nice lemon on the exhale. That's kind of like trick cereal. You ever get the lemon on trick cereal? Yep. You can find that in Irene and all kinds of stuff like that too. Yeah. I love that. I've experienced it before and I love that. When they're growing, there's a little bubblegum in it, but it kind of goes away after the cure. I don't taste it. But I really, really, really enjoy smoking that. And then the Onion Bajie, which is the Chem 4 Sunshine Day Dream, crossed the Lemon Cushman. That is the nastiest thing that I have smelled in so long. It's cheesier than cheese. There was a cut in Oregon called the Silver. Have you guys ever had that one? No. It was a haze. They call it Super Silver also, or no, they call it Silver Surfer also. That sounds familiar though. That really does. Yeah. So I had a little sample, Green Bodhi shared a little sample with me and it was like, I remember in the 90s in Cleveland getting this bag of weed. I thought it smelled like sewage fruit. That's what I called it. It was like puke and fruitiness at the end of it. It was so disgusting. I remember having it under my seat of my car, not taking it in my house, coming back into my car later, and the whole car fucking stunk. It was the most righteous shit ever. I never saw it before or after. I got it one time. And then when Green Bodhi gifted me some of the flour from the Silver Surfer, I was like, that's it. It's fucking that. And one of the other dudes on the Discord knows about the Silver. He's been asking about it. I've never been able to get a cut of it, but the Onion Bajie really mimics it. It is like white cheddar popcorn, onions, body odor, and there's just a touch of bubble gum when it's growing. Like Northern Lighty kind of bubble gum in the background. It's the stinkiest thing. It tests really high, which I don't generally care about, but I do have a job to do and that's part of the job. It does test really high. It's a bell ringer for me. It's very heady. It smokes like a haze, like a really strong haze, but it's just fucking phenomenal. So that's the one I'm reversing right now. And I'm going to hit all my new cuts with that. I'm going to hit a lot of the current stuff I have in this stable. I got a lot of just old OGs and, you know, chem and kush varieties, a lot of new stuff as well. I think it will blend really well with both the kind of heady hazes and the OGs and the danker stuff. Just that flavor profile I think is going to really lend itself to some interesting crosses. So I just finished the reversal of that. I'm shedding pollen now. We're probably, I don't know, seven weeks from seed maturation and then we'll do all the phenyl hunts on site out there in Arizona. So that'll be a cool one. And then, God, well, it's my smoke. And I found, so I used the night piff, which I'd mentioned earlier, and I crossed that into the purple cast as well. And we did a run of about 50 in the facility. And we found one that is just completely unlike all the others, extremely dense and super tight. And one of the KPIs for THC and cannabinoid content is the density, which I just found that out from Mark Lewis recently. Oh, really? Yeah. So, so you can sort of look at density and have a correlation, at least with cannabinoid content. And this, this rang true for this one too. Every other plant that I tested from this cross was like, you know, lower mid 20s, kind of like a 22-24. And this thing hit 29. Smokes like a haze. Like the effect again is different, but the flavors there, it's very addicting. The mango is stripped away entirely. It's like old books and leaves the incense trade in the air when it burns. That one is called the taser. And that's kind of an homage to my buddy, who is the family that gave me the purple cast in the first place. It's kind of an homage to him and a little, a little thank you back, but super excited about that one as well. And then I did do some land race work. I got some purple Transky from a dude that used to be in the group. I remember. Yeah. He gave me some purple Transky. I did some, I did pretty decent size hunt with that actually in my backyard. Did you find anything cool in there? I did. Yeah. Yeah. So I did, I did that. And then I was running, I was running some blue Panama that was gifted to me from some friends who I was working with at the time that just got rid of all their males. And I found some really nice, like very, very haze like stuff in the blue Panama that I really enjoyed. And so I crossed that with the, I called it, the selection I made for the purple Transky was what I call purple South African or PSA. And it was like, it's like grape syrup, a super black, the plant stays green, but the bud goes really, really dark. And I use that, you know, just a one off cross. When I did the land race check, I was looking for THCV stuff. And so I just did like a solo cup run, you know, so in January, I put all these plants that were like, you know, this high in solo cups outside. Let them all go to flower. They all finished like this high with one megabud on the whole thing. And, and did selections from there, just reveged right out of the solo cup, which was super easy. I was able to do like basically 500 plants in like, I don't know, an eight by eight area. I had many times a day with a hand can. Mike, my son was young at the time he was helping me out just watering them all the time. I'm just literally like, need to be watered constantly. And a cool thing I learned from that is if you do that and you do a pollination in the early spring, you can actually let everything reveged. The seeds will finish and then you can take cuts off the plant again. Yep. I love doing that. That was just an unrealized technique, but it's great. Yeah. I mean, that was an easy way to hit numbers, grow really small plants contained to some degree. And then I could pollinate everything and then still get the cut off the clone of the best one at the end of the day. Yeah. Seeds from it. So that was a good learning experience there. But so recently in the facility I have, I crossed the blue Panama into the purple South African and have run the seeds from that and found some really interesting stuff actually. They're super sensitive though to the high PPFD and high EC that we run in the facility just being like an indoor grow. So it's going to need some taming, but it is like magenta. The whole bud turns super dark and it smelled like foot cheese. It was like toe jam. It was disgusting, but it was like disgusting in the best possible way. So I'm, I'm, the onion Baji is going to hit that land race genetic also, which should just be a fucking disgusting stinkfest. So I'm excited for that. But the land race work is honestly the interesting thing I think is my, my ideas early on were that. You know, hermaphrodites are sort of like a modern cannabis problem. You know, your sex issues are due to bad breeding practices and people using bag seed and blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the land race stuff that I've run, I found more herms and land race consistently than I have in just general modern cannabis strains. Yeah. Which I thought was really interesting because it just kind of, you know, took that idea and smashed it for me. Yeah. They're a little finicky. And definitely lower, lower cannabinoid content. It's hard to find something from the land race. That's really, really good. I did run the black African magic recently. That was pretty interesting. Where did you find something that someone labeled that? So Cora genetics has some