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Tips and Technology to Advance Your Grow Facility

The six-year study will analyze how biochar treatments and hemp rotations improve crop yields.

Washington State University Launches $5M Study on the Effects of Hemp and Biochar on Soil Health

This article explores fundamental principles of photobiology, including Photosynthetically Active Radiation, photoreceptor-mediated responses, and the spectral influences on plant morphology and development.

A Call for More Representative Horticultural Lighting Metrics for Cannabis Cultivation

ILGM and Leafly announce their Home Grow Tour that will visit cities throughout the US to help educate growers on cannabis cultivation.

Home Grow Tour Launched by ILGM and Leafly for Cannabis Cultivation Inspiration

The internship will provide hands-on experience in medical cannabis cultivation in the country’s expanding medical cannabis market.

Aurora Cannabis Announces Cultivation Internship Program in Germany

Advancements in blockchain technology point toward an evolving landscape where transparency, security protocols, and regulatory compliance integrate into standard cannabis operations.

Exploring Blockchain Applications for the Cannabis Industry

 sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. Here we present a clip from this interview.

Watch the clip for insights into the importance of soil health, read the transcript below, and 

Cannabis Science and Technology sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. 

Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation: The Importance of Soil Health

On a scale of 1 to 10, how does soil health rank in importance of cannabis cultivation?

: How important is your soil? 10. But there's levels, right? There's multiple different levels to what somebody would consider soil health. Is healthy soil to you, bagged soil from the hardware store, or is healthy soil to you “no till, living soil completely amended out”? It's completely different levels of how important, and then how important is soil in comparison to hydroponics, aeroponics? Because then you're looking at the difference between – it's like anything grown in soil is like a sit down, fancy dinner and aeroponics, hydroponics is like McDonald's. So, there's levels, but if your soil health isn't right, other than having, let's say, no light, it's the most detrimental thing that can happen to your grow. 

Obviously, when anyone's trying to grow the best plants they possibly can, you want to get the best genetics, you want to get the most efficacious lighting, you want to use the best water, and you want to get the healthiest soil. With the plant being so effective at a process called bioremediation, it can uptake a lot of metals and minerals out of the soil that if you start with a soil laden with arsenic, or lead, or any kind of additives that you don't want in there, there's a chance that that could migrate into your plant tissue, and then you have a negative impact. So even if you're using the world's best genetics from Adam Jacques, and you have the world's best LED lighting, if you have bad soil that doesn't have the right nutrients or the right structure or the right microbes or is laden with heavy metals, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Videos

As we prepare to publish our full Back to Basics: Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation interview, let’s revisit some of the tips and insights from our cultivation experts, Adam Jacques, a world-renowned cannabis geneticist and Zacariah L. Hildenbrand, a research Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

 sat down with Adam Jacques and Zacariah Hildenbrand for a deep dive into cannabis cultivation and crucial role soil plays in your grow. Here we present a clip from this interview.

Watch the clip below for insights into mold and pest issues in soil, read the transcript below, and 

let’s revisit some of the tips and insights from our cultivation experts, Adam Jacques, a world-renowned cannabis geneticist and Zacariah L. Hildenbrand, a research Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Soil’s Crucial Role in Cannabis Cultivation: Mold and Pest Issues

Are certain types of soil more prone to mold and pest issues?

: Types of soil, yes. Additives in the soil can cause issues. A lot of people put bark chip on the soil, which I would now recommend. Then it matters what you're doing with your soils. No till soil will build up heavy metals and a big one right now is Aspergillus, which people are getting in their living soils, no till style. So that is just bad input building up over time and then bioremediating into the plants. I would say that that's not great.

As far as like issues go, if you get a bag of soil, a lot of what I see is bagged soil companies are using municipal compost, which is fine as a thing, but generally municipal compost comes with all the problems of that area. Generally, that's fungus gnats. So when you use a bagged soil, especially indoors, you're going to see an influx of fungus gnats into your space. For us, we are constantly bioremediating with predator insects, so it's not a huge deal for us, but a lot of people bring bagged soil home, and all of a sudden they have an insect infestation of some sort. It's coming out of the bag from the municipal compost. So that can be an issue.

