Tag Archives: cannabis genetics

Genetics determines cannabis potency, flavor, and therapeutic value. Choose the right cultivar, stabilize the right traits, and the chemistry will follow. But a new in-depth biological study suggests that genetics may be only part of the equation.

A recent study published in Frontiers in Plant Science reveals that chromatin accessibility—an epigenetic mechanism that determines whether genes are “open” or “closed”—can significantly influence cannabinoid and flavonoid production, as well as trichome density, without altering the plant’s DNA. In other words, two genetically identical plants can perform very differently depending on how their genes are expressed.

These findings highlight a layer of plant biology that could redefine the next frontier in cannabis production.

Genetics vs. Epigenetics: Why Some Plants Outperform Others

To understand the study’s impact, it helps to distinguish between genetics and epigenetics.

Genetics determines which genes a plant has
Epigenetics determines whether those genes are accessible and active

Chromatin—the structure that packages DNA—can exist in either an “open” or “closed” state. When chromatin is open, transcription machinery can access genes and turn them on. When it’s closed, even high-value genes may remain largely silent.

The researchers liken this to a cookbook: owning a recipe doesn’t matter if the page is stuck shut.

Inside the Study: Comparing High- and Low-Trichome Cannabis

The research team analyzed two industrial hemp cultivars with starkly different characteristics:

One cultivar with dense glandular trichomes
One cultivar with sparse trichomes and lower secondary metabolite content

They used an integrated “multi-omics” approach, combining:

Metabolomics (what compounds the plant actually produces)
Transcriptomics (RNA-seq) (which genes were expressed)
ATAC-seq (which regions of the genome were epigenetically accessible)

The goal: determine not just what differed between the plants, but why.

How This Differs From Tissue Culture and Genetic “Cleanup”

Tissue culture is already a foundational tool in modern cannabis breeding and propagation. Breeders routinely use micropropagation and meristem culture to eliminate pathogens such as viruses and viroids, stabilize elite cultivars, and preserve valuable genetics over time.

That process addresses plant health and genetic integrity. Epigenetic regulation, by contrast, addresses plant performance.

When a cultivar is cleaned through tissue culture, its DNA sequence remains unchanged, but that does not guarantee consistent expression of cannabinoids, flavonoids, or trichome density once the plant is grown at scale. Two plants derived from the same clean mother can still exhibit markedly different chemical profiles depending on how their genes are activated during development.

This is where the new research adds an important layer of understanding.

The study shows that chromatin accessibility—an epigenetic mechanism—determines whether key metabolic pathways are actually switched on, even when the underlying genetics are identical and disease-free. In high-performing plants, chromatin surrounding flavonoid biosynthesis and trichome development genes is more “open,” allowing those genes to be expressed at higher levels. In lower-performing plants, the same genes exist but remain less accessible.

Simply put, tissue culture ensures breeders are starting with a clean, stable genetic foundation. Epigenetics helps explain why that foundation does not always translate into consistent potency, flavor, or secondary metabolite richness in commercial production.

Rather than replacing tissue culture, epigenetic insights are an opportunity to manipulate a plant’s performance and increase its value. They suggest that the next frontier for breeders and cultivators may lie not only in preserving elite genetics, but also in understanding how cultivation conditions, plant hormones, and developmental cues influence chromatin state and, ultimately, chemical output.

Flavonoids: Directly Controlled by Chromatin Accessibility

One of the clearest findings involved flavonoids, compounds that contribute to color, aroma, antioxidant activity, and therapeutic nuance.

In the high-trichome cultivar:

Chromatin surrounding flavonoid biosynthesis genes was significantly more open
These genes showed higher expression levels
Flavonoids such as kaempferol and quercetin derivatives accumulated at much higher levels

In other words, chromatin accessibility directly governed flavonoid production. When the chromatin opened, the chemistry followed.

For brands focused on full-spectrum formulations or flavor-forward products, this finding is particularly significant.

Cannabinoids: An Indirect Epigenetic Effect

Cannabinoid regulation turned out to be more complex.