Cora. Yep. Cora. I can send you a link. I grew them out. I got a bunch of pictures. They were really interesting. Definitely land racy, tighter in some of them, some dark colors, kind of a cherry lutein smell on the best of them. The rest of them were very hay-like and not much to speak about. The labs in Arizona aren't quite sophisticated enough to really pick up on some of the minor cannabinoids. And so we were looking for THCV in those and didn't pick any up, but that doesn't mean that it didn't have it. It's just, I don't think the labs are actually capable of testing for it out here quite yet. Yeah. So I did run those recently as well. And since then, honestly, I'm just going back to my regular work because I think there's more value. Do you know the history behind the African black magic, the mythology and whatnot? Yeah. Yeah. I've read about it a little bit. And obviously when those are passed to me, super skeptical and not going to call anybody anything. No, no. It's not even that. Realistically, the first time I ever saw it referenced was DJ Short's book. Yeah. He described it as some weed he was brought that looked like crumbled pieces of shit, you know, like brown, but had thick, thick, heavy, dark smoke and fucked him up like nothing ever. And I think with modern eyes reading that, like knowledge, you would realize that's just African cob, like Malawi cob, you know. Yeah, right. So I think really it's the African black magic really is a process of how it's dried and cured as opposed to as straight. Gotcha. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the origin of these are outside of what he told me. It sounds interesting though. I like Africans. Yeah. I'll send you some. I still have some. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. It was interesting. I mean, I like the Malawi a lot. I really like the South African stuff that I grew from Rasta. I enjoyed all that. I enjoy the smoke of all this stuff. It's just, I find that if I'm smoking a lot of Landry stuff, I'll end up finishing and capping off with something modern to sort of get that effect back. Yeah. I mean, I definitely know what you mean. I think also in modern times and newer growers, the idea of land races sounds really exotic and unique and cool. See something like that isn't in the modern cannabis world, but like in theory or that's in theory, but in practice, like it takes big pops. A lot of it's going to smell like hay, not be applicable to indoor grows, not finishing any time that they're comfortable with. There's so much that goes to it, but it's great seeing people take hold of it. They know what they're getting into and really giving these things a shot, seeing what's in there and be willing to go through the hard work and big pops to find it. I admire that. Yeah. I think it's restrictive for big pops because of those aforementioned reasons. I think I can get away with big pops with the more modern stuff that's going to test well because I can always homogenize into some pre-rolls or make some extract or whatever where the Landry stuff, I'm probably not going to get more than one pass on that. Yep. The selection I made from these, I'm going to grow out. We just took a clone run of it today actually. So I'm going to continue down that line and see what's there. I don't think it's going to be a high test or anything, but it is the truth of exotic. It is exotic and this is really unique and the smell of it is not like anything that you smell in modern cannabis generally. So it'll be interesting to see if I can make it work at all. Yeah. I think you can. With enough time, enough dedication, you absolutely can. I mean, a lot of it's got to me. You know, it's future breeding work. It's like something I want to add in to get something novel out and sometimes it's okay if the purpose of a plant is just a building block. Absolutely. Yeah. So for you, yeah, very much a means in more than the end in itself, at least at the moment, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's part of the enjoyment that keeps me going. You know, it's part of a part of the learning experience is part of the exploration. It's part of the discovery of what's interesting about being in the cannabis industry. So I'll keep growing them and keep trying to source them. Of course, that dude also gave me some Chinese seeds that are there as big as like BBs. They're the biggest seeds that I've ever seen in my life are massive. They're like, it's crazy. That was cool though. Yeah. He's got an extensive land race collection. He did a lot of work in Switzerland. So I think he had a lot of connections through there and it did a lot of work in Africa too. So he's got some interesting connections. He's a really interesting guy. He's accessible. He's definitely an OG and knows his shit. So shout out Core of Genetics. I definitely recommend. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They have some cool shit, man. Yeah. He's a cool guy. I think they were even the ones that were doing like Viking and stuff like that, like redoing, bringing back some really obscure rare shit. I think it's great, man. Yeah. That's his whole thing is obscure and rare, which I appreciate. Is that bald man Lala running it? No. His name's Hardy. Okay. I'm not familiar. I knew there was like Lala in the collective and Monkey and a few others that I knew, but I'm not familiar with that dude. I'm not familiar with who's in his circle or isn't. I've crossed with him a couple of times and we were kind of in similar circles and he was generous enough to give me with some stuff. That's cool, man. And likewise, I'll do the same back to him till the end of time because I appreciate that about the community. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. And yeah, thanks so much for telling us about those projects. Yeah. Was there any more recent work you wanted to highlight? Because otherwise I wanted to get into like maybe a broader discussion on the industry and your thoughts on certain things. Also, I've been doing this interesting. I mean, it's I'm running a line now called red bananas, which is an offshoot and has some more modern stuff in it, but keeping true with the banana line. Like the red bananas a lot. It's a great extract plant as well. I don't know. Always pop a new season. It's always the next thing. You know, that's the thing is that like as much as I complain about the fickle nature of the of the like the retail consumer that we're always selling to. It's like, I'm the same way. And so as soon as one project's done, it's kind of on to the next, but I'm really excited now to be to be pollinating again, because I've had a hiatus on that for a while. So that's really the focus will be on really collecting some better hard data on reversal specifically. And I am offering a DIY reversal kit nowadays. So something really simple just to let people make it at home and figure that out. What I want to do to be able to support that a little bit more is specific like ML dosages, you know, for how much you're going to need to get a successful reversal and what types of plans do better with this or that. What's the minimum? So helpful. Apply, you know, Maybe you should talk to find my dad. Yeah. Everybody's getting into the spray market and I'm trying to get out. I mean, I'm not really getting it. You know what I've done is a lot of times when people when people support I've, I've offered it as a freebie. Like, I'll give you a freebie because I have a shitload of it. So it's more just that and