Tag Archives: cultivation

How Smart Water Filtration Strategies Can Save Cannabis Growers Thousands

By Shu Saito
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For licensed cannabis cultivators, water filtration isn’t news. It’s critical infrastructure. Yet treating it as fixed infrastructure rather than an operational cost could be quietly cutting into grower margins.

As operators finalize budgets and review efficiency for the seasons ahead, water quality deserves closer scrutiny. Not just from a plant health perspective, but as a recurring expense that directly impacts profitability in an industry where every percentage point matters.

The Filtration Foundation

In controlled environment agriculture, particularly hydroponic and aeroponic systems, water quality is non-negotiable. Commercial cannabis cultivation typically requires a blank canvas: microbiologically safe water stripped of dissolved solids and contaminants so growers can add back precisely calibrated nutrients.

The industry standard starts with ensuring biological safety (typically through UV treatment, though many operations confidently rely on municipal sources), followed by reverse osmosis to reduce total dissolved solids to near-zero. Pre-filtration with sediment and carbon filters protects the reverse osmosis (RO) membranes from premature fouling, extending their operational life.

This multi-stage approach works. But it comes with ongoing costs that many operations set and forget, until replacement cycles hit harder than anticipated.

The Replacement Reality

RO membranes aren’t permanent. Even with proper pre-filtration and maintenance, commercial membranes in cannabis operations typically require replacement every 2–3 years. Sediment and carbon prefilter cartridges need changing every 6–12 months, depending on source water quality and system load, while backwashing carbon tanks last longer.

The costs add up quickly, particularly with stacked replacement cycles across multiple grow rooms or facilities. For multi-room or multi-facility operations, avoiding even one premature RO membrane replacement or emergency downtime event can translate into thousands of dollars in annual savings.

“While environment, pest control, and genetics all matter, water quality plays an outsized role in achieving desired results,” says Shu Saito, founder and CEO of All Filters, a filtration supplier serving indoor agriculture operations.

“Staying on top of filter maintenance and having replacement components ready means operations never slow down waiting for parts to arrive.”

Where Cannabis Growers Mispend

Not every cultivar demands identical water treatment. Some growers overspend on RO systems for peak capacity they rarely use, paying more upfront and replacing membranes more frequently without improving yields or cannabinoid profiles. Others skimp on pre-filtration to save upfront costs, then watch membranes foul prematurely. A sediment filter protecting an RO membrane extends its operational life significantly, but only if it’s replaced on schedule—or sooner if water quality changes unexpectedly.

The Variable That Changes Everything

Source water quality isn’t static. Municipal water chemistry shifts seasonally. Well water composition can change with weather patterns or aquifer drawdown. Both scenarios can accelerate membrane fouling or require adjustment to pre-filtration strategies.

Regular water testing will catch changes in hardness, chlorine levels, or dissolved solids. Many cultivators test nutrients religiously but may only test source water once during buildout and never again.

Rethinking Water Strategy

Smart operators now treat water treatment as a controllable operational cost with specific levers:

Inventory management: Keeping replacement filters and membranes in stock prevents emergency orders and minimizes downtime.

Scheduled maintenance: Proactive replacement based on volume processed and water quality testing, not waiting for system failure.

Bulk purchasing: Volume discounts on replacement components, particularly for multi-facility operations.

Source water monitoring: Regular testing to catch changes before they accelerate membrane degradation.

Right-sizing systems: Matching filtration capacity to actual demand rather than theoretical maximums.

The goal isn’t cutting corners on water quality. It’s optimizing costs without compromising the precise nutrient control that makes RO essential for commercial cultivation. With energy, labor, and regulatory costs rising, water filtration represents one area where informed purchasing and proactive maintenance deliver measurable improvements to the bottom line.

Starting with water that’s both safe and pure isn’t optional. How growers manage that requirement, and what it costs annually, absolutely is.

This Company Wants Your Dirty Grow Air Filters

By Pam Chmiel
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It is not uncommon for industries outside cannabis to adapt their technologies to address challenges unique to this maturing sector. American Air Filter International (AFF) is one such company, bringing decades of experience in air filtration for critical environments such as pharmaceutical clean rooms, food manufacturing facilities, hospitals, and even jet fuel applications.

According to Nikki Sasher, a microbiologist and head of the Clean Air Laboratory at American Air Filter International, cannabis cultivation facilities face a host of airborne risks, with mold at the top of the list. Once mold enters a grow, the financial consequences can escalate quickly, from destroyed harvests to failed compliance tests. Beyond lost revenue, there are serious biosecurity and worker health concerns tied to inhaling mold spores. In cases where Aspergillus reaches the lower lungs, Sasher notes, the mold can colonize and continue to propagate inside the body.

In 2022, a Trulieve employee died after suffering an asthma attack linked to prolonged exposure to ground cannabis dust in her workplace. Following the incident, OSHA cited the company for failing to implement adequate dust control measures, including proper ventilation and the use of HEPA filtration on vacuum equipment.

Health officials and researchers have since identified a range of respiratory hazards common in cannabis cultivation and processing facilities. These include mold and fungi, pesticides and chemical residues, and terpenes and other volatile organic compounds. Many of these compounds create strong odors and can interact with other airborne agents to form irritants that pose both acute and long-term health risks.

These incidents present a growing safety and occupational health challenge within the rapidly expanding cannabis industry, one that is increasingly difficult to ignore.

 

Filtration Is Not Yet an Industry-Wide Standard

Despite these risks, comprehensive air filtration is far from universal across cannabis operations. Sasher explains that geography plays a role. Drier climates, such as Nevada, tend to experience fewer mold issues than states like Michigan, Colorado, and New York, where temperature swings and higher humidity create ideal conditions for microbial growth.

Greenhouses, in particular, present ongoing challenges due to constant water activity created by irrigation systems and plant respiration. Sasher frequently sees mold outbreaks occur in drying rooms, where freshly harvested plants retain moisture. If mold is already present in the room or circulating through the air handling system, spores can easily settle onto wet plant material. Drying rooms are typically smaller and more enclosed than other areas of a cultivation facility, making them among the highest-risk environments in the entire operation.

The use of high-tech air filtration systems has only been around for less than twenty years; some sectors still need to catch up to the standards required in food and pharmaceutical manufacturing, such as adhering to minimum efficiency ratings, change-out intervals, locations, first-in, first-out process flow, and hazard analysis.

 

AFF Wants Your Dirty Filters

To spark greater industry awareness around the benefits of proper air filtration, American Air Filter International has launched a free filter-testing program for cannabis cultivators. Through the initiative, growers are invited to submit used air filters from their facilities, allowing AFF to analyze real-world contamination and build a clearer picture of airborne risks across the sector.

