 Breeder's Syndicate, where we explore the history of a clandestine scene through the eyes of the folks who lived it. I'm Matthew, owner of Riot Seeds. I'll occasionally be joined by my co-host, not-so-daught, breeder and grower from Mendocina. Welcome to the Underground. Welcome to Breeder's Syndicate. We're here today with Dr. Daniela Vergara. She received her bachelor's in microbiology from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, 2006, and her PhD in ecology, evolution, behavior, minor in genetics from Indiana University Bloomington. She is an emerging crop specialist at Cornell University and a research associate and lecturer at the university and a postdoc at Colorado in Boulder, starting 2013 in cannabis. Is that correct? Yeah, I started as a postdoc in CU Boulder in 2013, and then I became a research associate in 2018. But yes, I started researching cannabis in 2013 at CU Boulder. That's perfect. So I reached out to you because going through, looking at a lot of the science that's been done, whether it's by larger organizations that have worked with breeders and collected DNA and data, I've noticed that there is a big falling out or maybe a disconnect in communication between maybe some of the people that are more serious in the traditional cannabis market versus the academic cannabis world. And I feel like there's a big disconnect. So I reached out to you and I was like, hey, let's talk. I don't know that anybody's talking. You seem really super cool and you actually care. So I wanted to talk to you and I thought what better way to do it here and maybe record it and for posterity and see if we can get anywhere and what we can learn from each other. So thank you so much for showing up and sitting down and doing this. Most people wouldn't, it's not a big show yet. Oh, thank you. I appreciated and to be honest, I don't think that there is a disconnect between the academic world and the science academic cannabis world and the cannabis world in general. I think that academics are disconnected from the world period. Like I think that in general, there is a disconnect between what happens in academia and what happens in real life and what real life people get. So in general, not just in cannabis, but overall. So I think that you are totally spot on on what you just said. So one of the first things we talked about was how genetics work out, what we see, what we don't see. But I figured with our show, I wanted to define some of these terms that we're going to be using and who better to help me define them than someone that's working with the breeding program at Cornell. So we talk about phenotypes a lot in cannabis in generally using the term. And the way I learned the term was phenotypes are like the observable traits, the physical observable traits and genotypes are the genes that underlie those physical observable traits. Is that correct? Correct. So when we use the term phenotypes, we're referring to the observable traits. And so people understand there are genes that underline those observable traits, which are the actual genotypes. Am I pronouncing correctly? Is there anything I'm missing out though? So in general, a phenotype you can measure somehow. So a phenotype could be height that you can measure using a meter stick or weight or in cannabis is cannabinoids that you can measure using an HPLC or a GC machine. So a phenotype you can measure somehow with a tool. Yeah. And genes need a gene mapping tool of some sort or measuring tool. Or some sequence, right? You need to sequence for you to see the letters of the DNA in order to figure out the gene, right? So in general, the DNA has four letters. Yes. But and those four letters are repeated in the genome in different amounts, et cetera. You can quantify like there's a thing that you can quantify the number of Gs or Cs. It's G, C, A and T. So the number of GCs in your genomic content, you can quantify that, but yes. So you need, in order to figure out a gene, you need to sequence that gene. There's many different ways for you to be able to sequence that it's kind of like transcribe the gene in order to figure out the specific letters of the gene. But you can, it's a much more complicated process, like I can measure your height easily. And then if you are measuring the height or the number of leaves or the number of nodes of a plant, you can do that fairly easily. But in order for you to take the DNA out, so you need to do a DNA extraction and then you need to take the DNA extraction into a facility that sequence it for you. And so it's a much more complex methodology possible. You know, we do it, but yeah. So is this what you do at Cornell? Are you working at the gene level on the plants? No, at Cornell, I'm actually part of the extension. So I'm at Cornell Cooperative Extension. So I'm actually working with farmers and the cannabis industry in general and the hemp industry. So cannabis at all levels, right? So for mostly for grain and for fiber and for cannabinoids that are not THC because THC it's still federally regulated and as academic institutions, we cannot work with high THC, but we do work with other cannabinoids, which is kind of like a similar thing, right? What you do to enhance CBD, you do to enhance THC. So I do work with, I do go to facilities and to work with growers and breeders and yeah. So you're from Columbia. What was the attitude in Columbia like growing up for a young lady, you know, just an average young lady where you grew up? Was it positive? Was it negative? When I grew up, so I grew up during a very violent time. I think that Columbia has never not had a violent time, but I grew up during the narco time. And it was a very violent time. And yeah, so at that time, they were putting moms in discos and bars. And my hometown, Cali, Columbia was the hub of a big cartel, the Cali cartel. So it was, I mean, I remember my teenage years and very fondly and I had a lot of fun with friends and I would go out dancing, but I do remember my parents, my mom. My mom is kind of graphic with her language. So she would say things like, I don't care if you're with a guy, I just wanna know where you are because if there's a bomb, I wanna know where I'm gonna pick up the leftovers of my daughter. Wow. Yes. That's real, that's very real. Yeah, it was a little bit more descriptive. Yeah, I'm sure. More descriptive than what I just said. But yeah, and there were, I mean, I do have very graphic gruesome memories of what was ongoing in the country. So that was, I did grow up in a medium, high income household. My dad is a university professor. My mom is an attorney. They're both the retired types now, but I did grow up in a very intellectual type of family. We still talk politics on the table, which coming to the US was weird for me. I'm sure. Being able to like, why are you voting for that person? You know, like asking questions, you know, like just, right? Like not in a bad way, but just tell me what is that person offering that I should vote for that person? Sure. So especially talking about elections that are coming tomorrow. Yeah, it's very restrained here. It's like you have to be because you don't know who's leaning which way. And especially now the country is very divided, super divided. In Colombia as well, especially with the last president, whom I am kind of proud that guy got elected, Gustavo Petro. Not because I think he's perfect. Like I don't think any politician is perfect. I disagree with 99% of everything. I disagree with the choices I made this morning. Yeah, right, right. I am the most intolerant person in this world, you know, like five feet two of intolerance. But I do think that Petro offers a difference. He offers something that has never been in Colombia. You know, Colombia has always been an oligarchy. Colombia has always been a minority that has ruled the country. And then after particular presidents before, now the oligarchy is the owner of the cocaine exports, right? Like we have to be honest as Colombians about it, that coca is the biggest export in Colombia, right? That's the country's main export, yeah. Yes, right, yeah. It's emeralds and bananas and- Yeah, but realistically, we know where the majority of the money's coming from. Yeah. And we cannot just be, you know, like- Yeah. It's real. Yeah. Yeah, so with that in mind, you know, I think that Gustavo Petro comes with like, hey, the warring drugs have not worked. He gave a speech at the United Nations a month ago or so that I recommend for everyone. Like I almost cried because he said it out loud, like, hey, this hasn't worked and we need to change things and we need to try something new. I mean, we already know that the money that Americans have given us to stop the coca plantations that has only brought violence and it doesn't work. So let's try to do something new. So I think that we're something different. And I think that that was really important. And he is now looking to, I mean, medical marijuana has been legalized in Colombia and now they're looking for recreational marijuana. And to be honest, I think that all drugs, quote, unquote, should be legal. I mean, we still have a clear definition of what is a drug. Yeah. You know, chocolate is a drug. Coffee is a drug. Yeah. There's so many things that are drugs that are intoxicants that could be addicting and that even aren't, that aren't even necessarily affecting your central nervous system that could be addicting in other ways. You know what I mean? So yeah, that's not clearly defined. And I think people get that pleasure hit from all kinds of different things, you know? And they could drive all kinds of factors in their life that could be positive or negative. So it's really open-ended that the way they've left it. And I think anybody who's, especially politicians, any politician that's willing to look at the war on drugs, the negative effects it's had on everyone, the way it's driven Americans, like privatized prisons, everything, it's crazy. So yeah, I'm all for anybody pushing for just total abolishment of illegal, like the idea of illegal drugs, the idea of it. I completely agree. Now, I think that maybe you and I are being utopic. You know, like, I don't know. Probably. Yeah, probably. We know that Oregon, for example, has these laws that they legalized a bunch of different drugs. Portugal, right? As a country did as well. Colorado right now has in the ballot Silo Saiban. So it is happening in some places, but I do think that asking for total legalization, there are many big players that are benefiting from mass incarceration, from the wars in drugs. The wars in drugs have been very successful for some people. Yeah, sure. Military