I don't know. I think it's like in the same way that as a as a director of cultivation, I have to be very open and supportive of home growers, you know, which for sure. Most people who are in that who are in that position, they want to sell them all their weed and that's not really what it's really about for me. So in the same way that I want to support home growers, I want to support other breeders too. I don't really have any secrets that I don't also share any tech I share. And so the same thing with if you need access to those types of chemicals to be able to do a reversal or information on how to do it. I'm pretty much an open book. So it's just a it's not really a business venture by any means. It's just something else that sharing to share. Yeah. It's really cool. It is like one of those gate kept type things for a long time. I remember even back on overgrown huge. It was hard to get people's like data, what they were actually putting in their spray to reverse like people all smoking mirrors and nowadays you could find the info really easy. And it's just a little bit of like, especially for me because I wasn't a chemist like I did horrible in chemistry and high school. It was just about doing it trying it, not being scared to fail. You know, and I think that's the biggest thing to overcome with reverses not being scared to fail. There's going to be failure. Success. Yeah. I learned a lot from from doing so many so many at a time. Yeah. The time when I was pumping out the seeds, it was like, I would have a general population area that I would do the STS sprays and also the seed maturation that was just always on a 1212 time. And then I will have four additional chambers off to the side. So as soon as that group of plants that was going to be a donor was ready to reverse, they'd go in the tent and the plants that were going to be met by them would be in the tent with them. They'd go through their pollination phase. Then I'd pull, I'd call the males or call the reverse and pull everything else into the general population area and just let everything mature there and then refill the tent and keep doing that. So I had four of those at a time and it was just going perpetual seed making, seed making, seed making. So learned a lot about in a quick amount of time about how much to apply, when to apply, how far in advance to your flower date. Can you start to apply to get those numbers up in the plant? Just some interesting different techniques and things like that. So, and again, just to reiterate too, I learned more about breeding from auto flowers than anything else by far. Absolutely. Because there's like, well, one, there's a can't miss scenario. The selection is easy, right? Because if you just keep it on 16 hours and it flowers, you have an auto flower. If it doesn't, you don't have the trait. So selections on that end are really easy because you can just do a wide swathing spray and anything that doesn't reverse isn't going to go into flower and will never create pollen to hit anything. So it's like, that's a lot of learnings in auto flowers. And even more so on recessive traits and the heritability of those. Absolutely. Which is really important today for everyone who's seeking the roadkill skunk. If it is a recessive trait, you cannot find it in an F1. You're going to have to go down your line and you're going to have to do some fucking work and put in some effort if you want to try to find that. So anyone selling F1Cs as like a roadkill skunk, I think that's if it's recessive and it's looking like it is. I think it is. I do think it is. All right. So anyways, enough about auto flowers. Yeah, you know, a lot of times people will ask me like in different interviews, like what I think about auto flowers. And that's the first thing that I'll say is like, for learning breeding and learning like heritability traits, because it's visual, you can see it, you can act on it. And a lot of times some of these things like the auto flowering dwarf type plants, they're so fast to go through the generations. You can go through successive generations really fast. Yeah. You can learn a lot by doing it. I think that's like for people with small spaces that don't have a lot of money for electricity and all this other stuff that they really want to learn how to breed and breed correctly. And what goes into that, they're perfect for it. It's one of the best teachers you can get. It's one of the only aspects of our industry that actually is true breeding. Yeah. When you look at gatekeeping and crossing one to another, it's like, this is actually you actually have to do work. And a lot of the work's already been done for you because we already have auto flower stock to choose from. But if you want to create an auto flower from a photo period and auto across, you got to do a lot of work. Yep. It's a lot. And it is super interesting and it can be also wasteful if you're making them at scale because when I was making auto flowers. I would only select the best of the best plants that got pollinated to keep the seed from. Everything else was bird food. So I would create, I don't know, a million seeds and keep maybe 120,000 or something like that. Because everything else was just like, traits I didn't want, plants I didn't want. I didn't want the, it's open paw. It's true open paw. I don't want that to continue into the next generation. So I leave those seeds behind and that becomes bird food and everything else carry on to the next one. And then keep doing that in a very linear sense, which is generally lost in the cannabis world as far as like. Absolutely. Absolutely is. People don't like to walk from seeds that they could possibly sell. Well, yeah, I mean, that's, yeah. And that's the thing too is the, like the old adage who cares, you know what I mean? Like if, if people are buying it and it's not broken and they want your F ones and they want your seeds and you don't have to do any actual breeding work to have a viable business or a viable brand or whatever, then who cares? Why even do it? You know, no value. There's no value added in that if you're already selling a show of seeds. Oh, one thing that came to mind. Oh, sorry, Matt. It was going to change the subject though. So if you had anything. Okay. One thing I wasn't quite clear on how much Femwork do you do relative to regular work? I do all Femwork now. I haven't done any regular work in a couple of years and mostly because of the facility I was working at, there were no male plants. They didn't want male plants. There was no need for male plants where we were breeding specifically and seed making specifically to be able to grow multiple acres outside from seed. And if you had male plants in there, then the value would be instantly lost because you'd have to do so much separation of the males or culling. And if they ever made it out to the crop, holy shit. Yeah. So all Femwork from there, you know, doing some doing some coursework at the at the UC Davis seed biotech really opened up my eyes of just the value of Femwork. All breeding lines and especially with cannabis because, you know, you only have value in the female flower. And if you know the traits of the female flower, it's much easier to predict the heritability and predict what you're going to get out. Targeted direct breeding at a fast rate. Yeah. So I've honestly gone completely the other direction and will probably continue Femwork for the rest of my life and I don't see the value for me in doing regular breeding today. I think there's a novel