While cannabinoid levels (including THC-related compounds and cannabichromene) were higher in the high-trichome cultivar, the chromatin accessibility of the core cannabinoid synthase genes (such as CBDAS and OAC) was not dramatically different between cultivars.

Instead, epigenetics influenced cannabinoids indirectly by activating pathways that control:

Fatty acid biosynthesis (key cannabinoid precursors)
Glandular trichome initiation and density
Flowering and jasmonate hormone signaling

The takeaway: epigenetics doesn’t just control the “factory,” it controls the supply chain and factory size.

More precursors, more trichomes, and greater flowering activity ultimately led to higher cannabinoid accumulation.

Trichome Density is a Critical Epigenetic Lever

Because cannabinoids are synthesized and stored in glandular trichomes, trichome density is a decisive factor in potency.

The study found that genes responsible for trichome development—such as GLABRA2—were both:

More epigenetically accessible
More highly expressed

Hormone-responsive genes tied to methyl jasmonate (MeJA), a known trichome stimulant, were also epigenetically activated in the high-performing cultivar.

This suggests that epigenetic regulation of trichome development may be one of the most powerful levers for increasing cannabinoid yield.

Why This Matters for the Cannabis Industry

For cultivators

The findings help explain why identical genetics can perform differently across environments. Light spectrum, stress, hormones, and cultivation practices may influence chromatin state—and therefore chemical output.

For breeders

The study points to epigenetic markers that could complement genetic selection.

For brands and formulators

This research adds scientific weight to the “entourage effect,” showing that chemical complexity is biologically coordinated rather than accidental. It also supports investment in cultivars bred for consistent metabolite expression, not just headline THC numbers.

Cannabis Quality Just Took A Step Up

Ultimately, the study reframes cannabis richness as a three-layer system:

Chromatin accessibility → gene expression → metabolite production.

Rather than asking only which genes a plant carries, the industry may increasingly need to ask which genes are accessible—and under what conditions.

January 5, 2026

Cannabis Seeds Could Be The Next Frontier For Space AgTech

By Pam Chmiel

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NASA’s core mission is to explore space and aeronautics, expand scientific knowledge, develop breakthrough technologies, and ultimately bring new knowledge and opportunity back to Earth. What many people do not realize is that some of NASA’s most impactful discoveries have reshaped industries far beyond aerospace, including modern agriculture.

Vertical farming and LED lighting are two widely adopted agtech innovations that trace their roots back to space research. Scientists studying long-duration space missions discovered that specific wavelengths of blue light influence how the human body produces melatonin, helping regulate circadian rhythms in environments without natural daylight. That same research revealed that precisely tuned light spectra could support photosynthesis and plant growth indoors. These findings laid the groundwork for modern LED grow lighting. Around the same time, Columbia University introduced the concept of vertical farming, defined as multi-level crop production within controlled environments. The approach was tested for space-based food production and has since become a cornerstone of urban and indoor agriculture on Earth.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dylan Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, a multinational space exploration company building next-generation space infrastructure for NASA and other global space agencies, suggested that seeds may represent the next frontier for space-based agricultural technology. Taylor emphasized that space presents extraordinary opportunities for agtech research that could meaningfully improve crop performance, resilience, and sustainability back on Earth.

That thesis is already being tested. StarLab Oasis, an Abu Dhabi-based agricultural research firm partnered with Voyager Space, is leveraging the space environment’s unique combination of microgravity, deep-space radiation, and launch vibration to develop crop seeds with novel and beneficial traits. On Earth, plant breeders routinely apply physical stressors such as drought, temperature fluctuations, nutrient limitation, and high-intensity light to identify plants that retain vigor, yield efficiently, and resist disease and pests. Space takes this concept to an entirely new level. According to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, space breeding has already produced more than 200 plant and fruit varieties, including rice, wheat, maize, soybeans, cotton, and tomatoes. These varieties have generated an estimated $29.9 billion worth of agricultural output, totaling more than 1.3 million tonnes of food.