contracts galore. So, yeah. Yeah, so when you grew up, I assume because it was like Narko Wars, where you grew up, was the attitude of your parents like more down on cannabis, like you cannot, we do not wanna see you using cannabis, or were they more open-minded on it? So my parents have always been kind of the hippies of their families, in a way. Even though, again, my family has always been kind of in academia, and that stuff, my dad is a physics professor, and I grew up going to his university, studying music. I had music lessons there when I was a child. So I've always grown up in a university environment. Like I've never in my life ever left a university, could you believe that? That's crazy. It is crazy. I've just changed, you know, different university from different places in Colombia or in the US, but I've always been on a sort of campus. Wow. That is wild. I mean, to surround yourself with education like that, though, it's gotta be your passion to constantly learn. Yeah, but as I told you, I am an intolerant human being, and I have my big fights with academia every single day, and with bureaucracy every single day, and with, you know, like I have my big fights about, I don't believe in the education system. I think that it's, again, benefiting a tiny minority. I don't think that this thing that Biden is proposing about student loan, I think it should pass. Don't get me wrong, but I think that that is just a little band-aid, right? Oh, sure, sure. It's better than nothing, but it is not solving the problem. I think that all of these academic institutions, some more than others, and because I've been in the US, I've been in three now, I kind of, you know, know a little bit about them, and I have academic friends all over, so I kind of know how they work, but these academic institutions are profiting out of the most vulnerable side of the population, which are, you know, 20-year-olds. They are benefiting a minority of administrators who do not care about the education, and in general, I feel that professors, especially those in tenure track positions, are just there kind of like, go well, you know, what can we do, go well. Yeah, you see a lot of that with tenure, like in any sort of, like teaching profession, whether it's like elementary school, all the way to university, it's the same thing. Once they get that, it's just like, mm. Yeah, exactly. You got there and you're sitting down, no one can fire you. Yeah, it takes an act of God. Exactly, that is a good descriptor. It takes an act of God to fire a tenure track professor, and they can do despicable things, you know, like, Oh, sure. harassment, sexual harassment, and they're still in this tenure track job. And so anything can happen. They're not gonna fight for their students or few of them are gonna fight for the students. There's some, right? Like I cannot put all of these millions of people in the same bag, but in general, they don't fight for the students. They don't fight for changes. They don't fight for, you know, more funding towards benefiting their labs, they're just there and no one's gonna fire them and they have a secure pension, right? Yeah. So that's one of my fights with academia is kind of like this lethargic state of the tenure track professors. Yeah, I think that's a lot of people that are the money and my friends in academia, that's the one thing that they have the most trouble with, especially if they're vocal. You know, a lot of people will take it on the chin and just try to go with it and try to work within that system. But like my personality, I'm one of those personalities where like I have no filter. So it just comes out. So I don't know if I'm the last in that. And I see you're kind of similar. So I wonder how that goes for you. Well, so when I was in CU Boulder, I'm still at CU Boulder as a lecturer and as a researcher, but when I was there in Colorado, I was in Colorado for eight years, I was part of the union. I am a total union proponent. I feel that in a perfect world, you shouldn't have unions because people should not need to unionize against, right? Yeah, if people weren't greedy, you wouldn't need a union, but people are. Yeah, exactly. If people weren't, yeah. You know, if there weren't like Elon's and Jeff's around. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, then you should have healthcare, like you should have. Should be normal, yeah. Yeah, it should be a given. You should have parental leave. You should, right? But because these things are not the norm, then you should unionize and unfortunately. So I was part of the union and I was very vocal about it and there were some people that need not like it. And then, you know, like I am a big proponent of free speech. You can say whatever you want. I also have the right to not follow you on Twitter. Yeah, totally. I don't have the right to tell you, Matthew, shut up. No, you can say it, but I do have the right to, you know, close my ears. Yeah, an adult should be able to like make that decision. I don't like this, you know what I mean? Like that should be an easy decision. Like I'm a big proponent of the block feature on all social media. It makes life so much better because like I don't, if someone doesn't like me and they're gonna say mean things about me, I'm not gonna sit there and like dwell on it. And I'm gonna be like, well, okay, cool. Like I don't have to see it ever again. You don't have to see me. We're cool. Life goes on, you know? Yeah, exactly. Like I can just mute you. There's that option for a reason. Yeah, it's a great option. I love it. But, and also because of the cannabis thing, you know, when I, for me cannabis happened, I mean, I've always been a pod head. We moved to Colorado. I'm out of that closet after women grow, you know, after I was in a women grow event and I was in the first cohort of women grow. So I, when women grow started back in 2014 with Jane West and Julie Bakwitz and has me that yard and I was part of that. And it completely opened my head. You know, I was coming from my PhD, which I was talking nerd to other nerds. And then I went into a completely different world in cannabis. When I started working in cannabis, it was a plant that I was gonna be studying, the genome. You know, I was really interested in the male and female thing in cannabis. So I was gonna start, you know, like very academic. And then I get into this industry that for me it was like, what the hell? This is an industry, an entire industry where you have lawyers and you have accountants and you have designers and you have every, and so for it was like, what? Like what is this a marketer? First time in my life that I met a marketer, what do you, what, you know? So it was completely mind blowing and then when I was in this women grow events, I am a biologist, I was a field biologist for a long time, field biologist, rubber boot type of field biologist. And so when I got there and I see all of these women, you know, lipstick and high heels with a joint. Yeah. It blew my mind. Oh, I, you know, I was a hippie kind of flip-flop type of thing, you know, rubber boot with a joint. And then you see these women that are super accomplished, super accomplished economist, financial analyst. And after that I was, I am leaving this closet. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, so the cannabis industry opened my scientific sphere and my, I guess my professional and personal life completely opened it. Yeah. So when you first started smoking, when did you first start realizing that? Cause I mean, the conversation is inevitably going to go one place. When did you first start noticing that maybe like there was inconsistency between what you would get at a dispensary between strains that they would assure you were the same thing. Meaning, you know, a lot of people go into dispensaries, they expect a certain medical effect from whatever certain strain they buy and they want to rely on that medical effect for whatever reason. When did you start noticing any kind of inconsistency or any of that in cannabis? I'm going to be honest. And I hope that your listeners do not hate me. No, no they won't. They're good peeps. They're good people. Okay. My palate is either yes or no. And it's usually yes, you know? In general with food, I am a very good eater. I just don't eat, you know, junk food, but in general, everything tastes good. Except for maybe cauliflower without cheese, but right? With cannabis, cannabis is the same thing for me. You know, like I'm high or not high. There are differences between, oh, this one really made it very cerebral or this one really gave me a couch lock or this one just, you know, it made me, like I am completely doing stuff, right? Yeah. Very active. So that is a difference. But in terms of anything else, plus I have a volcano on when you have a volcano and you vaporize it that way, kind of like the smells and all of that is lost. Yeah. So I really thought that all of that cannabinoids and terpenes and all of this was just, you know, pod heads saying stuff. Yeah. Like a lot of people look at wine con or whatever they call it, sommeliers. Sommeliers. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that that was kind of BS until I analyzed data. For me it was data that changed my mind when I started analyzing cannabinoid and terpenes and the amounts and the distribution and the diversity and this one has one and not the other. Then I was like, oh, this is for real. Like this is for real and all of these smells. And so there's been multiple studies throughout the years that just corroborate that I just have a terrible pellet. Yeah. And that's a for real thing and what you're describing to me is like with my wife she smoked when she was young, like a bunch but she didn't really ever get into like, oh, I'm going to smoke this strain of that. She didn't care. Like she was just getting weed, whatever. So once we got together, I, you know, like I'd say, yeah this is, you know, X kind of blueberry. It's this, this and this. And she's looking at me. She's like, I smell weed. Like what are you talking about? You know, like, and it took and it's taken until probably the last year to where her pellets finally getting, oh, I see what you're saying now. Like, but it takes a long, long time and constant really getting into it to develop that. And an effort, right? So now when I go to grows, for example, I usually what I do is that I rub the plant with my fingers and then I smell my fingers. But there is indeed some that smell like skunk. There is indeed some that smell like lemon. There are others that smell more forestry, right? Like more and there's definitely the pine thing. And then when you look at the chemotypes in the studies that I've done and then you see, oh, there is indeed a terpene called pine and there's this other one better choreophiline and there's, okay, so that makes sense. So this is not a lie, right? Yeah, so now, and recently I got something that smelled really, really skunky. And I was like, oh man, this is really skunky. And there is a skunk that lives around my house. And I smelled it and I was like, I get it. Yeah. I get it. You finally made the scent connection in your brain to the smell and everything, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I get it. And so showing that sense, but yeah, but in terms of, you know, I really liked there was one strain that we could get in Colorado long time ago that was around 20, yeah, 2013, 14, 15, which was this tangerine haste. Okay, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. My friends in Colorado growing it. So I know exactly what it is, yeah. Yeah, but other than that, I also like edibles. So you like really, do you like the fact that, I mean, do you like edibles that are super strong and will lay you out for hours or do you like the ones that are more calm and not as strong? So I always have THC CBD together, right? So something that has both, but I like whatever gives me energy to do house chores cause I do not understand how people do house chores. How do they vacuum and sweep and clean a bathroom while sober? Yeah, I don't, you got me on that one. I'm right there with you. Like to be motivated to do that while you're sober, I, yeah. Exactly, like what are you gonna do today? I'm gonna clean the toilet. Woo, yeah. Exactly. No, I need, you know, so I take the cookie and then recently a friend of mine gave me these cookies that have Delta 8. Okay, yeah. And this Delta 8, I love it, you know? And I love the chemistry behind it, the biochemistry because all of these compounds, the differences where you have these double bonds, the carbon, so Delta 9, you have the double bond between two carbons, between carbons eight and nine and then Delta 8, you have the double bond between carbons seven and eight. So it's, I like that kind of like, okay, why is it called this way? Besides chemistry has always been difficult subject for me. I, you know, understand chemistry, like, yeah, I get it. Like it doesn't come naturally. Like I really have to read and just go on. So that he gave me these Delta 8 cookies and for me, those Delta 8 cookies, I am super active for three hours and then, or four hours max. And then I just fall asleep. And it's like falling asleep. I could be sitting in the table and then, and I just, I'm done. Absolutely. It's so amazing how different, like the cannabis chemistry affects everyone's different brain chemistry, like vastly different. And it can even be like beginning of the day, smoking the same exact strain, the same amount, you know, like will make you feel completely different than at night sometimes. It's wild and it's taken me so many years to understand the variance even between clones. Like that's something a lot of breeders in cannabis, like the past several years, like haven't really even come to that conclusion or understanding yet. Like I'll often have people message me and be like, hey, I have this clone. I bought it at a dispensary. I wanna know if this is the old clone that you and your group remember from, you know, 20 years ago. So I'll say, one, I can't identify anything by pictures and they'll be like, why? I don't get it. And it, well, because it may grow very differently in your room than it does in the other room. And people don't get how vast that difference can be. It can be, I tried to explain with the UK cheese, I've had it turn out super blueberry fruity and look, you know, a little short and stout all the way to a very lanky, tall, very, what people would consider typically sativa plant that's foot funk cheese and it's the same clone. So can you talk about some of the genetic reasons behind that variance? Yeah. That's super interesting that you mentioned that. So any physical characteristic, which a physical characteristic is a phenotype, anything that you can measure somehow, it's a product of genes and the environment, right? There are some physical traits that are more genetically dependent. There are others that are more environmentally dependent. And I'm gonna give you the same two examples that I always give. And I hope that if people have been in my talks before, I'm sorry for repeating myself, but human height is highly genetically a heritable, right? It's very genetic. So if your parents are tall, it's likely that you're gonna be tall. If your parents are short, it's likely that you're gonna be short. It's 80% heritability. So that 20% is environment and that 20% is usually what you ate while you were growing up, right? You had good nutrition, you may achieve that potential height, right? If you had poor nutrition, you may not, but it's 80% genetics basically. There are other traits like weight, which also has a genetic component. There are some people that are more prone to be a little bit thicker than other people. However, if you eat a particular diet, you're more prone to have more weight or less weight. You can control the amount. Yes, it's more environmental than it is, right? It's the same thing with these clones. So if you're growing the same clone in a completely different environment, you can have what you just said. You can have a completely different plant, particularly because we know that cannabis, for example, is very photosensitive. Yes. So if you have very good lights, it's more likely that you're gonna produce more cannabinoids and that your plant is probably gonna be happier than if you have fewer lights. Like if you put your plant in a closet in the basement with no lights. Yeah. And probably it's gonna die, right? So that environment is very important. What we don't know is of these cannabinoids and terpenes, this complex, it's a very complex phenotype. It's a very complex phenotype that involves multiple genes acting in unison, right? So there's this Jordan Sager, who's the CEO of Dewey Scientific in Washington State. Okay. He has a paper with who was his postdoc advisor, Mark Lange in Washington State in Pullman. And they have this paper that I really like where they talk about all of the genes related to cannabinoid and terpene production as a network of genes kind of acting together. And I think it's a really good description, right? So what we in biology called epistasis, which is kind of like two genes acting on a particular phenotype and pleotropy, which is two different phenotypes that are controlled one by one gene. So we have this play a chocolate pick and this epistatic effects acting in unison for this very complex phenotype. However, we don't know how much of it is environmentally determined and how much is genetics. We know that there is a genetic component for sure. For sure. But we don't know how much. We don't know if it's gonna be like weight or is it gonna be like height in humans, weighting you, right? And the experiments for you to figure that out are quote unquote simple, right? You just need to have several generations or you can do, for example, the same clone in different environments and then measure it, right? Yep. And but yeah, but I agree with what you said to your friend like, is this blue cheese or anything? I don't know. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it could be. It looks like it. It could be a mother to it. It could be a hybrid of it or it could be something that just totally expressed as similar and not related to whatsoever because cannabis is wild and plastic like that. It has plasticity. And the other thing is that we know that there is a lot of diversity. There is a lot of genomic diversity. So in the genome, all of the conglomerate of DNA of the plant, all of the letters of the DNA, we know that it's very diverse. It's three to four times as diverse as humans. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's very, very diverse. So if you have that amount of diversity, you can have a lot of diversity in your progeny, right? Yes. So full Sibs may be completely different to each other. Yeah. And therefore, probably this ChemDog number one and ChemDog number four, which were probably full Sibs, that's why they're completely different phenotypes. Yes. And reason why it makes sense for you to clone the plants because when you're cloning them, then you're assuring that they're gonna be more similar to the mother plant than if you have seeds. Yes. But that's why I think that we need really good breeding in cannabis in marijuana, right? Because in hemp, it's happening and cannabis is hemp and marijuana. Yeah. But in hemp, it's happening for grain and for fiber and Europe has done some good job at breeding and China as well. But for marijuana, I think that we need to have good breeding and good breeding for particular locations because especially if you're growing outdoors because Ambal County, California has a very different environment than upstate New York or Colorado, right? So if you're growing outdoors, I think that you need to have really good breeding. And I hope that that happens in cannabis or I know that it is happening right now. Sure. Yeah, it's been happening for years, but the ratio of people doing that kind of work to the people just putting something on the market to make money is it's very low. Like the amount of people like doing serious breeding work versus I'm gonna cross this to this and see what happens because the names are cool, you know, and putting it out on the market. There's a lot of that now. And that's typically what we see in the breeding market. I think so. I think that there are very reputable companies in California. I know one company from Colorado Trilogy and Seeds, I think that they're good at what they do, for example, as breeding. But it is not easy. It is time consuming. And I do agree with you that the naming thing is, what we know that the naming convention is just BS, right? And we know that Sativa, Indica, Hybrid, they do not mean much. Yeah, correct. Especially when you're trying to group traits like this is Sativa because it's lengthy and tall and then it has high THC. Like those traits are completely different. It's like me saying like, oh, you are tall because you have brown eyes. Like that is not related whatsoever. Or a dog is tall because it's white. Like that doesn't have any sort of relationship. And also we know, for example, that there are strains that have nothing to do with each other. Girl Scout cookies, for example, Girl Scout cookies. You