aspect that people want to attach to it. Like I'm going to get something different. But again, it's the reality of breeding regular work is that you need to grow out the progeny to know which male lesbians use. And if you're not doing multiples, if you don't have space for that, first of all, which is extremely restrictive, then you're there's no purpose at all. And if you're not going to actually do that, what's the goal? If the goal is just to get a great cut out or a clone only out, then why not just do Fem anyway? I agree. And the market realistically too, regular seed market has completely plummeted in the U.S. where it used to be vice versa. Like the Fem market was a really hard push when I was doing it real big. And regular seeds were everything and there were all these ideas that, you know, Fem seeds were subpar. You would get subpar weed. They would all be herms. They would all, you know. And I don't think that those are necessarily as attached as they used to be. And it seems to be a much bigger demand for Fems in the market now. Yeah. Because so many people are doing it and people are doing big hunts, you know. You know, this is a divergent a little bit, but the biggest loss of our community recently is the genetic availability going to these massive, you know, corporations and MSOs. Absolutely. You know, I'm a grower for an MSO myself. It's not like a big MSO. It's not like a publicly traded one. It's not massive. So there is a startup and grassroots aspect to it that I can really cling on to and enjoy about what I'm doing now. But when the price of pounds fell so low, everybody started selling their genetics off. And, you know, if you got loose grips, loose grips sink ships, man. It's like the whole industry is tanking because of the availability of everything is everywhere. And so with that, though, I think a lot of those MSOs and larger outfits, they do see the value in Fem seed and being able to run large numbers and make selections for themselves. And I've sold a lot of them seeds. I know what they're doing. Yeah. You know, that's what they're doing. And they'll pull out a, you know, an S one of something and call it their cut of the same thing, which. Oh, sure. Spank them a little bit for that is so annoying. It is annoying. Yeah. But, you know, the other reality that we have today is that we have people that work in marketing divisions who have never seen a plan to touch the plan or had anything to do with it. No idea of the history and the respect and credit that should be given ahead of our own, you know, pumping ourselves up sort of thing. You know, I heard about in Canada and this is the first time it is like maybe a year and a half ago when I first heard about this and didn't realize it. In Canada, the way the MSOs operate, or I shouldn't say MSO is multi-territorial. I don't know what they're called over there, but like it's the buyers work for the government and they're not people who smoke or have any knowledge about cannabis, but they're the ones choosing which strains get grown in their country. Wow. It blows my fucking mind. That's crazy. Essentially, it's determining what clones get saved and held over time. Wow. And it's people that have nothing to do with cannabis doing that because like we saw in the states, as things, as rain's tightened and as cookies and gelato and cherv became more in demand, there became a point where people that were keeping these moms rooms had to make that conscious decision, do I keep spending money on electricity and time and energy and soil, medium feed, all that to keep these moms alive that nobody's buying the bud for anymore? And I don't see it, you know, like that really happened. And that's that led to a great drop in genetic diversity. Yeah. I mean, and then you have people that are non-cannabis people in charge of whole countries. Yeah. I mean, that, I guess, you know, there's no risk anymore, so it's just a job at this point. Yeah. Right. So it is what it is. We got all kind of live with the times and do our best to lightly educate or pass on the knowledge that's important, pass on the understanding that there needs to be some credit given to the trailblazers who literally gave up their freedom in life for us to even be in this position. But that's probably a fool's errand, honestly. And that's what we try to do. And it is a fool's errand. You have to like self-flagellation a lot to be doing that. I'm telling you. Yeah. I think it's the good fight, though, man. You guys got to keep it going. It's something I think it's just stubborn, essentially. Good. I respect that too. Yeah. Stubborn and ego is what everybody would say. I've got, I've got one of those questions from Pico right now, since we're kind of in the broader, you know, broader reflections, I guess, on the industry. What are your thoughts on the modern gene pool? I'm trying to diversify it as much as possible. It's a little depressing because it's not my flavor, I guess, but in my fickle nature, my flavor today is not my flavor tomorrow anyway. So I don't know. I can appreciate, I can appreciate the new, the new guard of things, but I always just go back to, there's got to be something interesting. And different is interesting. You know, the same is not interesting. And that's, that's where I lose interest really quickly. And it's the same thing if I go back to my history, if I just growing all OG all the time is extremely boring. Now I would fucking kill to have that OG cut and be growing that just for my personal smoke, even because it was fucking killer. And I loved it. And I still love it. And I don't have it anymore. Let's talk about that in the last several episodes. I get hit up daily by other readers like, Hey, did you keep any OG cuts? Like it happened. Yeah. And I've got so many now in the stable, but none of them are hitting the button the way I want. And, and honestly, some of what we're doing in the indoor grows, I think has taken away from that flavor profile, like being as true as it is. I'm sure the viroid and, you know, those sorts of things are playing a role in a lot of this and just general pathogen in the modern gene pool. So what I'm trying to do with our, with our operation is really establish a clean plant program, which is mostly starting from seed, you know, and not intermingling those with cuts that might come in from whoever or where. And for me, that's the only way out from the viroid or from other pathogen issues is just to start from seed, keep really clean plants and, and always have something unique. And that really serves our purposes of at the end of the day, we're trying to do a cell weed too. And having unique things in the market is always going to help because at the end of the day, we are competing against everyone that has the same list of clones essentially. And, you know, it just becomes milk toast. And then what you have is buyers that are just price shopping, because it's all the same. So if it's got the name and nobody can see it or smell it before they smoke it anyway, then they're just price shopping for who's going to, who's about to go out of business. Who's going to give me the cheapest price to liquidate their, you know, I'm going to cherry gelato runs or whatever the fuck it is. So it's a little, I mean, as much as I say that I still see so many people doing good work, so many people putting out new interesting things. And so many people continuing to try to diversify the gene pool and try to do what I would consider the right thing for the plant and being