According to Sasher, the filters are evaluated for efficiency, resistance, and pressure drop, as well as downstream mold capture to determine what is circulating in process-facing air. AFF also uses scanning electron microscopy to examine the filter media at the microscopic level, revealing how particulate matter, such as mold spores, dust, and plant material, accumulates and impacts performance over time.

To expand the scope of the research, AFF has partnered with Dr. Alison Justice of the Cannabis Research Center. Together, the organizations are collecting data that will help quantify air quality risks and translate them into practical guidance for cultivators.

 

Exposed Areas in Cultivation Facilities

Modern cultivation facilities rely on complex climate control systems that include HVAC units, humidifiers, and dehumidifiers, each requiring filters with different efficiency ratings. Sasher notes that many of the filters currently in use fall below recommended standards, a gap AFF hopes to validate through its research partnership with the Cannabis Research Center. The goal is to help growers better understand which efficiency ratings are needed in different parts of the facility to meaningfully reduce risk.

Mold spores, Sasher emphasizes, are ubiquitous. Air filtration is only one engineering control among many, alongside practices such as room fogging and sanitation protocols. Once mold is introduced into a facility, it can be extremely difficult to eliminate.

One uniquely cannabis-specific challenge is the presence of trichomes. These microscopic, sticky particles easily become airborne during cultivation and processing, where they accumulate on filters, restrict airflow, and degrade filtration performance. As part of the testing program, AFF is evaluating how sticky versus non-sticky particulate matter affects filter lifespan and efficiency. The findings could help growers better determine optimal change-out schedules and identify operational factors that accelerate filter failure.

For Sasher, biosecurity is the most compelling reason to invest in proper air filtration. Through its collaboration with Dr. Justice, AFF aims to merge air quality science with cultivation expertise to produce data-driven research that the industry currently lacks. The partnership is focused on developing practical guidance around filtration standards, airflow management, preventative maintenance, and standard operating procedures, areas where formal benchmarks are still largely absent.

Looking ahead, the research team plans to identify pilot cultivation sites where filtration can be evaluated directly within active grow environments. By measuring conditions before and after filtration upgrades, they hope to quantify the impact on contamination levels and overall plant health. Sasher points to similar work in agricultural settings, where improved air filtration reduced livestock mortality rates by double digits, delivering measurable economic gains.

While cannabis-specific results will take time, Sasher believes the approach has the potential to deliver actionable insights that the industry can implement quickly. Even cultivators who are not using AFF products, she says, will be able to apply the findings to strengthen biosecurity, protect workers, and reduce costly crop losses.

 

Beyond Particulates: Managing Odors and Emissions

While much of the focus in cultivation facilities centers on particulate filtration, Sasher emphasizes that molecular, carbon-based filtration plays an equally important role in cannabis operations. These systems are designed to scrub gases and volatile compounds from outgoing air, an increasingly critical requirement as cultivation and extraction facilities operate closer to residential and commercial neighborhoods, and as consumption lounges come online.

In cannabis, terpenes are responsible for strong odors, as well as gases released during extraction processes that use hydrocarbons such as butane. These gas-phase emissions are subject to strict environmental and safety standards, particularly in regulated markets where operators are required to control odors and limit volatile organic compound emissions.

American Air Filter International addresses this challenge through a dual filtration approach. Pleated particulate filters support plant health and worker safety by capturing airborne contaminants within the facility, while carbon-based molecular filtration systems target gas-phase pollutants before exhaust is released outdoors. Together, these systems help operators remain compliant with local regulations while reducing environmental impact.

Sasher also points to a key differentiator in AFF’s gas-phase filtration program: the ability to test and monitor the remaining life and gas-holding capacity of carbon filters. By measuring remaining adsorption capacity, AFF provides operators with data-driven guidance on when to replace filters. This reduces guesswork, prevents performance failures, and supports more predictable maintenance schedules.

 

As regulators, communities, and workers place increasing scrutiny on air quality, molecular filtration is becoming a necessary extension of cultivation and extraction infrastructure rather than an option. As the industry inches toward rescheduling and ultimately descheduling, GMP-certified facilities will be required, and with that comes clean-air filtration.

CONTACT NIKKI SASHER IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FREE AIR FILTER STUDY: nsasher@aafintl.com

Listen to Nikki Sasher’s full interview on the Innovating Cannabis Podcast.

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

 

 

 

From The Lab

How Tissue Culture Is Advancing Cannabis Genetics and Global Expansion

By Pam Chmiel
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Not every genetic is suited for every growing environment, production model, or end market. For cultivators, the challenge is not finding new genetics but identifying which breeders align with their goals and whether those genetics are clean, stable, and commercially viable. As demand grows for consistency, disease resistance, and scalability, shortcuts in breeding and cloning are becoming more common. Without proper tissue culture protocols, even elite genetics can carry hidden pathogens that can devastate entire operations.

At MJBizCon, Sergio Picazo, co-founder of California-based Powerhouse, moderated and hosted panel discussions examining how breeders and cultivators source, validate, and scale genetics, and why tissue culture is rapidly becoming an essential tool in modern breeding programs, particularly for breeders looking to scale globally.

Picazo opened one conversation by emphasizing that tissue culture remains underutilized in cannabis, despite being standard practice in other agricultural industries where it is foundational to professional breeding and propagation. Panelist Martin Chase of UMAMI Seed Co. expanded on this point, noting that his team has relied on tissue culture since 2014, well before pathogens such as hop latent viroid were widely recognized. Initially, their focus was on cataloging their genetics library, protecting individual cultivars, and minimizing the footprint required for mother plants.

 

Contaminated Clones Unknowingly Flood the Market

As legal cannabis markets expanded around 2016, many new operators sourced clones from established legal or legacy markets, often without comprehensive pathogen testing. Infected plant material circulated unknowingly for years before cultivators realized that viroids, viruses, and other systemic pathogens were the root cause of widespread crop failures. Powdery mildew, viruses, and viroids traveled easily through shared genetics, exposing a major vulnerability in the industry’s early supply chains.

As outbreaks intensified, breeders and cultivators recognized that pest management practices were no longer enough. The need to prevent disease at the genetic level became apparent, prompting commercial operators to adopt tissue culture to establish truly clean mother plants.

 

Nodal vs. Meristem Culture: Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

According to Chase, not all tissue culture methods serve the same purpose. As pathogens became more prevalent, his team began cleaning up the genetics using increasingly precise tissue-culture techniques, starting with meristem culture. This method involves dissecting a plant down to a tiny cluster of undifferentiated cells roughly one millimeter in size. Because most viruses and viroids do not typically reach this cellular level, meristem culture offers the highest likelihood of producing pathogen-free plants. However, Chase noted that in extreme cases, where infections are deeply embedded, even meristem culture may not fully eliminate disease.