can have two strains, Girl Scout cookies that are more closely related to something completely different except to each other. So when people ask me, my recommendation, what I tell them is, well, you name this, I don't know, Blue Dream, right? You name this Blue Dream. And they got, I don't know, a cannabis high times cup. Yeah. Then rename it next time and just call it, I don't know, Dream Blue. Yeah, yeah, that's typically how it goes, yeah. Yeah, rename it or then, right? Or then just this Blue Dream got whatever. Then name another strain, Blue Dream as well. Like no one, right? So I, and then when people tell me, like, well, but mine is the real Blue Dream, I don't know, I can tell you whether your Blue Dream is related to other Blue Dreams, but I cannot say who's the real one, like, which one is the real OG? Yeah. I don't know. See, and that's what's like the most fascinating part of the topic to me is what we were talking about and my friend Matt pointed out to me, he's like, it's anthropology, Matt, like, because I was trying to explain to him, like, how do I explain to a scientist what we do and why, what we do is reliable, most importantly, because like anybody can say, like, yeah, I got this cut. And yeah, it's real because I said it's real or it's real because this guy told me and he's old. Like these are not good, this is not science, right? But there is anthropology to it in the sense that there are people that have been alive and in the scene for X amount of years and were there when this strain first popped up, watch where it came from, already worked that kind of person that would record that kind of data, you know? And there are these guys in the cannabis world that exist and have existed like total nerds. So there are these people that exist in the cannabis world that are kind of reclusive, but it's been a task. Like that's what I've devoted my life to is figuring out who these people are, where they're at and if I can shake down their story and really figure out is this one, is this provable, is it plausible, probable, or total BS? Cause there's four answers you can get there and most of them are right in between two and three. You know, there's very little stuff that we can be like, okay, we know this came from, for example, Dave Watson, we know Skunk One came from Dave Watson, 1975 roughly. You know, we know that for a fact because it was well documented at the time. It was in books at the time, multiple different sources. He's still around, can still give, you know, statements that are all contemporaneous with what was going on the time the story hasn't changed. However, then we have stories like Purple Herbal where we have nine to 10 different claimants. None of them can show that they had any kind of parental progeny or documentation on it. So it's one of those stories that sits. But oddly enough with things like Goji Kush, we can, we have pretty good documentation of certain strains like that because enough people were around. It wasn't so long ago that a lot of people that were around then are still around, you know? But it's debatable regardless. Yeah, and I think that it would be super cool to be able to do some genetic study that may corroborate all of these stories, right? Yes, that's the most important. Yeah, I think that that could be super cool. I would be a little hesitant because I have gotten a lot of, sometimes not a lot of no, some negative vibes from certain people about genomics work and about, right? And these tools that are super powerful and that are going to change the industry really. Sure. So that part I feel, you know, like saying, kind of like, hey, this is really not blue dream. There may be someone that's not gonna like it, right? I've heard a lot of feelings in this industry that way. Exactly, that you heard a lot of feelings. So I think that it would be a really cool genetic study that corroborates this anthropological study, right? Exactly. And we've done that with dogs, we've done that with humans, you know, we know, for example, that dogs were domesticated multiple times by multiple cultures. Yes. It's pretty crazy, but we also had anthropological evidence that the Chinese, for example, had dogs and that there were also dogs in Europe and in the Americas. So we know that dogs were domesticated multiple times and we know, for example, in humans, one really cool study that I remember coming up, you know, we know that when Christopher Columbus came to America, they basically, the Spanish were different from the British, right? The British kind of sense colonies in North America, the Spanish just took all of the gold and left. Like they were not planning on really staying in South America, but they did, you know, rape women, killed men and then took the gold and left. And now we have some evidence, genetic evidence, that many of the genes that are coming from men are from Spain and many of the genes that are from women are from native women in South America. And there was this beautiful study that was published in PNAS. I'm gonna say that it was probably around 2011 or 2012 that took what we knew anthropologically and had this genetic study about the human mitochondria that is inherited through the mother and the white chromosome that is inherited through the father. And it was so beautiful to see, you know, the parallels between genetics, you know, genomics and anthropology. And I think that in cannabis could be similar. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's how you make anthropology scientific, right? Is you back up the data or you back it up with data? And I, yeah, I know there was, we had talked about this about 10 years ago, we were gonna start doing it just specifically with the OG CUSH project. And the problem was, one, of course, you have to source all of these cuts specifically from the most reliable sources and the most reliable sources in quotes because it's only gonna be what people tell you. But if you get enough of them, you can kind of get an idea, a very good idea, especially when, you know, multiple people confirm certain sources. And we were gonna do that, but at the same time, we didn't know of any reliable place, except there was one company at the time called Philos to even do the testing to tell us the matrilineal, patrilineal relations, any of that stuff. And they, any OG that was submitted to them, they all said was the same clone. They were not able to tell when it was obvious, like when someone was like giving a known self-line, like saying, I popped the seed from a known self-line from this clone, I'll send you a clone of this and a clone of this, send it to him and it was showing up as the exact same clone. So we already knew it wasn't gonna be reliable from the job. You know? So Philos, they do have that galaxy, which is trustworthy. I think that they have done a good job at the galaxy and they have all of the cushions, right? So show their galaxy, I know the tests behind the algorithms behind that galaxy. And the cool thing is that you can shift it, right? And you can kind of zoom in to a particular part. I think that that is pretty cool. And I disagree or I don't know what are they doing right now regarding their sequencing, but I disagree with particular ways of sequencing the genome. I think that there's other ways of sequencing where you can get a lot of information and you can also explore other things. But if you have multiple individuals, multiple cushions that are, that may not be related to each other and they are all appearing as the same clone, I would be hesitant about those results. And I think that it may be the way that they're sequencing, right? So there are, for example, four paternity tests. So to figure out whether that is your child or not, there are particular genomic regions that you sequence and not other genomic regions, right? You sequence genomic regions that are very varied between individuals. Because there are genes that are extremely conserved between you and I that, you know, you're Mexican and Colombian, they may not differ. Yeah, yeah. So, but there are reliable paternity tests. So you need to figure out which region of the genome you're sequencing. And I think that there could have been a problem with Phylo's doing that. Sure, yeah. I mean, in a hypothetical situation, I'll say it that way. Like we were taking a clone mom, like let's, for example, we'll call this sendo stirps and a Lubakush, right? And we were taking that mother clone and the other mother clone, submitting those to Phylo's. We crossed them together, ran the progeny. We know that one, I mean, the progenies all either Lubakush or Mendo perps are a variance of. It's very reliable and breeding. Sent them a clone of that and none of them showed related at all between all three. And that's when we were like, okay, so we have the OG Kush data, we have some pretty known data when it comes to cookies on cookies parentage and it's not showing up in Phylo's data. And then we did that to kind of test and see how hypothetically we did that, allegedly that was done to see how if it would really show up like that. And in one case, there was like Chem91 in Chem91 S1's self-line sent and they were able to tell this as a self version of that or really close relation to that. But in many cases, they couldn't tell direct relations from each other. So there was no consistency. Like sometimes it was right and sometimes it was just so off, it was really confusing to me. And I never knew why it never made any sense to me. And I don't understand the science behind how they collect the data, where the error would have been, but it's always fascinated me to no end. So, okay, so I'm gonna explain something to you, which I think could be, I don't know if it's for sure, but it could be one of the reasons. So when you are sequencing a genome, you have all of the letters of the DNA, there's multiple ways of sequencing the genome, right? There's one way that is called whole genome shotgun where you take the entire genome and you sequence it all. When you're sequencing whole genome shotgun, there's something that it's called the coverage. So the coverage is the amount of times that on average, each letter of the DNA is being sequenced. So on average, if you have one X on average, each letter is sequenced one time. If you have 10 X on average, each letter is sequenced 10 times. If you have 100 X on average, each letter is sequenced 100 times, right? So I really like whole genome shotgun, even if it's one X, because you have the entire genome and you can look at different regions of the genome. And at the end of the day, it is cheaper per letter to sequence the entire genome at a whole