: Honestly, a healthy plant does better against pests and pathogens than an unhealthy plant. If you have this kind of crappy soil which has been amended with all this stuff – I just look at it as like the human body. If you eat garbage food, you don't exercise, you live a sedentary lifestyle, you just take all these pills to kind of maintain your health, you're still susceptible to getting sick. But if you eat properly and you exercise, you do all the right things, then you don't need to have all these additives. Even if you have propensity for some of these things based on the soil quality, if the plants are healthy because they're eating right and they're getting the right light, and there's proper drainage and all these other things, then they're going to be able to fight those infestations off much more readily than you know, a sickly plant.

Filmed live at the Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri, 

 sat down with James Wylde, President and CEO of 

, which provides comprehensive in-house testing technology for growers and producers.

Here, Wylde discusses the importance of crop steering, current technologies and their challenges, and why growers should measure the state of their crop in real time. He also shared details about Greenlight Analytical’s HarvestIQ technology in assisting growers with cannabis cultivation in real time.

During the conference, Wylde also presented, “Maximizing Quality & Revenue with Daily Analytics,” in the Cultivation Track.

Watch the onsite interview at the Cannabis Science and Technology booth and read a partial transcript below for insights into cannabis cultivation innovations.

In this interview, James Wylde, President and CEO of Greenlight Analytical, discusses new cannabis cultivation tools.

Real-Time Cannabis Cultivation Insights: An Interview with James Wylde at Cannabis Science Conference 2024

Is there an efficient way that growers can implement testing during the growing cycle?

: Sure, they could send samples to a lab. But as I mentioned earlier, labs are too slow to get results back in time. Now, growers could build their own labs. However, to build an analytical chemistry lab is very expensive, takes a lot of specialized skills, a lot of specialized equipment. It's really too cost prohibitive, too labor intensive prohibitive for most producers to implement their own lab. Even if they do build their own lab, sometimes the results come back in hours to even a day, even from a typical analytical lab. So it's very important for producers to have access to technologies that give them very accurate results on how the plants are doing, but doing it in real time and doing it accurately. And being easy enough to use that they don't have to go and hire PhD scientists to operate them.

So for example, in our case, we develop the HarvestIQ, which is based on the same technology that they use in the laboratories, but we build some technology around it that makes it a lot easier to use than a typical lab instrument, and utilizes things like AI and machine learning to make the results easy to understand that you don't need specialized skills to operate them. It's more and more important that producers have access to these sorts of technologies for the whole spectrum of growing indoors. For example, all these systems, as I mentioned earlier, are all connected together. So they're not controlling different things independently. They're all being controlled together. It's important that you have access to technologies that also feed back to the control system to make sure those knobs that I mentioned earlier are turned the right way. So for example, with the HarvestIQ, it can operate as a node in a network. So through our partners like Grownetics, we implement this as another device on the network, so that the conditions are changed when they're trying to steer the crop, the plants are measured, and those results are immediately fed back into the overall control system for a facility.

In this interview at the Cannabis Science Conference, James Wylde, President and CEO of Greenlight Analytical, discusses new cannabis cultivation tools.

Taking place May 7–9, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri, Cannabis Science Conference is the premier cannabis science conference focusing on analytical science, medical cannabis, cultivation, and compliance. Heading our Cultivation Program is Zacariah Hildenbrand, PhD. Dr. Hildenbrand is a research Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, the principal founder of Inform Environmental, a partner of Medusa Analytical, and is a director of the Curtis Mathes Corporation (OTC:CMCZ). He is also a regular contributor to 

Get a sneak peek into the Cultivation Track with the video below, and register 

 for Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024!

In this 2-minute interview, Program Chair Zacariah Hildenbrand shares insights into the upcoming Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024

Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024: Interview with Cultivation Program Chair Zacariah Hildenbrand, PhD

What are some new topics in cannabis cultivation?

: Well, when it comes to cannabis or hemp cultivation, obviously, a lot of folks are interested in hop latent viroid. Some of these other pathogens, the testing associated thereof. Testing, I would just say testing in general, whether you're looking at pests or pathogens, or you're looking at potency numbers, I think a lot of people are very much concerned with the state of analytical testing in the field right now. And I happen to be one of them. You're going to see a lot of questions, comments, a lot of discussion at the forthcoming Cannabis Science Conference about testing in particular.