For less intensive needs, nodal tissue culture offers a faster and more cost-effective option. Nodal culture is essentially micropropagation, producing tiny clones from existing vascular tissue. While this approach can help standardize production runs and reduce surface-level contamination, it does not fully reset a plant’s genetic health. Because vascular tissue can still harbor pathogens and endophytic microbes, nodal culture is better suited to maintaining clean cultivars than to rehabilitating compromised ones.

Breeding projects, foundational grandmother stock, or heavily infected plants are best addressed through meristem culture. For stable, repeatedly tested cultivars, nodal culture can support scalable production, provided operators are prepared to restart the process if contamination reappears.

 

Resetting Declining Genetics

Beyond disease prevention, tissue culture plays a critical role in preserving and reviving older cannabis genetics that remain commercially or culturally valuable.

Cannabis is an annual plant, not a perennial. Under natural conditions, plants complete their life cycle, produce seeds, and die. In commercial cultivation, however, elite genetics are cloned and maintained indefinitely, an unnatural process that can lead to gradual degradation over time. Aging mother plants often weaken, lose vigor, or exhibit subtle performance changes that growers may mistakenly attribute to environmental conditions or nutrient programs.

Chase noted that long-term cloning can result in genetic drift, accumulated mutations, and physiological stress, causing cultivars to behave differently under new lighting systems, feeding schedules, or production models. Tissue culture, and specifically meristem culture, offers a way to reset that decline. By regenerating a plant from a tiny cluster of undifferentiated cells, cultivators can effectively return a cultivar to its original baseline, similar to starting again from seed, but without losing the genetic identity that made the plant valuable in the first place.

 

Scalability and Cost Effectiveness

According to Chase, tissue culture offers one of the most powerful advantages for exponential growth. One container becomes two, then four, then eight, and so on. This process dramatically reduces the space required for nursery production. Operators can eliminate 75 to 80 percent of traditional mother space, stack thousands of plants within a very small footprint, and use the same environmental controls already in place. For large-scale operations, this efficiency translates directly into cost savings, operational consistency, and faster expansion.

 

The Path to Global Distribution

As the cannabis industry matures, tissue culture is becoming essential for preventing large-scale pathogen spread. Panelist John Bayes of Green Bodhi emphasized that when genetics is distributed at scale, especially across borders, consistency and cleanliness are non-negotiable. Backing up genetics at the meristem level ensures plant material is uniform, clean, and suitable for international movement, an approach long used across global agriculture.

Chase expanded on how tissue culture enables compliant global distribution. With tissue culture labs operating in Canada, Austria, Germany, and Australia, his team is able to move phytosanitary-certified plant material around the world with relative ease. Because tissue culture plants are shipped in sterile, sealed vessels without growing media, they can bypass many traditional import and export barriers while still meeting quarantine and regulatory requirements.

Unlike seeds, these shipments often include live explants. Once received, facilities with basic lab infrastructure and trained technicians can rapidly scale production. By rooting plants outside the lab environment, operators can quickly transition tissue culture material into plugs that behave like conventional clones, significantly shortening production timelines. While the process requires technical expertise, it allows growers to start with genetically uniform, pathogen-free plants that can be scaled efficiently across diverse environments.

Picazo emphasized that this level of scalability is only possible because of the work done on the front end. By dissecting plants down to meristem tissue and validating cleanliness through multiple stages of testing, breeders can ensure genetic integrity before material ever enters the global supply chain. In an increasingly international cannabis market, tissue culture is emerging as the most reliable pathway for scaling genetics uniformly while reducing the risk of widespread pathogen outbreaks.

 

Despite this progress, the cannabis industry is still only scratching the surface of what tissue culture can offer when compared to advances made in other agricultural sectors. Not every plant responds the same way in tissue culture, and techniques that work for bananas do not automatically translate to cannabis, hemp, or hops. Even so, tissue culture is emerging as a critical tool in the modern cultivation toolbox, helping breeders and cultivators push genetics, consistency, and scalability to the next level.

Why Cannabis Cultivation Needs a “Soil to Shelf” Standard

By Steve Garner
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In cannabis cultivation today, many decisions are made in response to market pressures such as speed, yield, and potency. But after two decades in both cannabis cultivation and commercial horticulture, I’ve come to believe that the most valuable outcomes, both for consumers and cultivators, are the result of a plant and product-forward process, not shortcuts. Too often, the industry arrives at the conclusion that craft quality and scaling operations are at odds with each other but, more often, this is due to a lack of knowledge, skill, or both.

A truly sustainable, trustworthy cultivation model demands a broader view – one that considers everything from crop health to post-harvest transparency. What my company, Ethos Cannabis, calls a “Soil to Shelf” mindset isn’t about one system or method. It’s about re-centering the values of integrity, transparency, and plant expression in an industry that too often prioritizes efficiency over quality.

 

Remediation Isn’t a Strategy, It’s a Red Flag

Remediation, whether through irradiation, ozone treatment, or other post-harvest processes, has become common practice in large-scale cannabis operations. For many cultivators, it’s a backstop when microbial contamination arises due to any number of factors.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if cannabis requires remediation to pass testing, something went wrong upstream.

The growing reliance on post-harvest correction raises concerns not only about product integrity but also about transparency. Patients and consumers often have no way of knowing if what they’re purchasing has undergone remediation despite meaningful differences in chemical profile, freshness, and potential therapeutic impact.

There’s a place for risk mitigation, of course. But the industry must ask: Are we normalizing band-aids for systemic cultivation issues rather than solving for the root causes?

 

Fundamentals and Crop-First Decisions

Similar to the trap of remediation, making decisions from a fundamental and crop-first perspective is one of the biggest differentiators between those who focus on quality and those who focus on shortcuts. While these fundamental decisions are often costly and not as ‘easy’ as doing things the standard, mass production model, we believe the end quality and consistency stand on their own.

A few examples from our cultivation facilities include:

  • Utilizing tissue culture labs to maintain disease and viroid-free mother stock
  • A design process for all cultivation facilities that is led by the same team that operates the facilities
  • Taking no shortcuts during the design process to ensure food-safe quality construction, redundancy with all equipment and systems that impact product quality, and remote monitoring capability to limit the risk of crop loss
  • No foliar IPM applications after day 21 of flower, to prevent any reduction in flower quality
  • Strict water, air, and surface sanitation protocols to create the most sterile environment possible
  • Irrigation and fertility programs that are strain-specific instead of a ‘one size fits all’ model
  • High-end HVAC, humidification, and dehumidification systems in all propagation, grow, dry, cure and vault spaces to ensure ideal growth or storage conditions at all stages of the process to limit

We at Ethos have a firm belief that if we build the right way the first time, evaluate and cultivate strong genetics, and intervene in the crop as little as possible, we will get the best expression of the plant that we possibly can. Quality is not about how much you do, it’s about how little you can do to get in the way of what nature does best.