genome shotgun. Okay. There is another way of sequencing the genome, which is called genotyping by sequencing, GBS. In GBS, what you do is that you take the genome and then you break it down into pieces with these enzymes, these proteins that are kind of like these little scissors, that you break the genome into pieces. And then you end up sequencing only 1% of the genome, approximately 1-2% of the genome. GBS helps you to figure out whether you're more closely related to me or whether you're more closely related to your mom. Okay. So that is GBS. However, GBS has a lot of problems. One of the problem is repetition. Okay. So even if you do it with the same restriction enzymes, the same pair of scissors, and even if you follow the same protocol, repetition is not consistent. Yeah. And there's a paper showing that, that repetition in GBS is not consistent. And in addition to that, even though it's cheaper because you're only sequencing 1%, it's cheaper in general per letter, it is not cheaper than whole genome shotgun. Okay. And there are different pairs of scissors. There's different restriction enzymes. So I have this study in 2016 that we compared the GBS data from one group to another and because they had used different restriction enzymes, we could not compare the data between them. We could just compare it to the whole genome shotgun. So this one against the whole genome shotgun, this one against the whole genome shotgun, but we couldn't compare these two. That makes sense. Because they were no overlaps. So it is my understanding that phylo sequences GBS, I don't know if they still do, but at least at some point in their lives, they did. And I'm always questioning that reasoning, whether it's for profits, because you don't want to spend more money or because the questions that you have, you just need to know whether you're more closely related to your mom than to me and that's it, but you cannot look at the repetitive content of the genome, the junk DNA, you cannot look at that. You cannot look at whole genes, right? You cannot look whether these entire genes have different copies. So I question GBS and I think that that may be one of the reasons why they got those results with you. I would not be surprised with GBS. And especially, I am really sloppy. I bump things, when the lab, there's a hair somewhere, I'm the type of person that is trying to look neat and then you have toothpaste. That is me, I have never been good at doing something more than DNA extractions. My DNA extractions are fine, but if you have to do something like GBS where you have to sonicate and then you have to do the restriction enzyme and then you have to do these other, that wouldn't work. Yeah, yeah. So if you need to have a really good technician and even then your results are not repeatable. And if they're not repeatable, isn't that what like science is? Like to be able to show something is repeatable, to have repeatable results, to make a valid, I mean, I'm a layman. So like I'm good at like English and history and stuff like that. So if I'm wrong, correct me. But like that also makes me think like, okay, so if that data is incorrect with just those very few examples that we noticed and we're one out of tens of thousands of people who use this, when they go to sell said data, if it doesn't merge well with other people's data sets, said data might end up worthless. So all that investment and savings that they went to be cheaper to save whatever, if that was the theory in it, would end up not working out so well, I would think. I mean, it just, yeah, from my point of view, as someone who's like a history and not a math person or a science person, it doesn't make much sense. I 100% agree with you. And unfortunately, people in the world, I'm gonna say some things that look, we know that there's a lot of science that it's not repeatable. For example, Excel spreadsheets, right? We know that Excel spreadsheets when you type one, whatever it translates it to, January 12th. Yeah, yeah. And it's thinking, what? So that, we know that Excel screws things up. But we also know that there's other science, old science that may not be repeatable right now, that at that time, so similar to GBS, I think that GBS, it's gonna be a few years until people stop using it for these reasons and for other reasons. But there's other techniques, enzymatic techniques that people do not use anymore. I used all those times during my PhD that no one uses that anymore. And just to give you another example, studies with mice, we found out, we in the world, I mean, we found out that mice respond differently to humans, whether it's a female that is treating the mice or whether it's a male that's treating the mice. So results with experimental mice may differ whether the person conducting this experiment was a woman or a man. Is it like scent hormone or do they know? I don't know, but we know that there is, we know that there is this gap in science. We know that there's a lot of data sets that are not publicly available, including some from my papers, one paper because of some reasons. But I try to make my data available because I think it's fair with the world and particularly because I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know whether my analysis was entirely correct. I don't know whether you analyze it differently and are gonna get a different result or right. So I think that I should make all of my data public for anyone here or in Patagonia, Argentina or in Shanghai, China to be able to analyze my data and tell me, hey, I did get what you or I disagree with you, right? And I think that in many cases that's not the way with science, that's not the way with Excel spreadsheets, that's not the way with, and I think that with GBS data, whenever I see GBS data, I'm not analyzing that. Yeah, and what's funny is because Philos was embedded in our subculture for so long. I mean, it was like a good, I don't know, eight years that people were taking their data and being like making conclusions from it and making other conclusions from it based on those conclusions that Philos had made. And when we kind of realized how bad or inconsistent some of the data was, it was like slowly unraveling stuff in our head. Like we always used to make these conclusions based on that data, but that's now invalid data. And you actually have to go through and like remove it from your brain, scrub your brain from all this things. So now when I see people with Philos data, I'm like, I don't wanna see it because it doesn't matter because it might be right, but it might not. And that's an unreliable narrator. I can't do it. Yeah, I think that there's some things that are right. I think that they're gotta see that the relationship between strange may be right, but now that they're doing breeding, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I don't even, I remember when all that blew up and a lot of people's anger at it, but for me, like I was just more interested in like, are you putting out good data or bad data? People are purchasing data. This is my, I don't care what you do with any of your breeding or any of that because they, you know, I mean, until they started asking for whole seeds and stuff like that, that's when it became different. But when it came to the data, is this data consistent with what we're seeing? No, okay, then why not? And then when we start finding out it's not, well, then what are you doing? Luckily, I think they no longer do data sequencing and they're just doing their breeding program now, which is cool, props to them. I hope they have good luck with it, you know. One of the other things in cannabis that we ran into over the years that we've been trying to figure out is in cannabis sex reversal. Ethylene plays a major role, right? A lot of times we're seeing a clone, like take a clone, take 60 cuts off a single mom, they'll be in a tray, 10 inch by 20 inch tray, 50 of them next to each other, you'll get 30% distribution that actually reverse really well, 30% that kind to do and 30% that won't at all or it'll reverse and won't drop viable pollen and none of us know why. And this has been going on for decades and none of us can figure it out. So I'm interested here at your take on it. I don't know. Okay, I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna, so okay, we know that cannabis has X and Y chromosomes, right? Yes. So if you are an XX, you're a female, if you're an XY, you're a male, kind of like us, right? Yeah. And then we have the monieshes, which people in the industry call the Hermes. So let's call it Hermes, although they're actually monieshes. Yes. So the Hermes, we know that there are particular regions of the chromosomes that are very similar to the female chromosomes. However, we don't know exactly how different the monieshes chromosomes are from those of the female chromosomes. Oh, interesting. We don't know that entirely. We know that the Y chromosome in the males, it's very big, is the biggest of all of the chromosomes. And so when you're sequencing a genome, there's something that it's called the genome assembly. So an assembly is when you're sequencing the genome and you have to partition those regions into pieces. And then you have to put them together. That's when coverage comes really handy, because if you have something that is more than one X, so if you have something that is, let's say a hundred X, then it's easier for you to put the puzzles together because then you have this piece, this piece, then you have this other one, and then you know you're starting to put your puzzle together. And ideally, you would have in cannabis, you would have 11 pieces, right? Because it has nine autosomes, so nine chromosomes that are not related to sex, nine. Then you have an X, and then you have a Y, right? So you have 11 different pieces that is your complete puzzle. There is a really good assembly that was produced by Chris Grasa and Chris Grasa et al. 2021, which is a female. However, we do not have the puzzle for the Y chromosome or the puzzle for the munitius chromosome. We do not have. We do know that if you have a Y chromosome, you're very likely to produce pollen. And if you have two X chromosomes, you're very likely to produce female flowers. There are some varieties, as you said, that if you put ethylene or silver nitrate, whatever they start producing flowers from the opposite sex in males, if you put ethophan, right? They start producing female flowers. There's some strains that are more prone than others. Yes. We don't know why. We don't know which are the genes that are turning on, right? We think that those genes may not be related to the X and the