good stewards of the plant. You know, by just continuing their own path and making and marching forward, you know, endlessly. So it's, it's all right. I think maybe it's better than it used to be. I don't know. It's hard to say man. There's like, there's more good weed today than I think there has been in the past. But that's also why the price is dropping down to nothing because there's everybody's growing it. I mean, what legality really did was it just took away the threshold of risk for anyone. And, and so even people who are doing it, you know, in the rainbow market or whatever the risk is 1000 times lower. I mean, Sonoma County, for instance, they, if we were completely illegal last year, doing things totally illegal, had no licensure whatsoever. It's like $100,000 a day fine. And if you were close enough, if you were close, you have 10 fucking acres. And if you were close enough to your harvest window and you got like a multimillion dollar crop, then that's fucking worth it. But if you were licensed and legal, you were facing. I think we had at one point we were facing 4x in fine. So we had 400 something thousand dollars in fines pending for because we had an emergency situation and had a storm and we had to harvest early and throw it in a building that we had. We did amassing hundreds of thousands of fines just because that building wasn't properly licensed. Oh my God. All of the weed was accounted for all of the metric tags were there all the weights were there. Everything was done to show that there was no like divergent. But we could have done it illegally made way more money and never had to pay any of the fucking taxes to do anything. So it's just like, I don't know, it's really like open this market up into an interesting way where no one has to risk it to, you know, to get gain out of it. And that's fucking everything up. Even worse than the gene pool thing, I think the players of today are the real stain on our industry. When I talk to people about legality, like, you know, a lot of people that aren't big in the cannabis world, like my family members, they're talking to me about it. And I try to explain it to them. And the way I explained it is it became more legal for rich people to grow and more safe for rich people to grow. I don't think there were a lot of advantages necessarily to the smaller growers though. I don't think any big advantage came for the home. Personally, maybe less. You're at night sleeping, which is it is a big thing in that sense. But you also have less fear because you're getting pushed out of the business. New hustle anyways, you know, that's the way I look at it for sure. Yeah, any other broad reflections on the industry. I mean, you kind of did touch on white labeling a little bit or an implication maybe did you want to talk to that more explicitly. Yeah, I mean, I'm opening, I'm open to talking about it. I mean, it's something that, you know, we've discussed as I think somewhat of a necessary thing, depending upon what an outfits needs are and how they're trying to grow their business and what their business model looks like. I've done white labeling for other brands. I don't have any issue with it. It was still something there's two sides to it. I think the viewpoint is that, oh, you're not doing your own work. You know, you're a bad breeder or whatever. But the reality is that it also opens up a lot of time for those individuals to work on other efforts that are going to continue their business along and not be bogged down by the actual production of the seed part of it. So it'd be like the same thing as hiring someone to run your grow in my opinion. Yeah, it's, you know, you're going to hire someone to come take loans for you. It's not going to affect the overall outcome. They're still doing all the direction. They're telling me what they want, how they want it. They're giving me plants, you know, nine times out of 10 to do the breeding work that they want. And, you know, I have skill and we'll travel. I'm happy to help. And that's what a lot of the, that's what the bank was about. You know what I mean? The bank was about essentially helping and aiding and it was about selling seeds also. So if that was the platform in order to sell seeds and it went through a white labeling thing, happy to do it. I think we see a lot of extractors and stuff, you know, they kind of work for life. I mean, it has become really, really difficult and expensive to sort of build a brand and get out there and start something new now. Because I'm going through it. I mean, my, you know, I've been working for a long time, but I haven't really self promoted. I'm not good at Instagram. I'm not a marketing guy by any means. I try to do good by that stuff. But, you know, the mass appeal has evaded me, I think in a lot of ways. And a lot of my work is more real than it is fluff. You know, it's actual good strong plants that are genetics that will yield for you and produce time and time again, have great vigor. And, you know, it's not just about taking a picture. It's more about serving the broader market. I think a lot of the hype shit is serving a very, very small amount of the market. In my state, it's probably 3%, 3 or 4% of the consumer who actually cares about like finding that hype strain or finding that 1 in a million or paying, you know, 80 bucks an eighth. It's like a tiny amount of the market. For what we're doing, it's like, we got to sell a lot of weed. And in order to do that, I need to have a broad scope of things that are available for everybody. So I went off on a tangent. I forget where I started with that with the white labeling thing. But yeah, I mean, it's a part of the market. You know, it's what happens in Europe to everyone. It's been happening for a long time and a lot don't realize that. Yeah, if you want to do business, there are brokerages, which will take your plants, make as many seeds as you want for you. They will package it for you. They will do all the legwork. They will do all the shipping. They will do everything and they'll pay you a percentage back. And that's the white labeling, you know, my white labeling was a little different. I would basically create and then offload to whomever and they could do their own everything with it after that and just provide quality seeds, you know, to them at a reasonable price. And for me, you know, that was still like seeds were worth about as much as gold. I can sell seeds for like a buck of seed. And that's going to net me about 30 grand, you know, gold is probably what 28 right now. I'm not watching the spot price, but it's like seeds are worth more than gold in that terminology. So if white labeling is the thing that helps to move the needle and allows something like the bank to take hold and be a driver for the greater good of many, then I see that as a solid move. Yeah, you know, I was, I did white labeling for a while for others. So I don't see like, I've never seen it as like a necessary like something evil or anything like that. When I was doing it was for friends and I fly out, do it, make it for them. I knew they were capable of doing it. It's just they didn't have the time to do it, you know, that way I knew they were also getting a good product and something. If I would put my name behind it, then I'm sure they would be stoked with it. Yeah. But it's also about dropping your ego really hard because sometimes you'll watch what you made be taken and put on a platform and the other people being like, Well, I've seen that too. I mean, you get there's