 

The THC Trap: Potency as Proxy

The current market rewards high THC numbers, despite growing evidence that potency alone is a poor predictor of consumer experience or therapeutic value. That dynamic creates a loop where growers chase THC-dominant phenotypes, often at the expense of chemovar diversity or minor cannabinoid development. It’s a narrow definition of quality.

In practice, some of the most complex, effective, and enjoyable cultivars are those with moderate THC but robust terpene profiles and balanced cannabinoid ratios. These profiles don’t always win lab label wars, but they tend to resonate more deeply with patients and seasoned consumers alike.

A recent example of Ethos’s efforts to reverse this trend is the introduction of our Landrace Sativa line in Pennsylvania. We worked with landrace genetics (think heirloom varieties that have been cultivated regionally for hundreds of years) from Colombia, Mexico, Pakistan, Burma, and beyond to deliver a diverse range of THC and CBD, along with unique terpene profiles. These genetics, while not as commercially desirable as 30%+ THC, have delivered medical benefits to our patients that are simply not available from 99%+ of modern genetics.

Reframing “quality” to include a broader set of metrics—total active cannabinoid content, terpene expression, cultivation transparency—is critical if the industry wants to evolve beyond novelty and hype.

 

Cultivation Ethics and Consumer Trust

When we talk about cultivation standards, we’re really talking about consumer trust. Especially in medical markets, patients rely on consistent, clean, and fully disclosed products. That trust is built, or eroded, in the cultivation facility long before the product reaches retail.

Decisions are made in that facility, including whether to select for certain genetics, how to manage pests, when to harvest, how to cure, and how to accumulate into the final product. Every shortcut carries a consequence. Every tradeoff eventually meets the end user.

In an industry still working to shed its legacy of prohibition and stigma, building that trust through transparency and consistency may be one of the most important outcomes cultivation teams can deliver.

 

The Case for Systems Thinking in Cultivation

“Soil to Shelf” isn’t a program. It’s a framework, one that encourages cultivators to treat each stage of the process as interconnected and consequential. That includes:

  • Environmental inputs: Are systems designed for plant health, or simply speed and yield?
  • Genetic decisions: Are phenotypes selected based on their marketability or their full-spectrum potential?
  • Post-harvest practices: Is the flower able to stand on its own, or is it being “rescued” in processing?
  • Labeling and education: Are consumers equipped to understand what they’re using and why it matters?

There’s no single formula. But systems built with intention tend to produce products with integrity.

 

Where the Industry Can Go From Here

Cannabis cultivation is at a crossroads. The drive toward scale, automation, and standardization has brought many benefits but also introduced blind spots. As new states legalize and new operators enter the space, there’s an opportunity to pause and ask what kind of industry we are building.

One possible answer: an industry that values how something is grown as much as what is grown. An industry that realizes quality and profit are not at odds with each other, one is dependent on the other. One that educates consumers on more than THC content. And one that views post-harvest remediation not as a default, but as a signal that bigger changes may be needed upstream.

We have a chance to raise the bar for cultivation ethics and product quality. That won’t come from chasing the next trend, but from recommitting to the fundamentals: science, transparency, and respect for the plant.

Move Over Clones, Seeds Are Making A Comeback

By Pam Chmiel
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Cutting cultivation costs was one of the loudest themes at this year’s MJBizCon. Michigan cultivator Kevin Kuethe, Chief Cultivation Officer at Lume, shared his strategy for combating price compression through genetics during a panel discussion titled “Mastering Genetics.” “The easiest way to do that is through more yield,” he told the crowd. “If you have two plants in a room, it’s going to cost you the same amount of land to grow both, but if one yields twice as much, guess what? That flower costs you half as much.”

Seeds used to get a bad rap for being inconsistent, but modern breeding has leveled up in a big way, according to Kuethe, who still runs a clone program but has eased into using seeds more, which now account for 30 to 40 percent of Lume’s production and power almost all of the company’s large outdoor grows. Today’s breeders are using genomics tools borrowed from big agriculture, such as SNPs, QTLs, and AI-generated breeding values that help predict a plant’s outcome.

 

Breeders can now screen thousands of plants, identify the markers that matter, and use that information to produce seed lines that grow more uniformly, resist pests and mold, and push yields higher. Kuethe says we are still in the early innings, but it’s a game-changer for cultivators.

 

Speeding The Process Up

Tools that have been standard in agriculture for years, like genomic markers, early-stage screening, and AI-assisted selection, are finally making their way into cannabis. And for growers, this means a much shorter breeding timeline. Native Roots’ Lacey Sears says breeders no longer need to grow huge plants or run massive pheno hunts to find a winner. Thanks to early genetic screening, breeders can identify promising plants at the cotyledon stage when they have just popped. “We don’t have to grow out mothers and huge plants anymore. That is the biggest thing reshaping this,” she says.

 

This new technology allows breeders to lock in traits like yield, vigor, pest resistance, and structure much faster and with far fewer plants. What once took years and thousands of test plants can now be done in a fraction of the time. As Kuethe puts it, “It is a drastic difference. This technology has been used in big agriculture for decades. We are finally catching up.”

 

Better still, breeders can now collaborate directly with cultivators to create genetics tailored to specific grow environments or business goals. Want a fast-finishing, short-stature plant that performs well indoors? Or a mold-resistant, high-yielding line for your outdoor farm? Breeders can now design for that.

 

Busting Seed Myths

One of the biggest hurdles to wider seed adoption in cannabis is the myths around seeds: they aren’t uniform, they are slower, they cannot hit high potency, yields are unpredictable, and “herms” make them too risky. Much of that was once true, but only because cannabis missed out on decades of modern plant science while the rest of agriculture raced ahead.

 

Damon Hess from Phylos compares it to buying a packet of tomato seeds. You don’t get 20 different tomato shapes and colors. You get the same tomato every time. Uniformity works in every major crop. Cannabis was the outlier because prohibition kept universities and major agricultural companies from doing the genomic work that other crops benefited from. Since the 2018 Farm Bill, that bottleneck has finally broken, and universities like Cornell, Oregon State, Kentucky, Colorado State, and Georgia are now generating data, breeding insights, and collaborating with seed companies.