Cannabis, To the Moon

Martian Grow is now bringing this space-breeding approach to cannabis. Founded by Božidar Radišič, a longtime cannabis researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Health Sciences in Slovenia, the company is focused on formal scientific research into cannabis biology and real-world applications. Martian Grow launched its first space-breeding mission on June 23, 2025, aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg, California. The research capsule itself was designed and sealed in Germany.

That initial mission did not go as planned. The capsule failed during atmospheric reentry, and the seeds were not recovered, meaning no experimental data could be collected. While disappointing, the outcome was not entirely unexpected in a field where engineering, physics, and biology intersect under extreme conditions.

Since then, Martian Grow has regrouped and significantly strengthened its leadership and technical team by bringing on American executive John Bernard McQueeney as CEO. McQueeney and his partner, Will Jasper, first attempted to send cannabis seeds into space in 2023 after learning about a Chinese space-breeding experiment that produced a drought-resistant wheat variety. That variety has since become the second most widely grown wheat strain in China.

Their initial proposal to conduct cannabis research aboard the International Space Station was rejected by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, due to cannabis’s Schedule I status at the time. CASIS serves as the United States’ operational arm of the ISS National Laboratory, which Congress established to expand access to the space environment and unlock research and commercialization opportunities in low Earth orbit.

In an interview, McQueeney explained that space-based seed experiments are well established across agriculture. Seeds are routinely sent into orbit and exposed to cosmic radiation, microgravity, extreme cold, and other stressors. “That combination of stressors induces higher rates of mutation in the genome, particularly in embryonic cells that are not yet fully developed,” McQueeney said. “Seeds are one of the most effective biological sample types for this kind of research.”

June 2026 Lift Off

As Martian Grow prepares for its next launch in June 2026, the company has partnered with some of the most respected names in legacy cannabis genetics. These collaborators are providing original genetics that will be grown out post-mission and closely analyzed for phenotypic variation, genetic mutation, and trait expression.

According to McQueeney, the growing list of partners includes Phylos BioScience, Sensi Seeds in the Netherlands, Canadian breeder Dwight Diotte, Huckleberry Hill Farms, Ridgeline Farms, and Kevin Jodrey of Wonderland Farms and the Cookies R&D Lab. The team has also been joined by Professor Lumír Hanuš, one of the world’s most respected cannabis scientists. Hanuš previously worked in Raphael Mechoulam’s laboratory in Israel and is credited with describing anandamide, the first endocannabinoid identified in the human brain.

The Plan

Martian Grow’s research plan is ambitious and methodical. Cannabis seeds will be sent to low Earth orbit for nine months, where they will be exposed to sustained microgravity and cosmic radiation. After recovery, the seeds will be grown under tightly controlled conditions on Earth to evaluate phenotypic, genetic, and epigenetic changes.

Biology adapts when exposed to pressures outside its normal environment. Spaceflight introduces two pressures that plants never evolved to manage: microgravity and cosmic radiation. When stable parent-line seeds spend extended time in orbit, they are forced to reorganize internal regulatory systems simply to survive. Those changes can result in entirely new expressions of vigor, yield, and resilience.

McQueeney points to studies from China conducted over the past decade showing that space environments induce higher mutation rates than traditional radiation-based breeding methods on Earth.

Martian Grow compares space-exposed seeds to Earth-based controls using whole-genome sequencing, transcriptomics, epigenetic analysis, metabolomics, and AI-driven multi-omic modeling. This approach enables researchers to map the full causal chain linking the environment, biological stress, adaptive responses, and heritable trait development.

Radišič notes that the past year has been spent rigorously preparing for the June 2026 flight. The team has tested its capsules in Germany using plasma wind tunnels designed to simulate reentry conditions, including the extreme heat and aerothermal forces experienced during high-speed atmospheric descent. The company’s thermal protection system is led by Maximilian Maigler, PhD, one of the world’s most prominent German space scientists, who has already delivered two thermal protection designs for Mars landings.

Martian Grow currently has three launches scheduled and is operationally prepared for up to five missions. The company plans to use traditional CubeSat and PocketCube dispensers mounted aboard SpaceX rockets.