a I'm not going to lie that there is like a slight what if or resentment when you see something that even if you sell for a seed and it costs you 15 cents to make it, you know, which is a great margin. And then they take that dollar seed and sell it for nine bucks a seed or 25 bucks to see which has happened. It's like, oh, I could have done a little I should market better because I could have made a lot more money doing this. But at the end of the day, happy to do the work and, you know, no skin off my teeth in the same way. And I considered a partnership more than just like a thing. But in the same way, you know, our outfit down down in Arizona is partnered up with Dr. Green thumb. So we're doing all the growing in the state of Arizona for their brand. And that's the same thing. You know, we're white labeling. They come and check up and make sure the quality is on point. But we do every aspect of the work outside of that and and try to support the relationship and support the brand in the way that they know that we will. And that's why we're partnered up in the first place. So in the same way, I think any sort of white labeling is still serving a great purpose. And and if you come at it with an honorable place and integrity and and the mission for both sides is really good stewardship of the plant and moving the thing forward, then I think it's all good. And I'm happy. I got a family to take care of. I'm happy to have a job in the industry, you know what I mean? And pay my bills like last year, I was on the precipice of taking a job totally outside of cannabis, which would have been the first time since 20 plus years that I would have been doing something outside of cannabis and was really seriously looking at that. And I went to the Emerald Cup last year and was like severely depressed at just the downturn that fall out. There was so few people there. The I mean the sizes of the booths had gone from like people had six booths next to each other and they were squished in and sharing one amongst like four other companies all of a sudden and it was like, oh my God, what happened to my industry. So I was like a fingernail away from taking a job that was all the way outside of the industry and hanging it up and really glad that I didn't because I was just saying it's more interesting to be in it. And again, I learn every day. So it's it's I believe it's my life's purpose. I believe I was I'm here to do this as silly as that may sound to some. I really feel like, you know, I've dedicated my life to it up to this point. I want to continue on that mission. And even to get to that point was was kind of sad, as far as the state of the industry goes. It's I mean, that's passion, right? It's passion. There is a reality to the economic side of white labeling right like it costs X amount. If you have a smaller op to make seeds, it's obviously going to cost more the smaller your op to make seeds. And in reality, a lot of these and why this whole thing even started in Spain and the Dutch went there was because of legal laws, legal loopholes kind of set it up and over time people realize, oh, it's actually cheaper to buy the seeds, repackage them and to make them ourselves get rid all the risk that comes with that. And there's a whole economic side to it that really drove the market that way. And almost made it a necessary part of it. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And that's why that's why the idea of the bank was more of a conduit to allow people here. I mean, I think that at one point with the bank with what we were doing and how many seeds we were not only creating but also testing and growing that I think we were probably one of the biggest seed producers in North America if not if not entirely we were there was a lot of work happening and it was it was awesome to be a part of that and hopefully we can revisit that at a later date. Is that Matt lagging out a little bit? Yeah, there was a little liar. You're good though. I'm good. Okay. Matt, I don't know when you're back. That's one minute one hour 3740 will say roughly. Got it. Got it. Okay. I wanted to offer a kind of paraphrase for this white labeling topic like, kind of like both of you are saying there's nothing inherently bad about white labeling like with any industry it comes with scale at a certain point. I suppose what's important here is between the, you know, for the customer it's about how these products being framed, I guess, and then between the producer and the seller it's about symmetry and some kind of fairness. And if those conditions are in place and white labeling is totally fine but sometimes those are not as long as you're paying for something and getting what you're told you're being paid you're paying for like this genetic says this and that shouldn't be an issue to me. That's that's the way it should go. You know, like, I haven't ever done it yet. You know, but I'm not saying I wouldn't do it because like the markets crashed markets absolutely crashed and and I don't always make them seeds anymore. You know, and there's absolute demand for it. But it's just one of those things you have to be able to present it with what it is like these genetics are what we say they are and transparency is key in that it not everybody does it that way but it's not necessarily on the onus of the people making the seeds to force other people to behave at the same time. Yeah, the key's been relationships. Absolutely. Like they know they can trust me to not only do a great job and carry it out, keep up communication, ensure that what I'm saying is it is. You know, but also help to serve their greater needs, whatever those may be and and vice versa and they're giving me, you know, an opportunity work and happy to do the work. You know, so at the end of the day, that's what it kind of comes down to for me. So yeah, no, there shouldn't be an issue. I don't think I think it's awesome that you get to go through these populations of all these different things. That's the only thing I when I think about this shit like that's the first thing I think best populations getting to see all these data points like Yeah, population equals speed. If you get the get to the best fast, the bigger the population you can, you can run the easier it's going to be defined doesn't mean you can't find great stuff out of 10 seed pops or two seed pops or 20 or whatever I mean I've I've done it always under the sun and I generally I always find something I like and find a keeper, you know, even if it's just compared against those comps that are in that group. But when I've done them in numbers of thousands, it becomes really apparent who the winners are for sure. And at least if you're looking at it from a phenotypic range like some of it was some of it was growing a huge amount just to get the data to know that if we want to do a real hunt. You know, we know what we're looking at. Reconnaissance reconnaissance pop. Yeah, exactly. I can be a sniper with my approach rather than take a very shotgun approach to it. This has been a really cool and yeah, very, very rich conversation. We're probably nearing the end of it. Now what are you saying? You said Rico that I was going to say Rico swap in your mind. Just ignore that. I was going to ask people like what's what's coming up next you know what's happening over this next to you. Well, so I'm doing I'm helping out a lot more with the actual marketing for this company so I'm going to be actually dropping off some stuff and doing all of my work is going to