 

Myth 1: Seeds grow slower than clones

Clones take roughly two weeks to root and another three to four weeks to veg before the flip, for a total of five to six weeks. With modern seeds, growers can go from sowing to flowering in about four weeks with the same eight-week flowering window. Seed-grown plants finish earlier, and the time they save continues to compound with every cycle.

 

Myth 2: Seeds are not uniform

This was historically true, but not anymore. Over the past several years, breeders have finally been able to stabilize cannabis lines the way other crops have been doing for decades.

 

Myth 3: Seeds herm more than clones

Herms are a stress problem, not a seed problem. Feminized seeds and female clones both herm when pushed beyond their stress limits. Phylos explained that their early seeds were sold only for outdoor use because stress-induced herms were too common indoors. That changed once they identified genetic markers tied to stress tolerance. By selecting for plants that do not buckle under stress, they drastically reduced hermaphroditic expression.

 

Myth 4: Seeds cannot match clone potency

Once a seed line hits a potency benchmark, it stays there. Phylos gave the example of its Cheddar Cheese line, which consistently produces THC levels over 30 percent. Mother plants age, decline, mutate, and accumulate pathogens, which often leads to potency loss. Stabilized seed lines do not have that problem.
Clones can certainly hit high potency, sometimes even higher than a seed line, but that peak is not stable. Once locked in, seeds maintain it.

 

The Challenge of Switching Your Grow To Seeds

Running a grow entirely from seed eliminates the need for mother rooms and the labor, space, and mechanical systems required to maintain them. That alone can recover weeks in the production cycle and free up valuable square footage for additional flowering rooms.

 

The real challenge, as Lacey explains, is that facilities have been designed around a clone-to-flower model for years. Seeds introduce new variables, such as lighting adjustments, environmental tweaks, and different early-stage care practices. Staff often need retraining. SOPs must be rewritten, veg rooms reconfigured, and teams taught to manage seedlings rather than clones. The transition takes time and money, but seeds offer advantages once dialed in, including minimal storage needs and faster veg times.

 

Because of this complexity, Damon recommends a phased approach. Most cultivators start with a small trial room to see how seed-grown plants perform in their facility. If the results are promising, the next step is a pilot production room that is run like any other production cycle to prove that seeds can deliver yield and uniformity.

 

What Are the Risks of Switching to Seeds?
While stable seeds are becoming easier to use and more reliable, shifting a commercial facility from clones introduces operational challenges. Cultivators have built operations around a clone-based workflow, so teams must learn germination and seedling development and avoid pitfalls such as improper sowing orientation.

 

Seeds also grow more vigorously than clones, which changes how plants respond to nutrition. If cultivators feed seedlings the same formula they use for clones, they may get excessive vegetative growth. Many growers need to rework nutrient recipes, especially by reducing nitrogen early in the cycle, and recalibrate fertigation equipment.

 

Another risk is environmental compatibility. Cultivators usually select strains that fit their facility’s existing environment. Dialing in seeds takes testing, and facilities with fixed lighting heights or rigid environmental controls may need incremental upgrades before seeds perform at their best.

 

Supply reliability is another concern. A winning seed line has to stay in stock. Operators worry about what happens if they build a room around a specific strain and the breeder runs out of that strain. Companies like Phylos are addressing this through guaranteed supply programs, but it remains a concern with growers.

 

Finally, seeds may introduce operational risk but also provide insurance. If a clone room crashes due to contamination or equipment failure, an entire cycle can be lost. With seeds, growers can pop new plants immediately and recover lost time because the propagation cycle is shorter. Seeds become a fallback that allows cultivators to get a room back on schedule instead of losing revenue.

 

Overall, the risks are not about seed performance. They are about change management. Facilities that invest the time to retrain staff, rewrite SOPs, run trials, and partner with stable seed suppliers are the ones that will optimize production and trim costs.

Is The Industry In Danger of Losing Its Prized Genetics?

By Michael Kudrewicz
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In cannabis, everything begins with genetics. Before lighting, curing, irrigation, or any cultivation technique, there is the seed. And within that seed lives more than chemistry. It holds history, culture, and potential. Genetics are the soul of cannabis. They determine whether a cultivar expresses citrus or earth, calm or clarity, relief or joy. They decide how a plant grows, how it finishes, and how it makes you feel. Unfortunately, many cannabis brands are ignoring genetics, the very foundation of the plant, and are instead chasing high THC percentages. This is an approach that will fail in the long term. Here’s why.

Every cultivar carries its own blueprint, a genetic code that dictates how cannabinoids and terpenes develop, how the plant responds to stress, and what kind of experience it ultimately delivers. When cultivators and consumers focus solely on THC, they flatten that expression. The result is potency without personality; high numbers with low resonance.

Strategic cannabis companies seek cultivars that preserve complexity and depth. For example, landrace and heirloom strains that contain rare cannabinoid combinations and terpene structures work in harmony. These genetics invite the consumer into an experience that unfolds slowly and lingers with intention. It’s not about acceleration. It’s about elevation.

A lower THC percentage combined with a robust terpene profile does not dull the experience; it refines it. These cultivars offer layered effects that feel grounded and personal, supporting mood, focus, creativity, or calm in ways that are both nuanced and enduring. Rather than a sharp spike and sudden drop, properly bred genetics create a high that breathes and evolves over time. This is where cannabis becomes more than a product and transforms into a true experience.

The industry’s fixation on THC has come at a cost. When potency becomes the only goal, terpene diversity diminishes and minor cannabinoids disappear. These compounds are essential to the plant’s character. They drive entourage effects, enhance therapeutic value, and influence how the body and mind respond. High THC without balanced genetics is like turning the volume to ten on one instrument while muting the rest of the band. It’s loud, but not music.

Choosing cannabis should never be about chasing the highest number on a label. It should be about choosing intention. Cultivars with preserved lineage and authentic expression don’t overpower; they meet you where you are and elevate you from within. This approach honors the plant, the cultivator, and the consumer alike.

More people are beginning to realize that cannabis is about more than THC. It is about expression, connection, and the quality of effect. The next chapter of cannabis culture will not be written by percentages but by those who respect genetics and preserve what makes each cultivar unique.

Genetics matter because cannabis is more than a commodity. It is a living lineage, carried forward through cultivation with passion, precision, and purity. Choose strains with a story, flower with roots, and genetics that invite you into the full spectrum of what cannabis can be.

Listen to an interview with the founders of Raven View Genetics on the Innovating Cannabis Podcast. Or watch on YouTube.