What are some topics being covered in the Cultivation Track?

: We're going to cover all of the genetic factors that are associated with providing highly efficacious flower materials, so high THC, high CBD, ancillary cannabinoids, we're going to touch on the terpenes, the various classes of flavonoids, the carotenoids, the anthocyanins. As I mentioned before, we're going to talk about pests and pathogen management. We'll talk about air, soil, water quality, and of course, lighting. Then we're going to have a number of talks, looking kind of at some of the new analytical tools that are coming out, qPCR some of these new techniques that have kind of infiltrated into the cannabis realm.

What are you most looking forward to learning at the conference?

: Ah, just in general, I mean, all of the times that I've gone to this conference have been a fantastic experience, because it's highly collaborative. I get to interact with folks. They're very personable and they're very accessible. And it really leads to the formation of new collaborations on the research front. I think it's a fantastic arena for people to come and establish new business partnerships. It's just way more accessible than anything you're going to see out there. And so I just think it's the quality of the interactions that you have at Cannabis Science Conference that makes it unique.

In this 2-minute interview, Program Chair Zacariah Hildenbrand shares insights into the upcoming Cannabis Science Conference Spring 2024.

 co-founders Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus provide insights into the medical cannabis laws, taxes, and other obstacles patients in the Pacific Northwest must navigate to access their medication, plus the challenges and rewards of methods of at-home cultivation.

Catch up on past interviews or watch the whole series!

Empowerment Through Education, Part I: An Introduction to the Founders of Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest

Empowerment through Education, Part II: 'It's a Big World of Cannabis Out There'

Empowerment through Education, Part III: ‘It’s Not Food Science, It’s Cannabis Science'

Empowerment through Education, Part V: Navigating Medical Cannabis Regulations

Empowerment through Education, Part VI: Cannabis Courses and Outreach

Empowerment through Education, Part VII: Rescheduling, Banking, and Beyond

In this interview, Jeremy Robbins and David Benedicktus explain the medical cannabis laws and cultivation practices patients in the Pacific Northwest navigate.

Empowerment through Education Part IV: Medical Cannabis Grow Laws and Cultivation

Read a partial transcription of the interview below.

 Can you tell us about the Washington cannabis laws? Are you able to cultivate cannabis at home?



20 years ago when I got my first cannabis card, I asked my doctor if he knew anywhere where I could get seeds or clones or any medicine and he just laughed. He said, “that's all up to you. I just signed this thing and I don't know anything else about it.” So yeah, there's something to be said for that, you know, doctors don't have much liability in the medical cannabis space. They sign these things and that's kind of it. In Washington State, you are able to if you receive a medical cannabis authorization that right there. You were able to cultivate four plants.

 Yes, 21 and over! All you have to do is get that script signed by a medical professional, and you can cultivate four plants. If you want to grow 15 plants, you have to get that signed by your medical professional, they have to put the 15 plants on it and then you have to go to one of those medically endorsed recreational dispensaries, and you have to have them enter you into the Washington State Department of Health Registry system and they will then give you a registry card. That registries card then gives you the ability to cultivate 15 plants. Some places you know, Minnesota just legalized and they have a home grow law, where anybody can cultivate four plants and keep for juveniles. Here in Washington State, we don't have a home grow law. So nobody can. You can only grow if you have a medical permit and it does not have the designations of how many plants can be flowering and how many plants can be juveniles.

