A new technological innovation in the cannabinoid industry might leave many thinking: Well, so what?
But the not-so-new tech enabling growers to sort seeds before planting could be a major cost cutter in an industry built on fine margins and continually having to compete with cheaper, untaxed black market products.
The new technique – still only a proof-of-concept study in terms of cannabis – was unveiled at a trade show earlier this year. It uses AI-driven machines coupled with spectral analysis to sort seeds. The technique is already widely used in the production of other crops such as tomatoes, both helping to prove that it could be of actual use in cannabis and bringing about one of those “why didn’t anyone think of doing this sooner?” moments.
What would really save the day for cannabis is the ability to identify the sex of seeds before planting. If growers were provided with female-guaranteed seeds, they would then be able to plant flower-producing females with significantly less hassle.
The companies behind the product are Innexo, which is involved in medical cannabis research and cultivation, in collaboration with Innoveins Seed Solutions, a Dutch provider of support and research programmes in seed-related fields, and SeQso, a Dutch company specialising in seed-sorting machines and seed analysis instruments. They say the technology could be used to identify other important traits such as germination rate, flowering characteristics and “off-types” – variations from the expected traits of a particular strain.
Moving on from cloning
A lot of medical cannabis is currently cultivated through clones. Cloning ensures better consistency in product type while also guaranteeing female plants. However, moving to seed production could be better in the long run as it would allow companies to innovate more and develop new phenotypes. It would also remove some challenges with cloning such as reliance on maintaining the mother plant and issues over rooting as well as vigour.
Several businesses have adopted hybrid seeds as a more scalable and cost-effective alternative to cloning, the companies behind the technology said. They believe their advanced sorting will further improve the stability and quality of the seeds while also eliminating the costs associated with accidentally growing male plants.
The technology uses spectral imaging and AI machine learning to analyse and sort seeds based on genetic and phenotypic traits. The companies behind it took existing models used for other crops and screened 600 seeds of six different cultivars – collecting over 5,000 data points per individual seed.
The subsequent grow-out was performed under controlled conditions, and a variety of traits were annotated. After statistical modelling of the annotated traits with the spectral dataset, the resulting traits with sorting viability were identified.
The next step will be to involve seed companies and breeders in order to develop specialist sorting algorithims for their specific cultivars. Widespread application of the technique could lead to cheaper production of cannabinoids and to knock-on effects across the wider cannabinoid space.
– Freddie Dawson CannIntelligence senior contributing editor
Photo: Dylan Hunter, Crystalweed cannabis