With all the complications of running a cannabis business, it’s easy to forget that cannabis is a plant: a living organism with its own genetics that takes care and cultivation to grow. To get all the various strains that now fill our stores, there are things a grower can do to improve those genetics and test to make sure we’re getting the highest quality plant possible.
However, cannabis isn’t just any plant. If you’re trying to grow blueberries, you would have lots of options in terms of genetics. You’d go to a company like Driscoll’s, provide your soil and latitude, and describe the kind of blueberries you’re hoping to grow. They would sell you the kinds of plants designed for your region.
With cannabis, however, traditional nurseries don’t exist. If you’re looking for a mother plant, you basically go to “some guy.” Then you create an in-house nursery, or mother room, where you try to keep that plant healthy – but it’s a huge risk. There’s the time and expense of taking care of the mother plant, not to mention the loss of grow space. Then there’s the ever-present threat of pests. It can end up taking a toll on a cultivator who already has dozens of other things to focus on.
That’s why we wanted to talk to Kevin Brooks, a visionary entrepreneur. Kevin is the CEO and founder of Conception Nurseries, the sole provider of commercial scale, multi-state tissue culture services within the cannabis sector. It takes businesses like Kevin’s – which holds the distinction of being the largest global cannabis plant provider – to make sure that the industry has legitimate, safe product to consume.
So what does it mean to outsource tissue culture and why would a cultivator want to try? Here’s what we discussed.
Fixing the Cannabis Supply Chain
The cannabis industry has come a long way, in terms of technology. Today, LED lights, HVAC systems and even the retail POS systems are all customized for cannabis rather than just repurposed from other industries. But what about the plant itself?
How do you provide clean, consistent, performance trial plants that growers can count on, in every harvest? Most growers use a mother room which is a vector for pests and disease. Even without that threat, there’s the issue of plant degradation over time: Each time you take a cut off a mother plant, it’s increasingly different genetically.
“Over time you start to see this degradation in plant performance,” Kevin says. “Then it’s this hockey-stick kind of drop off.”
The only way to rejuvenate your stock, he explains, is through tissue culture – essentially banking those genetics long term.
That’s a highly specialized, risky, expensive task – which requires the time, space and expertise most growers lack. Conception Nurseries offers an outsourced option: “Most growers want to grow really great product,” Kevin says. “They also don’t want to manage their own in-house nurseries. That’s where we step in: We allow them to turn that risk/cost center into a profit center by supplying either their mother plants or production clones.”
Benefits of Outsourcing Tissue Culture
When you outsource tissue culture, you choose from a menu of plants that perform well in different environments.
Because Conception Nurseries uses meristem culturing – cutting the heart of plants – the process takes about a year. With that kind of investment, they’re necessarily choosy about their plants and provide the results of their in-house and external testing to confirm quality with growers who receive a 3.5 inch plant with a very developed rootball, delivered in a hermetically sealed bag.
Some growers start with a small order, testing the outsourced waters before jumping in and giving up on in-house production all together, which allows them to turn their mother room into a flower room.
When it comes time to measure performance, Kevin finds his plants overperform for growers in every area. They get a higher yield, better THC consistency and spend less on integrated pest management. For some customers, he’s backed up this confidence by making a deal to share in the risk – and in the upside when it overperforms.
The Case for a High Degree of Specialization
Outsourcing tissue culture is an example of embracing a high degree of specialization in the supply chain – a rarity in the cannabis industry that faces strong pressure for full vertical integration, unlike other industries.
But in an industry that’s capital constrained, it’s essential that each piece of the supply chain works exceptionally well – a belief Kevin shares with many top industry performers, like Jake Berry of Loud Labs and Marianne Cursetjee of Alibi Cannabis.
As problems of pests, disease and degradation increase, outsourcing tissue culture will likely become a more common practice.
“Most growers are aware of tissue culture as a solution,” Kevin says. “But, like anything in this space, they’re apprehensive about jumping two feet in – and rightfully so. The process of outsourcing becomes ‘crawl, walk, run.’ They purchase a handful of plants from us, we make sure the plants perform throughout their life cycle and then, at the end, the feedback is usually overwhelmingly positive. So, they do another order, and it just evolves into a relationship.”
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