International Trade and Cannabis Decontamination Considerations

By Jeff Adams
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With shifting perceptions, economic incentives, and the evolution of international regulatory frameworks, more countries around the world are starting to embrace legal cannabis for its medical and recreational uses.

One of the hotspots of legalization remains the European Union, where countries like Malta and Luxembourg have legalized cannabis for adult use, and Switzerland and the Netherlands have pilot programs in place. These pilot programs are temporary, limited initiatives that are implemented by a country’s government to test and gather data on the effects of legalizing and regulating the sale of cannabis. Rather than diving headfirst into full-blown adult-use legalization, many nations will take this approach to study the impact different regulatory models can have in a smaller, controlled environment.

As of May 2024, twenty-one of 27 EU states have legalized cannabis for medical use, with one of the most prominent being Germany. After passing the Cannabis Act (CanG) in April 2024, Germany’s medical cannabis industry expanded rapidly as the legislative action improved patient access and removed some administrative burdens for prescribing physicians.

Reliance on Foreign Partners for Optimal Market Growth and Efficiency
As legal cannabis use spreads globally, nations will need to continue to build and rely on partnerships with one another to provide ongoing support for safety and quality assurance and foster symbiotic market growth. For example, Canada legalized cannabis for adult use in 2018. In the years that followed, the country faced challenges due to oversupply. In 2020, Health Canada reported an excess of 600,000 kilograms of unpackaged dry cannabis flower and an additional 46,413 kilograms of packaged flower. To help counteract the buildup of excess product, Canada has now emerged as the largest exporter of medical-grade cannabis to EU states with thriving medical cannabis markets like Germany.

Quality & Safety Controls for Medical Cannabis

To be able to import cannabis for medical purposes into the EU, it must meet stringent rules and regulations for safety and quality control. Contaminated cannabis has the potential to cause harm, especially to medical patients who are immunocompromised or have respiratory conditions. Several types of contaminants can be found in cannabis, including microbial, particulate, and chemical. Microbial contaminants, including bacteria, viruses, yeast, and mold, can be introduced to the product from the environment, raw materials, equipment, or personnel.

Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP)
A first step in quality assurance for medical cannabis is the Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP). GACP provides broad technical guidance on collecting high-quality medicinal plant materials for herbal goods classified as medicines, including medical cannabis. The goals of GACP are to ensure the quality of medicinal plants by providing a broad guide on quality, safety, and efficacy, establishing standard operating procedures, and encouraging and supporting the sustainable cultivation and collection of high-quality plants for medicinal purposes.

European Union-Good Manufacturing Practice (EU GMP) Certification

Developed by regulatory agencies such as Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union-Good Manufacturing Practice (EU GMP) certification is one of the most stringent sets of standards in the international pharmaceutical industry. Regardless of where the cannabis originates from, the product must be GMP-compliant to be sold in the EU.

Under GMP standards, products must be:

  • Of consistent high quality;
  • Appropriate for intended use;
  • Meet the requirements of the marketing association or the clinical trial authorization.

Cannabis must pass regular quality control testing to ensure the product meets the standards for potency, purity, and consistency. The flower must be tested for the presence of microbial contaminants. The goal of a manufacturer following GMP standards is a contamination rate as close to zero as possible. If contaminants are found, the product must be decontaminated and retested, or it risks being rejected and destroyed.

Additional Considerations for Decontamination Tech

Since quality control testing is a significant step in meeting EU GMP compliance, decontamination technology may also play a crucial role in the process. Tech using X-ray, gamma-ray irradiation, ozone gas, or radiofrequency, among others, may be used to decontaminate cannabis of specific microbes.

For example:

  • X-ray decontamination – Highly effective on mold, bacteria, and spores.
  • Gamma-ray irradiation – Highly effective against all microbes, including spores, but can be harmful to the plant because of intense doses.
  • Ozone gas – Effective for mold, mildew, and bacteria. Decontaminates at the surface level only.
  • Radiofrequency – Kills mold, yeast, and bacteria. Has the potential to heat the plant and affect its integrity.

While the technology itself does not need to be EU GMP certified, the decontamination technology and process must be compatible with the EU GMP processes of the cultivator and manufacturer, or risk negating their certification.

My company, XRpure, specializes in producing decontamination systems – our models include the XR16 and the XR12 – that allow X-rays to penetrate through cannabis flower and neutralize microbes while preserving its cannabinoid profile.

We recently announced our company’s expansion into Canada to service cultivators and producers exporting medical cannabis to the EU. We are currently implementing several advancements to our technology to align with EU GMP processes, as well as achieving new milestones to demonstrate compliance with foreign directives.

We are currently implementing several changes to the technology’s user interface, including the addition of user profiles in the software: a user profile, an administrator profile (used to set up new users), and an engineer profile (used to set up new recipes). Additionally, we are currently seeking to obtain the CE mark for electrical safety on our decontamination systems. A CE mark signifies that the manufacturer has declared the product complies with all applicable EU directives for safety, health, and environmental protection.

Depending on the system and the process of the cannabis cultivator or manufacturer, other changes to the technology may be required to comply with their EU GMP processes.

As the global cannabis industry continues to expand, countries will continue to rely on foreign partnerships to foster collaboration, innovation, growth, and support for their burgeoning markets. The EU remains an area for cannabis industry expansion, especially in medical markets such as Germany. To support a large base of medical cannabis patients, Germany relies heavily on import partners like Canada for its supply.

 

For countries seeking to balance growth with safety and compliance, meeting EU GMP and GACP standards is crucial. Technologies like decontamination systems demonstrate how innovation and regulatory oversight can work in tandem to ensure product safety, consistency, and intended use. By continuing to progress alongside evolving international frameworks, the global cannabis industry can achieve sustainable, long-term growth and deliver high-quality products to patients and consumers.

 

 

 

How Does the X-Ray Method Work in Decontamination?

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As cannabis production scales and testing standards tighten, cultivators face increasing pressure to ensure their products are free from harmful microbes without compromising quality. Decontamination, the process of removing or killing microorganisms, has become a common step in post-harvest processing. Traditional methods come with trade-offs that can alter the plant’s potency, aroma, or appearance.

Until recently, most producers relied on heat-based techniques, such as pasteurization, or surface treatments, including ozone and ultraviolet (UV) light exposure. While effective in food and agriculture, these methods often fail to penetrate dense cannabis flowers, allowing microbes hidden deep inside to survive. Other approaches, such as gamma and electron-beam (E-beam) irradiation, have been used safely in the food industry for decades to sterilize spices, produce, and packaged goods without affecting nutritional quality or taste.

