Back in July, I reported on the Phylos Bioscience saga for Wired.
When Mowgli Holmes and his childhood friend Nishan Karassik founded Phylos Bioscience in 2014 they had one major goal: to provide more transparency in the cannabis industry. That “and science, truth, consistency—and better weed,” Holmes wrote me in an email back in 2017.
They never could have guessed in 2014 that within a few years, they would be the subject of suspicion and outright contempt in some quarters of the tight-knit cannabis-growing world. But maybe they should have, because the transition from the illicit trade in marijuana to the mostly licit cannabis industry was never going to be without its complications and conflicts. Large science firms and Big Agriculture see an opportunity. Little cannabis sees a threat.
One of the first services Phylos launched was a “plant sex test,” which saves pot growers time and money by determining the sex of a seedling within a week of germination. (Only female cannabis plants contain usable amounts of THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids, so you want to cull the males ASAP.)
The company also began a collaboration with Rob DeSalle, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History and professor at Columbia University, to sequence the DNA of as many cultivated varieties of cannabis (or cultivars) as possible to shed some light on the plant’s evolution. The results were published—on April 20, 2016, 4/20 naturally—in an open source forum called the Galaxy.
A splashy visual representation of the genetic relationships between cannabis varieties, the Galaxy is also, in essence, a road map for breeders. At first, the Phylos Galaxy was a kind of community science project—anyone who sent in tiny piece of stem (swabbed with alcohol to remove any traces of THC) got their cultivars genetically sequenced for free. (A fee was added later.)
But later in 2016, Phylos began offering a “plant genotype test,” which included a placement on the Galaxy as well as a full report on its relationship to other cultivars. Because the Galaxy is public, it allows any breeder, scientist, or curious pot consumer to see how their favorite cultivar fits into the big picture—and it also helps growers decide what to breed next. (The farther apart two plants are genetically, the more likely they are to yield a plant with higher vigor and more disease resistance.)
Genotyping also offers a quick fact-check, allowing growers to know if they’re mislabeling cultivars—which, due to the clandestine nature of the black market, happens with some regularity. From the beginning, Phylos positioned itself as a “new kind of agriculture company,” one that mistrusted Monsanto and championed small-scale growers and breeders, the people responsible for the vast genetic diversity in the cannabis category. At last count, the Phylos Galaxy had 3,000 samples from 80 different countries, making it the largest database of cannabis genetics in the world.
So when Holmes announced on April 16 via Instagram that Phylos would be launching its own breeding program in a facility west of Portland, it wasn’t all hearts and smiley faces. Many in the cannabis community were outraged. “How about staying in your lane,” said one early response. “Damn, maybe you really have been stealing genetics this entire time,” began another. And finally: “Every idiot that allowed your company to put their genetics into their system just lost all their intellectual property.”
At first glance, the haters’ comments might’ve been dismissed as paranoia, jealousy, or at the very least anti-science. After all, you can’t resurrect a cannabis plant from a dead stem and 2,000 sites on the genome, which was all Phylos was sequencing.
But a few days later, a video surfaced that showed Holmes pitching investors at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference in Miami in February. In it, Holmes tells a roomful of would-be investors that Phylos has a huge lead as a cannabis breeder. “We’ve been collecting data and IP for four years. We have really huge barriers to entry protecting us,” and that “we have more trust in the cannabis industry than any other science company.”
The real bombshell, though, was when Holmes introduced a few members of the Phylos advisory board, one of whom had worked for Syngenta for years, and another who was VP of technology acquisition at the merged Dow and DuPont. Holmes continued: “So, having these guys around is just critical for us, because we’re building a company that is ultimately going to be acquired by that universe.”
To breeders and growers who had often heard Phylos employees publicly disparage Monsanto, affiliation with Syngenta and Dow/DuPont sounded like a deal with the devil. Also the idea that Phylos would use its storehouse of genetic data—in some cases freely donated by small growers—to pump up its market value and attract a major industry buyer sounded like an underhanded double-cross.
It was too much for brothers Aaron and Nathan Howard, co-owners of Southern Oregon cannabis farm East Fork Cultivars, who had been working with Phylos on a high-CBD hemp breeding project since February as part of something called the Breeding Innovation Network. In late April, East Fork was still publicly defending Phylos—both on Instagram and in real life.
The Howards knew the company was about to launch a breeding program—it wasn’t a secret—and although they had believed in the company’s integrity and commitment to helping small family-run cannabis farms like theirs, they were growing increasingly worried that they had been misled. “For so long, Phylos had been talking about being a different kind of agriculture company,” says East Fork CEO Mason Walker. “It would be one thing to be under crazy financial pressure and eventually have to sell under duress, but to actually have that as an intentional strategy? That really changed my mind.” East Fork left the Breeding Innovation Network in early May.
The episode is emblematic of a larger trend unfolding in the still-nascent legal cannabis business: The science and technology of mainstream agriculture is about to revolutionize marijuana. But old-school, pre-legalization cannabis growers fear they’ll be snuffed out in the process.
Though cannabis remains federally illegal, 11 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized recreational adult use, and 33 states along with DC have legalized medical use. Overall, members of the legal cannabis industry view the prospect of federal legalization—which some expect to happen in five to 10 years—with a mixture of hope and trepidation.
Once cannabis is legal, Big Agriculture will be able to invest enormous sums into improving cannabis. Once that happens, it will become extremely difficult for longtime breeders and growers to compete. Other monied interests from Big Pharma and the alcohol beverage industries have already jumped in. (Look no further than liquor conglomerate Constellation Brands, which last year invested $4 billion in Canadian cannabis firm Canopy Growth.)
To keep reading more, go to Wired.