For me I primarily do outdoor growing. I just throw down 15 plants in my backyard, and I've been doing that for at least 12 years. It gives me the ability to produce quite a bit of biomass. I am an intermediate grower. I kind of know what I'm doing. There's always little, little surprises along the way. But I end up with quite a bit of weed at the end of the season. And so, what that does is that gives me the ability to take care of people so I'm still a caregiver. I give away four ounces of cannabis a month, every month. Pretty much all year long. I have a couple of patients. It's free weed. I recently was talking to someone online, who's involved in an autism support group that uses cannabis and they are paying $100 for seven grams. Yeah, that blew me away and they don't live in a place where they can produce it and/or have caregivers. It's really challenging financially for a lot of these folks. Anyway, so yeah, I grow, I'm also a caregiver and a patient, and so my growing practices are organic. I use primarily topdress products, some fungi, and things like that, but it's all organic and so I produce organically in cannabis. That is potent, is terpene rich, is beautiful, and I really enjoy growing. Not only is it a hobby but it is actually therapy. When I broke my neck, they put me in something called horticulture therapy and believe it or not in that little hospital room, they had all these grow lights. I wouldn't be lying to you if I thought “by god I wonder if I can grow cannabis right here with these fluorescent lights.” Anyway, that's really, it's been a great, great hobby for me. It's also given me the ability to share how I grow from a wheelchair with other wheelchair growers and they may or may not be cultivating cannabis. We all have adaptions that we have to use to grow things, raised beds, containers, using Reacher's, and other sorts of tools that are out there. There really is kind of a whole different set of skills that you that you need to develop if you want to be a wheelchair grower.

Join us for Part IV of this multipart interview series where we dive into the complexities of state cannabis grow laws with the non-profit, Cannabis Patients Pacific Northwest.

Empowerment through Education, Part IV: Medical Cannabis Grow Laws and Cultivation

In this interview with Modine Product Manufacturer Jamie Tuinstra, we discuss how innovative and efficient heating technologies benefit cannabis growers 

Heating Technology in Cannabis Cultivation: An Interview with Jamie Tuinstra of Modine Manufacturing

Too busy to watch the video? Read through the full conversation below:

Can you explain how using secondary heat exchanger technology and a robust tubular primary heat exchanger design helps with energy efficiency?

 A standard efficient unit, when we talk about efficiency and we're talking about 80% or a little bit higher, uses a single primary heat exchanger. And what that does is the heat blows through that heat exchanger and a fan goes across it and it pulls that heat out through that primary heat exchanger. So you're pulling the heat out of the metal, into the space. But as time has evolved and as efficiencies become more and more important, technologies move to combining a secondary heat exchanger. So instead of one, now you have two. And the idea is that your heat runs through the primary heat exchanger and then it actually will run through the secondary heat exchanger. And what we're doing is extracting the maximum amount of heat that we can out of those heat exchangers. So all that fuel that's burned, you want to pull as much heat out as you can to put it in the space. Because if you don't, you're basically just taking that heat and throwing it right out the stack and out the building. So having a secondary heat exchanger just optimizes pulling that heat out into the space. So whatever they're burning, the dollars they’re spending on that fuel, they're getting the most in that space versus moving it out of the space. That's really where that comes from and that's why you'd want to have a primary and a secondary heat exchanger in these systems.

What are some unique challenges that your heater overcomes that are specific to cannabis growing?

 In the cannabis world, or in any really growing world, plants have a requirement for temperatures to grow the best that they can. So it all depends on the stages of these plants, but unit heaters can maintain a constant temperature in these spaces, which is really reliable. Number one, you can put a heater in one building and say that building is growing cannabis and they need it to be a certain temperature. You can have that unit do that. And in another room, maybe it's a different plant they're doing or a different strand of cannabis that they're doing that needs to be a different temperature. These units, once they're set, they will maintain that temperature in that space. That helps with the space. The other thing would be, these plants are sensitive to humidity levels, issues like mold and mildew. So running these heaters can help balance that. Just keeping the heat at a constant temperature will help balance that out. These units also have a blower motor on the back of them, whether it's a propeller fan or whether it's just a blower style motor. And what that does is they can actually have these units run the fans consistently all the time and it'll actually help with air circulation in that space. So you're not having dead spots in the grower’s building, just like a home furnace. You could turn your fan to the on position and it actually helps keep the temperatures more even in the space so these heaters can do that as well. You can have localized heat. We talked about that a little bit, which I think is good for growers, depending on their setups. Some of them have very, very large growers and they have a wide open space and you can have multiple unit heaters in there to heat this space, or maybe they want to segment it off based on what they're growing. So having them in specific areas really helps. I would think lastly, especially in a growing operation, when you look at the overall footprint of the greenhouse, how they make their money is the growing space. So keeping the growing space available, meaning the floor level and maximizing that, that's key for these growers. So these units are designed to be hung above the growing areas, not taking up any floor space or any headroom. Certainly you could have these lower and you can do things like that. But in a growing application, they want to maximize their growing space. So these are tucked out of the way; they're going to be hung up typically near the roof. So you have all sorts of room underneath it, headroom. Basically they're tucked out of the way for these growers. So those are some of the things I think that are really critical for the growers as far as maintaining temperatures, footprints of the units, how they operate, and where they can be placed.