Tens of millions of dollars have already been invested globally in similar space-breeding experiments across major crop varieties. While Martian Grow has secured a seed round to support its first launch, the company is actively seeking additional investment to fund future missions and expand its research pipeline.

Those interested in learning more can contact John Bernard McQueeney, CEO, at john@martiangrow.com

May 13, 2016

An Introduction to Cannabis Genetics, Part II

By Dr. CJ Schwartz

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Plants and animals have roughly 25,000 to 30,000 genes. The genes provide the information needed to make a protein, and proteins are the building blocks for all biological organisms. An ideal analogy is a blueprint (DNA) for an alternator (the protein) in a car (the plant). Proteins are the ‘parts’ for living things. Some proteins will work better than others, leading to visible differences that we call phenotypes.

Many traits, and the genes controlling them, are of interest to the cannabis industry. For hemp seed oil, quality, quantity and content can be manipulated through breeding natural genetic variants. Hemp fibers are already some of the best in nature, due to their length and strength. Finding the genes and proteins responsible for elongating the fibers can allow for the breeding of hemp for even longer fibers. In cannabis, the two most popular genes are THCA and CBDA synthases. There are currently over 100 sequences of the THCAS/CBDAS genes, and many natural DNA variations are known. We can make a family tree using just the THCAS, gene data and identify ‘branches’ that result in high, low or intermediate THCA levels. Generally most of the DNA changes have little to no effect on the gene, but some of the changes can have profound effects.

In fact, CBDAS and THCAS are related, in other words, they have a common ancestor. At some point the gene went through changes that resulted in the protein producing CDBA, or THCA or both. This is further supported by the fact that certain CBDAS can produce some THCA, and vice-versa. Studies into the THCAS and CBDAS family are ongoing and extensive, with terpene synthase genes following close behind.

Identifying gene (genetic) variants and characterizing their biological function allows us to combine certain genes in specific combinations to maximize yield, but determining which genes are important (gene discovery) is the first step to utilizing marker-assisted breeding.

Gene Discovery & Manipulation

The term genetics is often misused in the cannabis industry. Genetics is actually “the study of heredity and the variation of inherited characteristics.” When people say they have good genetics, what they really mean is that they have good strains, presumably with good gene variants. When people begin to cross or stabilize strains, they are performing genetic manipulation.

A geneticist will observe or measure two strains of interest, for example a plant branching and myrcene production. The high-myrcene plant is tall and skinny with no branching, reducing the yield. Crossing the two strains will produce F1 hybrid seeds. In some cases, F1 hybrids create unique desirable phenotypes (synergy) and the breeder’s work is completed. More often, traits act additively, thus we would expect the F1 to be of medium branching and medium myrcene production, a value between that of the values recorded for the parents (additive). Crossing F1 plants will produce an F2 population. An F2 population is comprised of the genes from both parents all mixed up. In this case we would expect the F2 progeny to have many different phenotypes. In our example, 25% of the plants would branch like parent A, and 25% of the F2 plants will have high myrcene like parent B. To get a plant with good branching and high myrcene, we predict that 6.25% (25% x 25%) of the F2 plants would have the correct combination.

The above-described scenario is how geneticists assign gene function, or generally called gene discovery. When the gene for height or branching is identified, it can now be tracked at the DNA level versus the phenotype level. In the above example, 93.5% of your F2 plants can be discarded, there is no need to grow them all to maturity and measure all of their phenotypes.

The most widely used method for gene discovery using natural genetic variation is by quantitative trait loci mapping (QTL). For these types of experiments, hundreds of plants are grown, phenotyped and genotyped and the data is statistically analyzed for correlations between genes (genotype) and traits (phenotype; figure). For example, all high-myrcene F2 plants will have one gene in common responsible for high myrcene, while all the other genes in those F2 plants will be randomly distributed, thus explaining the need for robust statistics. In this scenario, a gene conferring increased myrcene production has been discovered and can now be incorporated into an efficient marker-assisted breeding program to rapidly increase myrcene production in other desirable strains.