Now, X-ray decontamination is emerging as a promising adaptation of these proven methods for cannabis. The technology penetrates through the entire flower, destroying microbial DNA while leaving cannabinoids and terpenes intact.

 

Jeff Adams, founder of XRPure, explains the process through a simple visual analogy:

“If you imagine a single mold spore as the size of a golf ball,” Adams says, “the DNA strands inside that spore are about the size of a needle. The X-rays, on that same scale, are the size of those needles—they pass through the ‘golf ball’ and target the DNA directly.”

 

Because plant cells are vastly larger on this scale, roughly fifteen feet in diameter, the X-rays pass through them virtually untouched.

 

“They’re targeting only the things that are on their size scale,” he adds, “which makes X-ray particularly effective at killing microbes while leaving the rest of the plant unharmed.”

 

By contrast, chemical or fog-based decontamination methods rely on molecules that interact with terpene and cannabinoid compounds of similar size, raising the risk of chemical reactions that can degrade flavor and aroma. X-ray avoids this issue entirely by working on a different physical scale.

Finally, Adams and his team note that X-ray systems meet the highest FDA safety standards and are sealed to prevent any radiation leakage. Operators don’t require special protective equipment or restricted rooms. “It’s a very safe, simple, and efficient technology,” says Sales Manager Joseph Bancheri, “that’s already built to comply with federal safety protocols if and when national cannabis legalization arrives.”

The Industry Has A Mold Problem

Despite the technology’s promise, decontamination in general is an ongoing debate within the cannabis industry. Some purists argue that remediation of any kind undermines the plant’s natural integrity, insisting that skilled cultivators should be able to grow clean cannabis without relying on post-harvest interventions.

Jeff Adams, founder of XRPure, acknowledges that sentiment but believes X-ray remediation represents a fundamentally different approach from heat or chemical-based methods. “One interesting thing about X-ray,” Adams explains, “is that the wavelength is almost exactly the same size as the DNA strand in a microbe. As it passes through the flower, those DNA strands absorb energy from the X-ray, which breaks them apart and essentially kills the microbe. It’s not a chemical reaction with the plant; it’s literally targeting the microbial DNA.”

That precise mechanism is what makes X-ray decontamination less likely to alter the plant’s terpenes and cannabinoids. “We completely understand the concern about maintaining quality,” Adams says. “Ideally, everyone would grow perfectly clean cannabis. But the reality is that the same environment that’s good for cultivating a plant is also good for growing microbes. Even the best operations in the country struggle with mold and mildew contamination.”

For producers operating at scale, those challenges can be costly. Adams points out that even small microbial contamination can lead to failed lab tests, lost batches, and reputational damage. “We provide a way to address contamination immediately after harvest—before packaging—so the product stays stable and clean on the shelf,” he explains.

Regardless, there’s a stigma. Cannabis that has been “treated” or “remediated” often sells for less, and many growers choose not to disclose the use of decontamination technology. “That’s just the reality of the market right now,” Adams says. “But we believe that clean cannabis is actually better for consumers. No one wants to inhale mold spores, and medical patients can be especially sensitive.”

Interestingly, consumer perception may be shifting. Adams cites a recent survey the company conducted showing that while 90% of respondents wanted transparency about whether a product had been remediated, 56% said they would be more likely to purchase treated cannabis, particularly in the medical market.

Sales Manager Joseph Bancheri adds that skepticism often comes down to scale and economics. “Some of the smaller or legacy-style growers, what I call the ‘tree-hugger naturalists’, don’t want to use any kind of remediation,” he says. “I get it. But if you’re losing 10% of your crop to microbials, that’s a big hit. Once you’re producing 100 pounds or more per month, it starts making sense to have an in-house system or send it out for treatment.”

Bancheri also points out that testing standards vary dramatically by state. Nevada allows up to 10,000 colony-forming units (CFU) per gram of microbial matter, while Illinois caps it at 1,000, and some states go as high as 100,000. “At 10,000 CFU, you’re in a reasonable middle ground,” Adams notes. “It protects medical patients but still allows growers to operate realistically. At 1,000 CFU, it becomes challenging, even for the cleanest facilities.”

Aspergillus, the common black mold sometimes found in household bathrooms, remains the biggest microbial culprit and is strictly prohibited in most states. “It’s airborne, it’s everywhere,” Adams says. “Even a sealed HVAC system can’t completely prevent it. And when you’re inhaling, your lungs don’t have the same defenses your stomach does when you eat contaminated food. That’s why this matters for public health.”

For now, the patchwork of state regulations keeps the debate alive. “Every state is its own island,” Bancheri adds. “Some base their limits on food safety data, others make up their own thresholds. Until there’s federal legalization, it’s going to stay inconsistent.”

Cost vs. Benefits

But for many growers, cost remains the deciding factor. “The biggest complaint out there,” Adams concedes, “is that people don’t want to add one more expense to their production. X-ray technology is more expensive than other remediation methods. But when you look at the numbers, the payback can happen very fast. Cannabis is a valuable product, and your losses can pile up quickly.”

To help make the technology accessible, XRPure offers leasing programs that spread costs across three- or four-year terms, covering both the machine and its maintenance. “That way, you don’t have to come up with a big chunk of money all at once,” Adams says. “For cultivators producing 300 to 400 pounds per month, the math works out—they’re actually saving money. For smaller growers, there are toll processors that can run the service for them, and we’re about to launch a mobile system that can drive right up to your farm, process your flower, and move on to the next.”

While X-ray delivers what Adams calls “the very best decontamination process,” it remains one piece of a broader post-harvest preservation puzzle—from packaging to retail storage. It’s challenging out there, but investing in technology that protects the plant’s integrity and keeps customers coming back can pay off in the long term.

 

Adams adds, “We’re just one piece of the puzzle, but hopefully a helpful one. As the industry moves toward medical markets and stricter standards, clean cannabis will equal quality cannabis. And organizations like ASTM are already laying the groundwork for those federal-level best practices once legalization happens nationwide.”

You can hear Jeff and Joe’s full interview on the Innovating Cannabis Podcast. 

The State Of New York’s Cannabis Industry 2025

By Pam Chmiel
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Jason Ambrosino, a disabled Army veteran and founder of Veterans Holdings, entered the New York market in 2019 under the state’s hemp program with the goal of cultivating and manufacturing cannabis. But despite holding a 5,000-square-foot indoor cultivation license, he decided not to build out his facility. The reason, he says, is simple: “The registered organizations (ROs) in New York State own the flower industry. They own it. You’re not going to break in.”