Y chromosomes. We think that those genes may be somewhere else in the genome. Interesting, yeah. Because if you have the X and the Y chromosome, you still express whatever sex it is. If you have XY, you're male. If you have XX, you're female. But then if you force them to produce the other sex, there are some that produce them and some not. So maybe these genes are found somewhere else, but we have some idea of some genes that are turned on and turned off. And I think that that is a really interesting question. Why, when, how do you turn these genes on? Is it just that some individuals do not have them? And like I said, even if they're clones of each other in the same tray, one inch apart, meaning the angles of light are very similar, like how they're being fed is identical. You'll see 30% in a random distribution, not like in one set next to each other. They'll be totally random. And it blows my mind every time that we just can't figure it out. We just cannot. I would love to explore that. That was what really caught my attention in cannabis was that sex part, right? The X. Yeah, yeah. And I've never so far worked, I worked in the cannabinoid genes. I worked in, and at the beginning when I started working in the cannabinoid genes, it was like, oh, why? Now I love them. Like I absolutely love them. But that part of the sex is super interesting to me because the white chromosome in humans is very, very small, it's tiny. Okay. And it basically has very few genes and there's one gene that says, hey everyone, wake up, express. And that's why I have many of the genes that you have to produce beer, to produce all of the hormones that men produce, but I don't have that gene that wakes everyone up. Right? And the white chromosome is tiny, basically has that one gene. And that's it. In cannabis, on the other hand, the white chromosome is humongous. And one of the reasons why I think that we do not have a proper assembly is because it's so big and it's full with repetitive elements, junk DNA. Yeah. And the repetitive elements are repetitive. So you have repetition, repetition, repetition. How many do you have? It's so hard to tell. It's so difficult to put together because it's repetitive and repetitive and repetitive. So it's very hard to know when it ends and when it starts, right? Yeah. And so it's, yeah, so we don't know what's going on in that chromosome. That's like the one thing that's driven me for a long time. Like we developed a spray that is a ready to mix spray for people that's a silver nitrate, sodium thiosulfate based, you know? And the one thing that me and a few other people that are making feminized seats longer than anyone else in the US, we've just never been able to figure out that one factor. And when you sell the spray, people are always like, well, how do we know for sure? And to tell them, I don't know, just numbers, bet on numbers, always use high amounts of numbers because odds are in your favor eventually if you use enough numbers that you'll have successful. Not, I mean, the one thing I've learned too when I did a population of, there were 16,000 plants, 3,000 of which I reversed and it was hemp. One thing I noticed with hemp is unlike high THC cannabis, it reversed immediately. Usually there's like the stagger period in cannabis, high THC cannabis where it takes two and a half weeks to then show their sex as being a male, completely reversed. In hemp, it was like that and they were ready to drop. What is hemp for fiber or grain? This was hemp, it was remedy hemp kush cross. So it was more for CBD production. Okay, so it was high C. Yeah, and it triggered immediately, but in that population of 3,000 that were reversed, there was probably three that didn't reverse at all. Stay totally female no matter how much they were sprayed with. And I'd never seen that in high THC cannabis, but I'd never ran that many plants in high THC cannabis. So it was really interesting to see stuff like that in sexual reversals that there were even plants that were totally resistant to that kind of spray in sexual reversals. Interesting. Yeah, but it took a seeing a large population that you can be able to see three, you know? Like, yeah. I would love to do experiments with that and see what's going on in the genome. Like what genes are you turning on? What genes are you turning off? Right, I think that that's super interesting. Yeah, if you ever want to work on anything, I am more than happy to send you whatever you need. We're always doing all kinds of experiments using all kinds of different ethylene blockers and all kinds of different stuff. But yeah. I think that you should quantify those things, right? Of these, however, because I think the numbers are so powerful. So of these 16,000, there were, I don't know, 11,000 and then you quantify and then when you do it again in, I don't know, 2025, then you do it again and you quantify and then you have numbers. Like what is the ratio? What are the odds? And then when you sell your product, you can say like, hey, you know, it works for 30% of the individuals when you have 1600. You should do it when you have more than five or, right? You'll find that a lot of like cannabis breeders that have been doing it a long time, they all fall on the autism spectrum hardcore and most of them refuse to keep data written down and it's all up here. Cause they've lived with that idea that like if I get caught with any kind of numbers or data, I'm gonna get busted and they're gonna use it against me in a court of law. So almost everyone keeps every bit of data up. It's crazy. Some of the likes, I'm not that great at keeping data stored. Like my memory is not that great, but some of my friends, I'm like, how do you remember like 25 years of data and they just magically do. But yeah, nothing's better than hard written data with a, you know, that you can compare and refer back to. Yeah. So I wanna talk and of course, this is what you refer to as, you know, something that probably people think is the most controversial topic that you're, that you like talking about is GMO science in cannabis. And I wanna talk about the future of cannabis and where you think it's gonna go from here and where we can go. What are some of the beautiful things that GMO science can bring to cannabis? Well, I mean, GMO, so I have a non-for-profit organization, the Agricultural Genomics Foundation and the aim of that non-for-profit and I hope that I someday can fulfill that goal is to develop genetic tools for the use of the public. These genetic tools include GMO. So GMO is genetically modified organism. Yes. What classifies as a GMO or not, that's very debatable, but in general, you know, if you can, if you need to be in a lab space for you to put the gene or take it out or express whatever, then it's probably a GMO, right? Yeah. I think that GMOs are a very important tool. We have GMOs everywhere, these big strawberries in the supermarket, they're polyploid and they were, you know, many, they are not existing naturally. It was humans that somehow made that, I mean, yeah, artificial selection is been done by humans, but there are a lot of GMOs in many things that we eat in rice and a bunch of things. I think GMOs could be super useful for cannabis, for marijuana, for example, to enhance maybe the production of cannabinoids in hemp, to silence certain genes if you don't want THC, then it could help. That's been a big problem for a lot of hemp producers is testing hot, sure. Testing hot. And especially if you're growing for fiber or for grain, why do you care about THC? Yeah, why have to put energy into it? Yeah, and sometimes some of these varieties for grain over fiber go over 0.3. They have, I don't know, 0.5. Who cares if a grain variety has 0.8? The farmer, because now he or she are in trouble. Exactly, it's serious at that point. Exactly, so I think that that, for example, in the specs determination stuff, I think that that would be important to know exactly whether or not your plant is going to produce flowers of the opposite sex because sometimes your plants just herm out and you then have seeds and it's like, who was the hermit here, right? So I think that GMO's could be useful for that. And for hemp for fiber and for grain as well to produce bigger grain or to produce plants that maybe this is resistant to particular diseases right now with a changing environment due to the climate crisis. I think that those techniques are gonna come very handy. So in general, I see a very bright future in that sense. The issue for me, these tools are happening in every single crop. It's not just cannabis, they are happening. The issue for me is who owns those tools. Absolutely. Who is able to access those tools and whether the access of those tools is gonna benefit the public, the grower, the consumer or if it's gonna benefit a corporation. Sure. I think that's super important, the politics of it. Yeah. That is my issue with those tools. Hence why I have the nonprofit organization which at some point I hope that I can grow enough for, I mean, I don't know if it's gonna be a big enough nonprofit to combat big corporations in big ag or big tobacco or big pharma, but maybe we can help the public somehow. What kind of funding would we need in order to be able to make any kind of difference in being able to use this technology for people that could benefit, that maybe aren't rich? I mean, cause I know this technology is expensive. That's one of the prohibitive factors and why you would have to establish a nonprofit in order to do this. What kind of funding would we need? Like Elon Musk type funding or is it a few million? So, yeah, many of these companies, many of these companies in the cannabis space, the phylo stuff companies, medicinal genomics type companies, they have raised in the millions for five, six, max 10, less than 10, seven, eight million dollars. I think that for us at AGF, Agricultural Genome Expundation is a nonprofit that I run. I am looking for a few thousand dollars to start public awareness and public education and to teach people really how, what is a genome? How do you do all these tools, right? And for that, few hundred thousand dollars could go a long way or few thousand dollars, less than hundred thousand dollars, like few thousand dollars could go a long way on teaching people how to use this, not that everyone is gonna become a genomicist or a bioinformatician, but how to be educated about it. And that's what we're trying to do now is figuring out how to raise that funding to be able to start growing this and to start educating the public and making some of these tools and then being able to get this, yeah, running basically. So