Can the heaters be used for a variety of growing methods?

There's a number of ways that, depending on what they're growing, they have what they call “bench growing” where we've actually had our heaters underneath a bench and blowing heat to warm the tables up. So we we've seen that, we've seen all sorts of vertical growth. These are very, very flexible. So what I would say is wherever there is a need, it probably really doesn't matter what they're growing or how they're growing, if they need heated air, our units are going to be able to provide that. They're very flexible as far as where you put them, surprisingly enough. In in a greenhouse market, it's probably the more harsh environments to have equipment in, you can understand what the humidity levels and so forth. We’ve in the greenhouse market for decades and our products are really driven around that. So very flexible, so whatever growing they plan on doing, I'm sure our units are going to work just great for them.

Do you encounter any issues with varying regulations throughout the US?

Yeah, currently we don't. Now when you when you look at the cannabis market, there certainly are a lot of regulations on growing and selling and so forth, but for our equipment to go into their space, it's no different than our equipment going into a pole barn or in a manufacturing building. What we're providing these growers with is a source of heat to keep their buildings warm through the winter months. Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't any out there that we don't know about. So it's always critical for these growers and their contractors that are putting in that they check with all local codes and all local ordinances to make sure they're following the proper laws in those spaces, but to our knowledge right now there, there's nothing that says they couldn't put these heaters in these spaces. They're fully certified for greenhouse markets and that's really where we focus on – making sure our product is safe and reliable and meets all those codes to be placed in these facilities. Our products is, but again they would just make sure that they check with the local codes.

What other new innovations are you bringing to the cannabis industry?

There's two and the biggest one we touched on in the beginning is the high efficiency unit heater. So for decades, the unit heater market and the unit heater product has always been a mid-efficient product and when I say that, I alluded that to a little bit earlier, is about 80% efficient. So when you when you talk about that the simplest terms is: 80% of the heat is going into the space and 20% is going out of the building. So every time you're heating that and the money you spend, you're losing about 20% of your value going out the stack. So as technology has evolved and as we've gone into these higher efficient units and using these secondary heat exchangers, now you can get north of 97% efficient, so only 3% is going out. That can vary depending on the product, but these units have gotten so much more advanced over the years. So, putting that in perspective for the cannabis growers, the technology to have a high efficiency unit in their growing facility is essential for them to save more money. So you can imagine 20%, you're talking one unit heater. If you're wasting 20% fuel going out to stack, now you're only wasting 6%, 3% going out. And now you start to multiply these units. So say they have 20 units in a growing space, some of them have hundreds in there. Fuel bills for the grower could be their number one expense. So lowering that fuel cost for these for these growers puts more money back in their pocket, more money in their business, so that's probably the biggest thing for the growers right now is putting in high efficiency units in their growing facilities so that they can start to recover some of those fuel costs. So that's the big one. The second one I would say is become more popular as time has moved on, is a building management system. Let’s say you have multiple unit heaters, or say you have one, but they have a computer system that centrally monitors all these homes, all these houses, all their operations, what the temperature is. We actually have a communication system that's already from our factory in there that they can tie into their computer system to tie these all one to one location. So somebody can go in and they can set the temperatures and building 1, or maybe they want to have the fan on in building 2. So it's a centralized system for them to utilize to make their products and their homes more efficient. It's not used widely right now in the greenhouse world. You will see it, but it is something that's kind of unique. So it's out there and it will help for those with bigger operations. Some smaller homes will have them, but bigger ones certainly do. So that's really the two big ones that we have today.

Jamie Tuinstra, product manufacturer at Modine Manufacturing, sits down with Cannabis Science and Technology in an informative interview where he discusses how heat exchanger technology can help support energy efficiency, the equipment his company featured at the Cannabis Science Conference Fall 2023, and challenges heaters need to overcome with cannabis cultivation.

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