Ambrosino explained that the state’s vertically integrated ROs, many of which started as medical operators, dominate the adult-use flower market with massive 100,000-square-foot indoor canopies and the ability to negotiate favorable energy rates. “The number one driver of indoor flower price anywhere is electricity cost,” he said. “Where I am in New York State, it’s 23 cents a kilowatt hour. The ROs can negotiate directly for 7, 8, or 9 cents per kilowatt-hour because of their size. There will never be a day when I can operate in the market alongside them, because it costs me twice as much to grow as it does them.” He said that disparity makes small-scale cultivation unviable for most new entrants.

Ambrosino estimates that it could cost him roughly $600 per pound to grow cannabis, while the ROs can do it for about half that. “You don’t really think about it until you end up paying for a license, only to find out the utility prices are so high that you can’t make it work,” he said.

He believes the state’s adult-use rollout created an illusion of opportunity for small hemp farmers and microbusinesses. “They used the illusion of inclusion to gain public support,” he said. “They built protections that were meant to keep ROs out for three years to create a level playing field, but these protections were stripped away after enough lobbying dollars were spent.”

According to Ambrosino, large operators pressured lawmakers by withholding financial commitments to social equity programs until they received favorable terms. “They held them hostage,” he said. “They told lawmakers, ‘We’re not going to pay you any of that money until you give us a more favorable law.’ So, they changed it.”

The result, he says, is a market where ROs hold most of the canopy, while smaller cultivators face high costs, limited access, and few realistic paths to profitability. “Right now, microbusinesses are structured for failure,” Ambrosino said. “They’re trying to sell flower at $60 when dispensaries can get indoor-grown product from ROs for $30 or $35. You can’t compete with that.”

Mismatched Policy, Manipulated Data, and a Market Set to Run Dry

Ambrosino says the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) has failed to recognize the growing imbalance between large registered organizations and small cultivators. “The data OCM puts out is very manipulated and questionable,” he said. “They conflict with what they report from one day to the next. One day, there’s not enough canopy, the next day, there’s too much. It’s all over the place. They’ll show you all the potential canopy of adult-use license holders, but the reality is 80% of them aren’t growing, or they’re only using part of their allotted space. Meanwhile, the ROs are operating at a massive scale.”

He believes this disconnect has led policymakers to think there’s an oversupply problem when in reality there’s a shortage of affordable biomass. “OCM looks at flower canopy, not biomass canopy,” Ambrosino said. “We don’t have enough biomass to produce distillate, and distillate is what sets the price for everything.”

Ambrosino, who sits on the board of the Association of New York Cannabis Processors, says the solution starts with expanding outdoor cultivation. “We’ve been lobbying the state to raise the outdoor cap from one acre to five,” he explained. “They keep saying there’s enough canopy, but that’s not true if you want a functioning processing and manufacturing sector.”

He also believes OCM steered small farmers in the wrong direction. “They convinced these guys to grow indoors when they had no capital to begin with,” he said. “Outdoor grows are cheaper, more sustainable, and can produce terpene-rich material that’s perfect for extraction. Giving up those outdoor licenses was the worst thing they could have done.”

Ambrosino sees the industry’s structural problems fueling a deeper issue: product inversion. “Inversion is like a cancer tumor,” he said. “Everyone — dispensaries, processors, cultivators — is supporting it. If OCM just cuts it out overnight, the market will bleed to death. We have to shrink the tumor first. The only way to do that is to expand cultivation enough that it doesn’t make sense to invert.”

Licensing Gridlock and Market Whiplash

Dispensary operators say New York’s market isn’t just constrained by bureaucracy, it’s tangled in its own rules. Jon Paul Pezzo, owner of NYC Bud dispensary, believes the state’s proximity restrictions have unintentionally frozen the licensing process. “You have a lot of people that are holding proximities because they’re in the December queue or they just have a proximity,” he explained. “Some may have abandoned their license or run out of money, but those spots are still locked up. That means someone with an actual license can’t move forward.” Pezzo said that while rolling out the market slowly may have helped at first, the process has caused problems on all sides.

Now that the agency is considering waiving its 1,000-foot proximity rule to allow more dispensaries to open, Pezzo worries it’s too soon for such sweeping changes. “The industry isn’t even five years old,” he said. “Let it play out before you start rewriting the rules. If we had known these laws would change this quickly, maybe we would have invested differently.”

He added that while OCM claims to solicit feedback from operators, the process feels one-sided. “I’ve been to many OCM meetings where everyone’s frustrated, and the regulators just sit there getting yelled at,” he said. “At some point, they just shut down. I don’t think they’re really listening to logic.”

The Data Gap: METRC, Testing, and a Lack of Standards

Ambrosino believes New York’s lack of standardized testing and tracking has left the industry vulnerable to chaos. “If you want a juicy nugget, I’ll tell you where to look,” he said. “It’s in the testing, and it’s in the labs. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that all of our labs are invalid because they were supposed to be updated by Wadsworth Labs, the state police lab that never got the equipment. Because of that, every lab is operating under its own standard. There’s no standardization between labs, and nobody knows.”

That lack of consistency, he warns, could have far-reaching financial consequences. When potency-based taxes were imposed, each lab’s different results meant the state effectively collected taxes on unverified data. “Don’t be surprised if people start demanding money back for what they overpaid in potency taxes,” Ambrosino said.

A long-promised track-and-trace system could have helped prevent some of this disarray, but the rollout has been repeatedly delayed. After three years, the agency now says METRC will finally be implemented in January.

Jon Paul Pezzo says the delay has left retailers struggling with manual systems that are prone to human error. “In a perfect world, this should work like a supermarket—product comes in, product goes out, and it’s all scanned into one universal system,” he explained. “Instead, we’re manually entering everything, and that leads to mislabeled products and bad data. For something that’s a controlled substance, that’s unacceptable.”

He believes a fully integrated METRC system could finally bring order to the process. “You’d have cultivators logging shipments, dispensaries scanning them in, and all the details automatically syncing,” Pezzo said. “It would make everyone’s life easier and protect the business as a whole. I just don’t understand why it’s taken this long.”

The Hemp Loophole is Undermining New York’s Legal Market

“The entire industry is using the hemp loophole,” Ambrosino said, describing a troubling double standard: OCM forced him to remove hemp-derived products from his website even though the regulations permitted out-of-state sales for products under the .3% threshold, while companies like Sluggers continue to sell high-potency “THCA hemp” products directly to New Yorkers online.

“This stuff they’re calling hemp, it’s not hemp, it’s marijuana,” he said. “We have to be smarter. It’s deceptive, and it’s hurting the legal operators who are trying to play by the rules.”

Ambrosino says that without proper lab oversight and product tracking, hemp-derived cannabinoids like THCA are slipping through regulatory cracks, further undermining the licensed market.