how far out do you think we are from, say, turning on or off the gene that is responsible for like, let's say HPLV, something like that, a viroid that's a ravaging cannabis right now. How far out would we be from being able to combat something like that GMO speaking? So that's the hoplate and viroid? Yes, yeah. Is it really bad in California? It's bad everywhere because of the nurseries and how hype strains kind of were pushed in and there were demands for specific strains. It spread like wildfire, wildfire, and in Spain now too. Here, we don't have that as much in New York state. Oh yeah, New York state's not one of the big, big hubs of growing with nurseries and stuff like that, California, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Spain, I know Amsterdam's been ravaged recently, Belgium, yeah, it's all over now. Oh wow, so it's a matter of time. It's a matter of time. How long are we gonna take? I don't know. And disease is just, because disease evolves too, right? We can see it in COVID and then we have the Delta and then we have the Omicron and then we have, right? So it's also changing. So it's also, you are changing and the virus is changing as well. So that one is hard. What I would recommend in that case is have a good tissue culture facility where you can do tissue culture and you can assure that your stock is clean, which is hard. Yeah, sure, and expensive. Yeah, I think that breeding is another good thing when you have actual males and females that you're breeding and then yes, again, you have to do the phenol hunting and then you take several generations and then you have two siblings that are nothing alike and then you have to grow however many hundreds of thousands of seeds to look for that one that is the one that you like. But as you go and as you're doing inbreeding, right? Parents and offspring are full-sibs, then you get better traits. But in terms of disease, I think that the best thing that you can have is diversity is as much variation as possible because then if you have full-sibs, maybe these two are affected by the virus but maybe these two are not, right? Exactly, it's super important. So that regarding disease, but there's other traits that I think, anabinoids, maybe terpenes, there's other traits that I know that people are looking at flowering time genes. Sure. That we may have genetic tools available sooner. Oh, interesting. See, that would be so cool. Because flowering time is a serious determiner of probably as best we can tell high. I mean, there's certain highs that you can get from 18-week flowering plant from Colombia that you can't get from a eight-week flowering plant from Afghanistan. So that's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see that played with a bunch. Is there anything else in breeding in cannabis that has totally blown your mind that you found like that was quite unexpected once you started looking at the genes? That was quite unexpected once you started looking at the genes. Well, the cannabinoid genes, it's so cool because at the beginning, we thought that it was one gene with two different alleles, like with two different forms of a gene, right? Yeah. So that if you were dominant for one, then you produce CBD. If you were dominant for the other one, then you produce THC. And then if you were heterozygous, right? So if you were homozygous, you produce THC. Homozygous for the other allele, you produce CBD. And then if you were heterozygous, then you produce both. Yeah. But then we found out that there are multiple genes related to cannabinoid production, multiple. And that individuals differ in the number of genes. So when we found that out, I remember, I remember the day that we found this out and I was doing the genome alignments and I was looking at them. And then my lab mates at the time who's now a good friend and collaborator, Kyle, he was the one that was like, this doesn't look right. Look at these alignments, it looks. And then we found out that there were actually different genes and there were multiple genes that were very similar to each other. And then we found out that, yes, indeed, there are different copies, individuals differ in these different copies, but these genes are in close proximity. And now I'm working on this paper that I hope to have published by 2023. That we now see that there are multiple genes, for example, for CBC production, right? So there's a bunch of genes related to CBC production. Why is CBC produced in such little quantities? Why? If there's so many genes related to CBC production, like that is a question that I'm like, why? And my hypothesis is that, you know, like these enzymes, we know that they're very similar. They act like the same precursor molecule, which is CBGA. And they're sloppy because they produce each other's compounds and they are promiscuous because they act on CBGA, the same precursor molecule. So they are promiscuous, they are sloppy. They're nothing, they're not very accurate at all. My hypothesis is that CBCA synthase, so this enzyme that is producing CBCA is producing everything else except for CBC, right? It's producing everything else because the genes are so abundant. Everyone, independent if you're a hemp for fiber and grain or independent if you're a marijuana type or if you're a CBDA type of plant, independent of that, everyone has a CBCA gene. What are those guys doing? They're partying, what are they doing? Yeah, that's so fascinating. And are there other cannabinoids that exist in cannabis that we may not even know about that may be more important in the high factor than we even know or anything that exists like that? I don't know, but the terpenes are produced in very low quantities. So you have, for example, that for THC, you have 28% by dry weight or even 30%, even 35% by dry weight. While you see, for example, for mercy and it's like 5%, or 3%, but it still smells. And there's some things that are even the part per million. So they're really tiny amount. Whether or not that affects your high, I don't know, right? But I think that's something that we do desperately need to do in the cannabis industry is to do controlled studies without you knowing what you're consuming. So we have this joint. We know the exact chemotype of this joint or whatever chemotype we know, because we're discovering now this THCP, that LT8 became a thing. So maybe there's another cannabinoid that we had not calibrated the BLC, whatever, chemists do not hate me. Maybe what I just said was completely stupid. But okay, we measure the chemotype and then we give it to you and Matthew smoke this and tell me what you feel, questionnaire. Maybe if we can, we can take blood before and afterwards, right? And then blinded study that you don't know what you're getting and then we can do it with however many hundreds of people, different joints with different chemotypes and that people do not know what they're getting. And then they tell us, okay, this is what I felt on Friday. I exercise, I ate, I slept. I am depressed, right? We know that for alcohol, if you're depressed or if you're, if you ate, we know that there's a difference in how drunk you get. Oh, sure. Women and men, we know that there's a difference in alcohol. In cannabis, we do have some suggestions that there are differences between women and men, but we don't know if you ate, if you slept, if you exercised, am I gonna feel the same with this joint today than on Friday? I don't know. Yeah, there's no way to quantify it yet. Yeah, so we need your studies, I think. And with the laws in place currently, we cannot do those studies federally? No, federally, we cannot, but we could do them in states, in regulated states. And in Colorado, one of my, I have some papers with her, Cinnamon Bidwell, collaborator of mine. She has the Canavan. And in the Canavan, she goes to places because she cannot bring people on campus and have them go get high. So she goes in the van and then she takes up blood before you consume it and after you consume it and what she tells you is just consume it as you are normally gonna consume cannabis. Sure. And then she takes blood and she does some sort of cognitive tests. Can you remember, so we know that there's short term memory. So she does try to memorize this grocery store list and things like that before and after. So she has done something like that, but we don't know with particular chemotypes, right? Yeah. And then again, for you to measure those chemotypes, you have to go to a reputable lab. There are some labs that are not that reputable. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But there are some that are. Yeah. So those particular labs. Yeah, that's fascinating. I think you wouldn't find a shortage of people wanting to do that, like willing to give their blood to just go get baked and give results. I'd be down. I mean, that sounds like fun. I think that's fun science. It would be super fun, but from the researcher's perspective, you do need a lot of paperwork in order to be able to do that. Even to give you a questionnaire, like even if I'm not touching you, just to give you the questionnaire, there's a huge amount of paperwork and stuff that you have to do. Yeah, I can't imagine taking blood. Like all that stuff would be so much paperwork to even be able to do that on people. Yeah. And then it's like, why are you doing that? No, I'm getting people high. It's like. Yeah, yeah. Oh man. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about before we finish up? I want to talk about your nonprofit again. Can we mention what it's called? The Agricultural Genomics Foundation, AGF, and the website. Can I put it here in the chat? What is it? I'll type it out right here. Yeah, you can put it in the chat and I can cut and paste it over. Agriculturalgenomics.org. There we go. And I can paste it over, let's see, right here. So that is the name of the nonprofit and I do a lot of public outreach through it. I'm trying to educate the public through it. I also do consulting as a side gig and you can find me on social media. And what's your Twitter name? It's at Kana Vakana. Let me go over here just so we can get it on there because I know everybody's going to be asking. And Instagram as well. And then on LinkedIn, I also use LinkedIn. Let me see my LinkedIn profile. Because we don't know if Twitter is going to live. Yeah, through Elon. Yeah, nobody knows yet. Yeah, nobody knows whether Twitter is going to be a thing anymore. So I don't know. I mean, is that LinkedIn seems boring sometimes? You know, I've never even signed up for LinkedIn in my life. Like I just never done it. I don't even know anything about it. So it's supposed to be a professional Facebook, in my opinion. And I accept everyone on LinkedIn. It's like, do you want to be my friends? Like, sure. But LinkedIn lately has been good. I do consulting and I have found several gigs through LinkedIn lately. So it's accomplished its job. So you never know. But if you want to hear me rant politically like I did to Matthew today. I love it. I just cannot, I do not understand how can you not be political in this climate right now? Yeah, my family was United Farm Workers. So I'm hardcore like, you know, union, you know, social programs. I'm all about it. Is that why it's called The Syndicate? Yeah, it is. The overall goal with The Syndicate, when I originally came up with it and it's like a pie in the sky idea where I want to take it. But a lot of these people that came before me don't like, even me, we don't have retirement programs for any of them. And I've seen a lot of people that laid the foundation for this industry just be run over. And they're having the hardest time. They're having to find new jobs. And these are people who deserve recognition and have earned their place in our society. And I'd love to make it some kind of union kind of deal where there's retirement plans, medical plans, you know, things like that for people in the future. But it's just a pie in the sky idea because I don't know a lot of people that would be into putting their hard time work and money into it. But I'll keep putting my work in, you know? I think, so did you see that there was a video that came out recently regarding the cannabis industry in California? I don't know whether you watched it. Let me see if I find it. But they have Steve DiAngelo. And I think it's super interesting because I think that California kind of did it wrong, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve DiAngelo is nobody's, at least from our point of view, like the hardcore people, like Steve DiAngelo has never been someone that any of us are like, yeah, I wanna see that dude do well because he was the first to bring in corporate, push it. And when he found out he wasn't rich enough to play ball with the big boys recently, he's like, yeah, I shouldn't have done Prop 64. And it's like, well, then why'd you push it, bro? You ruined a lot of people's lives, in my opinion. My friends are now out of work and hurting. But I think you should watch that YouTube video because he does talk about that, you know? Like he does talk about Prop 64 and how California kind of did it wrong in that way, right? Let me see if I find it. It's such a good, is that my kid watches videos also in my thing? So then I get, you know, like- I know what you mean. Yeah, your history gets all twisted up. Yeah, my history, it's all like my kid watching a stupid toy video. I think the hardest part for me with Steve DiAngelo is that we were the group, like our friends were the group that was pushing back against him when we were saying, hey, guy, this isn't gonna work. It's gonna screw a lot of people. And he put so much money and hate behind it to push back against us. And at the end he realized, oh, I don't get to play ball. I'm not a multi-trillionaire like these people that are gonna own cannabis. This isn't fair and I don't like what I see. But we all saw that long before he did and he fought against us. So it's like, yeah, we get, you don't see it now, but if they would let you play ball you probably would have, you know? That's the way I look at it with him. Very disingenuous fellow. I've never understood really California in general because California is as big as Columbia almost in population, right? California has, I don't know, 45 million people. Columbia has 50 million people. So it's an entire country. It's huge. It has an ocean, it has mountains, it has a desert. I don't really understand why California doesn't secede from the US. Oh, all about it. Which it's the fourth largest economy in the world, I think fourth or sixth, but around there, right? So just the state of California. So I don't, it's huge, right? What it's going on in California when you talk about, it's so different from the information that we get around here. But it is, okay, so I found it. It is called, it's a Forbes documentary. So I'm gonna put it here in the chat, Forbes. And it's called How America Watched Cannabis Legalization. Gotcha, let's see. And it was released five days ago. So I watched it this week. Oh, interesting, okay. Yeah, and I think that it's an interesting take. I don't think, I think that the documentary should be how California, right? Because what's going on in the other states is completely different, yes. California is the biggest market in the entire US, yes. But what's going on here in New York, it's very different from what happened in Colorado. And it's very different from what's going on in California. So I think that we have to keep that in mind, but I totally recommend this documentary. When I was looking at early on in California, when it was first going legal with 215, what I saw was like stuff in Amsterdam where they had bedrocon, it started out as like, there were shops, all of a sudden you couldn't grow, now you can't sell seeds, you can't make seeds. But one corporation was able to take it over and get the main thing. Then I saw in Israel, like the same kind of stuff happen. I saw in Canada, started going that way too. And then in California with the Prop 64, everybody was kind of like, well, it's looking like it's gonna be too expensive for any of the legacy farmers to own any licenses. And we couldn't even afford to buy the equipment to surveil ourselves with the cameras, let alone, afford to run a business and make money off that when the guy down the street is quadrupling the production on us and able to charge and able to run at a loss for 10 years. Whereas we're small farmers, we can't run at a loss for a year, let alone 10. And they know that they can wipe out the market that way and drive everyone out. Yes, I agree. I mean, I don't know, honestly, I don't know. I know that Israel is very governmentally controlled, isn't it? Yes, yes, yes. As well as the Netherlands. Yes. So I think that here in the US it's different because you can get corporations that are multi-billion dollar corporations where you have a guy just spend billions of dollars in a social media. Yeah, yeah. Right, I think because there is no, the capitalism here is going to an extreme. But I do think that you need some sort of governmental regulations in some sense. And I think that the problem of California was that there may have been too much governmental regulations. And that you're requiring the legal industry to operate at a loss compared to the illicit market. Right, the illicit market must not test as thoroughly the illicit market does not have to have the packaging. So I think that you're operating at a loss due to those particular laws and regulations, which is something that New York State, for example, different from Colorado. Colorado is not as regulated as California or New York State. And now in New York State, it's kind of like, hey, do not make people test, like make them test as you would test for a tomato. Right? Yeah, yeah. If you're going to consume the tomato and yeah. Yeah, I went apple peaking three weeks ago, two weeks ago, and I took an apple from the tree and I ate it. I am fine. I am sure that there were some living organism in that apple. I am sure what it didn't kill me, right? Had I smoked that apple, I think that I'm still not be dead. Yeah. Same thing with weed, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, I totally agree. I just hope that there's a time where anywhere in anywhere that people just don't settle for like, and I feel like that was the attitude with Prop 64 and 215 for that matter. Like they're finally going to give us a little bit. Why don't we just take what we can get now and maybe fight for more later? And what I've learned like just in all laws is like, they don't really give you what they aren't willing to lose. And if they're not willing to lose more than that, you're never going to get it. It's what benefits whoever is in power and can pay the piper. So, but I do think that there are some people that are in power that are actually looking for the best for their people. Yes, I do understand that some people are in power and it's like, I have the power and I'm the king, but I do actually think that there are some people who are in power that are kind of like, hey, let's build something. That's why I think elections are so important. But I also think that many of the laws and regulations, for example, regarding the 0.3% THC, like I always, why didn't they ask me about that regulation, which makes no sense? Who is going to get high on a 0.8 THC fiber hemp when you go to a dispensary and you have a 98% concentrate? It makes no sense at all. It doesn't make sense. Like who did they consult for these kind of laws? Yeah. Do we know who they consult for these kind of laws? That's horrible. I mean, there's some regulations here in New York state that are kind of like, dude, you have never grown a plant before, right? Like, you're limiting the acreage size and how are you determining some of these laws? How are you determining? So do you have a houseplant? Do you have a plant living in your living room? There's some regulations that are just, you know, a guide decided, a lawyer that knew how to write laws decided. Yeah. We have got a long way to go, but I'm really excited about the future, especially as it comes to science with breeding because I'm such a, I'm such a nerve when it comes to breeding, like I love the idea, whether it's through successful, there's successive generations and breeding in a trait or whether it's being able to eliminate a trait completely that has no beneficial anything to what we're doing, that helps, that helps breeding. That helps us make our projects with successive generations even easier. So I'm super stoked to see what you do. And I'd be really excited to work with you on any level in that in the future. And I really appreciate you taking your time tonight to come and hang out with me in a conversation. I want to have you back soon. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I'm excited to one because my job in extension in Cornell is very related to farmers. I hope that I get to do that with onsite with cannabis farmers and hemp as well, you know, for grain and hopefully for grain. I hope that I get to do that here as well. And I think that breeding, that's going to be the key, right? It's going to be yet, I think. Well, I'm excited that we're also having conversations. Thank you very much for having me.