Using Tissue Culture to Accelerate Propagation and Combat Pathogens with Bill Graham

Ben Amirault Cultivation, Podcast Leave a Comment

Bill Graham is the Founder of Microcline Tissue Culture, a company that provides tissue culture kits, consulting, and training to cannabis cultivators. With hands-on expertise, he retailed and distributed hydroponics supplies, sourced grow lights globally, created Biojuice nutrients, designed Phresh filter air quality systems, and simplified micropropagation cloning – creating the leading Microclone tissue culture kits in 2005. During our …

Manipulating Environmental Factors to Improve Cannabis Yield with Mitchell Westmoreland

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Mitchell Westmoreland is a Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Bruce Bugbee in the Crop Physiology Laboratory at Utah State University. His Ph.D. research focuses on whole-plant physiology and cultivation of medical Cannabis in controlled environments. He has published his research on photobiology and plant nutrition in high-impact peer-reviewed scientific journals. I spoke with Mitch about the various environmental factors that contribute to …

Managing Total Yeast and Mold with Zamir Punja, PhD

Ben Amirault Cultivation, Podcast, Safety Leave a Comment

Zamir Punja, PhD is a Professor of Plant Biotechnology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. His research interests include the etiology and management of plant diseases on vegetable and horticultural crops, and the applications of plant biotechnology for disease management. Since 2018, his work has shifted to researching cannabis, where his group has described a range of previously unreported pathogens …

Preventing and Eliminating Hop Latent Viroid from Cannabis with Zamir Punja, PhD

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VIDEO VERSION AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE Dr. Zamir Punja is a Professor of Plant Biotechnology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. His research interests include the etiology and management of plant diseases on vegetable and horticultural crops, and the applications of plant biotechnology for disease management. Since 2018, his work has shifted to researching cannabis, where his group has described a …

Fighting Costly Plant Pathogens with Michael Straumietis

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If you grow or consume cannabis, you’ve benefited from something Michael Straumietis has done. A grower since 1983, Michael’s mission is to make cannabis an acceptable and everyday part of healing humanity. In 1999, he founded Advanced Nutrients and launched the world’s first and only complete cannabis growing system that Hits the Shift and optimizes all phases of the vegetative …

Field-Portable Testing Solutions for Cannabis with Russell Jessup, PhD

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Dr. Russel Jessup is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University. Russ started his career developing improved perennial grasses as biorefinery platforms for biofuels, turfgrasses, forage, ornamentals, phytoremediators, and renewable bio-based products. He has since transitioned into working on breeding industrial hemp, during which, he and his team identified a need for field-portable testing technologies that could help accelerate their programs. …

How Hormones Affect Cannabinoid Synthesis with Lauren Sands, MSc.

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Lauren is a Senior Laboratory Technician at SafeTiva Labs in Westfield, MA. She works in both the biological and chemical side of operations, utilizing PCR and chromatography to test cannabis products. Lauren recently obtained her M.S. in Plant Science with a focus on cannabis molecular biology at the University of Connecticut where she focused on how hormones affect cannabinoid production.  …

Analyzing Photosynthesis in Cannabis Leaves with Allison Justice, PhD

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Allison Justice is the Founder and CEO of The Hemp Mine, a 30-acre hemp farm in South Carolina that supplies premium hemp genetics bred in-house across the US. The Hemp Mine produces a wide array of consumer products ranging from smokable flowers to topicals to tinctures of different concentrations for humans and animals. Allison also co-founded the Cannabis Research Coalition, …

Phenohunting and Breeding Stable Cannabis Seeds with Nathaniel Pennington

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Nathaniel Pennington is the Founder and CEO of Humboldt Seed Company. He has been supplying high-quality cannabis seeds to growers since 2001. In 2018 they hosted the World’s Largest Phenotype Hunt, teaming with local farmers, industry experts, and top researchers, many of whom are CannMed alumni. We talked about the Mega Phenohunt Project as well as Nat’s process for breeding …