be dropping through the company I'm working for now which is the flower shop in Arizona. So they have three retail locations in Phoenix. I go to those the first Tuesday of every month and I'm in the store kind of debuting the new selections that we're doing and we're offering those as like shop drops so cool. Yeah, so that's that's a really cool thing. I'm trying to build that up and develop it more. Obviously, I'm not known there. They don't know my work from anybody else's and don't have like a name but trying to do it really in a grassroots way where I can connect with the retail consumer. In my spiel and also connect our cultivation facility with our retail locations. That's always been a key for me in the sales and the legal market is really being able to connect what we're trying to do in our ethos as cultivators with how it's being sold and presented on the retail level. So I'll be doing that next Tuesday actually because the new year we fell off and every Tuesday after that and with my phenohunts that I'm doing at the facility and when we find cool shit. So we we debuted in the shop drops we pepper it out in really small amounts so that it's going to sell out and not be widely available. And then generally if those strains are good enough we'll hit we'll go into like a more of a production mode with them and not only produce for our brand but the other brands that we grow for as well. So that's going to be happening I am doing more work on in the vein of the seed hub, trying to make more of those connections and bring more folks down to this facility to do the same kind of thing. As I said earlier in the conversation it's something I'm really like tiptoeing into everything I've done has been fairly calculated as far as like risk goes and and with having to serve a company outside of just myself and my own interests. You know I need to prove it and make sure it's working for them as well. And so that's where we're trying to build like kind of the first couple of relationships that we want to enter into agreements with and get into contract to have the seed production done down at our facility. Do the Fino hunts down there and then hopefully release the flower in this kind of like shop drop model that I'm trying to build up now. So that's been a lot of my focus and just continuing to not only make seed and hunt seed constantly and just learn just learn more about the plant as much as possible. The challenges that I have now is really more about management of people, which has been a real challenge you know we have 75 employees down at the spot on that. So yeah so just just that alone is a new challenge that I'm really trying to take on and and with that I'm trying to also there was a guy I was working with before who sadly isn't with us anymore. His name is James. He didn't die or anything he just went to a different job. I was like oh I'll rest in peace. That's not really dire. No, no, no. He went to a different job but but what he had set up at the facility I'm at now was basically a leadership program for some of the younger folks who are coming up into the industry for the first time and having their first jobs and kind of teaching them on not only how to behave, not behave but you know how you can be a great leader and a great motivator and really build the passion that we have for this plant into some of the other people who are just stepping into these roles for the first time. But just how to be a great leader even if you're going to be outside of this industry and continue on. So that's that's a program that I'm actually focusing quite a bit of attention on right now. It's a it's a new challenge and it's kind of outside of the industry whilst or outside of the plant while still being, you know, very important in the industry. So that's a big focus. And then I'm really trying to do more education for the retail and bud tender consumer, not only about things like the provenance of plants the importance of lineage the importance of credit being given to those who came before us, but also more education around chemotypes, plant profiles, the terpenes specifically. I use crybabies sent kit as a great tool for education around really debunking what has become a problem as far as the word terpenes are used or used in our industry today. And and trying to you know the banana is a great example so having a banana strain where I can show them a terpene profile I can show them each individual terp and so you can smell it. And tell me when you see that or when you smell the banana, you know what I mean. And then I can bring out the esters that he has also in the kit and really show them these other things are also responsible for the things that we smell taste and just love about the plant. More education has always been the move and I'll continue that this year and then you know I really want to. I just want to continue to develop better relationships with my community members and folks in the industry. And I think too often, you know, we get really chippy and that's something we were talking about earlier. I think before we started about there's a competitive nature to the breeders in general. And and that's normal because we're it this is capitalism, you know, we're all kind of fighting for the same share. But the thing that always brought me to cannabis in the first place the thing I loved about it even more so than the effect that I always enjoyed and smoking and everything else was the camaraderie. And the fact that if I was at a random place as like a teenager and found another person who wanted to go outside and get high. It was like instant friend, you know, just like it is with the music. You're the same shit as me. And and that really if I boil everything about the plant down and the community or the, you know, the quote unquote community that we always talk about. That's what it's about. It's about sharing when I do something great when I create like something amazing that I'm proud of. I want to share it. It's not something that I can keep to myself because my pride of ownership over what I've done is really only understood when it's shared. And so absolutely. I don't know just continue with that and trying to be like a better overall person and community member in 2024. Now that we're at the beginning of the year, you know, I'm getting sappy with it. Yeah, your old New Year's resolution. I love it. I love it. I'm also I'm also in dry January. So that's my resolution. The rest of it is like betterment for myself and in a growth mindset always, you know, to just continue to develop not only the plant and our methodologies and our operations, but also myself as a person as a leader as a person who deals with cannabis and being a good representative for, you know, for the plant. Absolutely. It's really cool. You know, I think both you and Matt share that a lot that kind of community oriented spirit. And I think, you know, it makes sense like people. What make things meaningful? If you die alone in your cave with your special project, it's like, you know, I don't know. It's not the same. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that's something I shared with with our with our facility recently. It was really interesting. So we look at like the serving size of cannabis, call it an eighth, right? So I was just doing like the math on how much like material we put out in the last month, I think it was the month of November, and how many if we just take that a total amount of material, you know, get rid of extracts and all the other shit and trim whatever else. But we just look at like our serving sample sizes and eight, like the facility that I'm running, we put out 250,000 eighths. So it's like, we potentially touched 250,000 people with our work. You know, to me, like the revelation of that is so meaningful and so important that I have to serve this thing with my best intentions and and make sure that the experience that they're having because of my efforts and work is as good as it really can be and that I would put my stamp on it and stand behind it and smoke it with them. You know, so I think that that's an important, an important point as well as just how many people we can touch with this thing and I happen to be in a very large facility so it's a lot. And just to bring that back home for everybody else that works with us just like, you know, that that's a shared experience like our efforts every day for grueling at work is like it's a shared experience that what we're creating is something special. It's something someone's going to get benefit out of and what a great way to spend work you know doing something that's also good, doing beneficial to humanity for sure. One of my quotes that I've lived by recently or in the last 10 years or so is just do good and by doing well do well by doing good. That's it so it's like I want to have both the moral good and the I'm doing good to, you know, aspect of what I do so I just try to keep those kind of, you know, North stars in mind when making any decisions or just going through the day to day because they can get Monday and they can get, you can get better down you can get negative really easily. So to stay positive I just focus on that stuff and remember that I could be shoveling roadkill off the side of the road like I was when I was living in Ohio. Yeah, dude, the real roadkill. Literally I worked for the Ohio Department of Transportation. For some roadkill skunk bro. Yeah. They had it. Dude, they had it. Or lost it. That's where they lost it. Right. 1000. What's next? What do we got? I think that's us more or less. Well, thank you guys. Thank you so much for the time. I really even appreciate being considered for this and obviously love having conversations offline. It's really cool to do this. So just thank you guys so much for even giving me the opportunity. I'm glad we got time to sit down and bang it out. Is there any any plugs you want to do at the end anything thought you want to leave us with or projects that you want to talk about maybe shine some light on. I mean, there's nothing really new that I haven't covered already. You know, there's going to be a lot of new stuff coming this year. We're really hitting full swing with all our efforts as far as phenol hunting and seed production go so just stay tuned. You can always check out my Instagram at pico underscore brand. And you guys can see me on the discord or whatever like I said open book love to love to talk to people I try to respond to everybody who wants to interact with me I have my own discord to for people who just want information on the, you know the seeds that I offer and the strengths that they're growing and I always do freebies for them on there. So anytime I'm, you know, 420 normally people do a lot of sales and stuff instead of doing a sale on 420 I give something away. So yeah, I just want everybody to take away a positive message try to be good in 2024 to everybody else and, you know, remember we're all in this together even though we're fighting for market share it's like, you know, give a nug to a buddy. And I wanted to thank you too because you've helped participate in our Patreon packs and stuff like that with your genetics and people are growing them out and they're awesome. I highly appreciated you. Yeah, let's keep that up. Let's keep that up. I love doing it it's been awesome and I just to actually great connections in that to ironically, my brother works for one of the guys who's in that patron thing so. That's wild man. What. Yeah, isn't that isn't that weird. It's pretty funny and then he, yeah, I'll leave that for off air but yeah, yeah, yeah. Really interesting to small world everywhere and you never know who you're going to run into so be good but yeah let's let's keep that up I definitely joined the Patreon you're going to get some some awesome seats that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, echoing Matt thank you so much there's definitely been one of the you know coolest conversations we've had I reckon and say that to all the guys. Talking nerdy breeding stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You rank amongst the nerdiest, the very nerdiest. It's the best favorite. I'm going to get a t-shirt. I might get a little trouble with myself. Can you imagine having Patrick on with Dan? That would be interesting. Yeah, I guess we gotta. We'll see how busy you are but hopefully we'll get you back again. We can always make time guys. I mean the holidays were up and you know it's all that stuff but I'm always available for sure I really I'm appreciative and we'll always do anything I can do to help out in any way so definitely. I appreciate it. Love it dude, love it. Likewise. All right, you got anything? Nah man. I'm happy. All right. Then we have like we talked about we have our Patreon Discord go check that out if you want to join Pico's I think just hit him up on Instagram you could send him a invite link. Yep. That would do it. We have riotseeds.com where you can get our spray you can get seeds we just did the diesel drop with CSI Humboldt which is so fucking cool. It's what I've been waiting for for a long time. We've been working at it for a long time to bring it to fruition and now it's here. We have packed blue dream hybrids on there. Yeah, I think and then we have a Gurt by seeds if you're in Australia. Check out Gurt by seeds if you're in Europe, check out Riot Seed Co Europe. Oh, lifted seeds in California. If you're a lifted seeds carries a bunch of our guys stuff and I believe he has direct card sells and stuff to you which is very advantageous. So go check him out. And am I forgetting anyone now? I was going to say that Pico is on Instagram as Pico underscore brand. Correct. Yep. I believe so. I should probably know that. Yeah. I checked. Okay. Thank you. I got too many people out there. Dude, I had to differentiate. Right. To all of them. Yeah. And with that, I just hope everybody has a happy new year. I hope it's a lot more calm, a lot less chaos, a lot less humanity just destroying each other. Yeah, that's it, man. Focus on the love. It's hard. It's hard. It is. Negative is easy. I do it every single day. I'm a hater. So it's an active precipitate participation to be positive and focus on that love aspect. So everybody should try that. Absolutely. And with that, we'll see you next week. Thanks everyone. Cheers. Want to sit at the table with a syndicate? Check out our Patreon and our link tree or description below. Our merch site is officially live. We have all sorts of shirts, hoodies and goodies to sort you out and shipping is super fast. And most importantly, the quality is top notch. I've been saving old designs for years for this purpose, so please check it out syndicategear.com. We also have an underground syndicate discord where we get together and solve old strain history together daily. It's an amazing community of learning away from IG and it's an amazing resource for old catalogs and knowledge. We hope you join our union of breeders and growers. Come check it out.