Canera Deep Dive: Large-Scale Cannabis R and D and Processing

0:01BubblemanThere we go.

0:06BubblemanWelcome, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Just ready for this to get going here. Got a couple minutes. Make sure we're going to go live. Just waiting for the stream to go live. I'm not sure it has gone live yet.

0:29BubblemanLet's see what we got going on. There I am. There I am. Okay. Sorry about that, guys. First of all, I'd love to welcome everybody to another episode of Hash Church. Yeah. Season 11, episode 13, brought to you by Canna. Gotta give a big shout out to Canna Nutrients. Gonna just give, put up their logo real quick and give them a little shout out. Shout out to Kat and the whole team over at Canada.

0:58BubblemanGlobal Pioneers since 93. These guys have been doing it for a while. Canna supplies cultivators from all over the world with products that easily align with their growing systems. By continuously looking into plants, growing conditions, and crop specific needs, they are able to offer not only the right products, but also the technical support that every grower requires to optimize their cultivation. With three unique R&D facilities globally in the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada, Canada is able to keep track of market developments and test all their products and respective growing techniques first before launching to the market.

1:31BubblemanThat's a really important part. Very few companies are able to, you know, do R&D respectively to develop everything before they release it. A ton of companies released before. So the call to action is... You can find these guys at www.canna.ca. Follow them on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook at Canna Canada Official and LinkedIn. I'll put those into the descriptions. And if you have a technical growing questions, you can always reach out through email to the Canna Canada team at info at canna.ca.

2:10BubblemanLet's get this show started. I'm pretty excited. We got a couple of heavy hitters coming in from Canara, this monster company out in Quebec that I used to buy material off of. And I see Justin is waiting in the room, so I am going to let him in right now. And I'd like to actually welcome Justin to the room.

2:32JustinYou can hear me okay, buddy? Yes, sir. Good morning, man. How's it going?

2:36BubblemanVery good. Very good. Welcome. Listen, I just want to give you the quick terribly sorry about that email this morning, just being on the completely the wrong page. But yeah, I want to give you a little introduction. So Justin Conway is the VP of Transformation. I love the title, actually. That's a that's a good one. Justin joins the Canara team with broad knowledge in pharmaceutical and cannabis, new product research and development, formulations, technologies, large scale technology transfer.

3:03BubblemanAnd production and operational management. Justin holds an MSC and a PhD in chemistry focused on drug delivery and self-assembling nanotechnology strategies with over eight peer-reviewed academic publications. Damn, including a book chapter on DNA nanotechnology. I really want to have a little discussion with you about that for sure. Entering the cannabis industry during the first year of legalization, he has over five years of experience in cannabis industry, working with some of Canada's leading Licensed producers, including Hexo, Great White North Growers.

3:33BubblemanAnd you're currently leading the transformation department responsible for all derivative concentrate products over at Kinera.

3:43JustinNo, that's it exactly. Sorry.

3:46BubblemanNo, don't worry about your dog. Your dog's welcome to be on Hash Church. We love dogs.

3:51JustinYeah, you know, it's been a really interesting journey. Been a huge fan enjoying cannabis at an early age, so call it 30 years now. So was expecting to end up in pharmaceuticals, but ended up in the cannabis industry, which very much suits me as a preferred choice.

4:12BubblemanAwesome. Very cool. I want to welcome Issam into the room as well. Issam Ben-Moussa, who is the VP of Production and Experimentation, also with a pretty cool title there. So Issam is an engineer in agronomy and biotechnology and a doctor of philosophy, PhD in plant sciences. He's conducted several research projects in academia and governmental institutions around the world, and he's led research and development in the plant production industry.

4:38BubblemanI guess with his track record in plant science research and his passion for the cannabis industry, Assam has joined Canero Biotech as scientific director, where he has been instrumental to establish data-driven growing strategies and improve cultivation practices using an experimental approach. He also has worked on streamlining workflows and processing during cultivation and post-harvest operations. And after holding the role of Vice President of Production and Experimentation, Assam focuses on building trained teams, standardizing production operations, and improving strategies to ensure consistency and sustainable development.

5:13BubblemanWell, that is also a mouthful and not very easy. Welcome, Assam. Happy to have you here today.

5:18IssamHey, Marguerite. Thanks for the introduction and greetings to everyone who is with us here and shout out to the entire cannabis community. Yes, awesome. Thanks for the opportunity and hope this session would be pleasant and valuable for the community.

5:33BubblemanAbsolutely, absolutely. Yeah, BC Trichome Farmers shouting out Nuggs. Check out Nuggs if you're in Canada. So Nuggs is one of the brands that you guys are doing. I guess that's the brand that if I were, and I actually have, I have tried Nuggs before. So if I'm looking for a solventless product, Nuggs is the brand that you're going to have that under, correct?

5:58JustinYep, correct. We have our rosin line is currently under the Nuggs brand.

6:04BubblemanAwesome. Very cool. Can you tell us a little bit about the development of that brand and what kind of, you know, you guys are a big company. A lot of the big companies often miss the boat when it comes to understanding the value of solventless. And a lot of the big companies, they go into distillate, they go into, you know, the more sort of profitable foundation-based products and SKUs.

6:29BubblemanWhat kind of made it so you guys saw the writing on the wall with solventless?

6:36JustinYou want this one, Issam, or?

6:38IssamI actually go with this one since it's from extract. You can go with it.

6:42JustinYeah, so I mean, I guess we have our three brands really, and sort of the identity behind them is Tribal is really, we're looking for your premium genetics. We're going to take you on a ride of all kinds of different flavors. Nuggs is, I guess, more of the old school kind of stuff, like still... The you know uh legacy market style products and you know we have our rosin i guess being one of those products that passionate enthusiasts are really interested in so i i've seen a lot of the people that are buying rosin is it's a smaller group of people but they're the more passionate people the ones that are really really enjoying cannabis And looking for those new flavors and chasing those tastes.

7:28JustinSo for me, that's what our Nuggs rosin is all about, is bringing the best parts of the cannabis that the plant is expressing and then finishing it off with a rosin where concentrated flavor, concentrated cannabinoids are really coming out as part of the experience.

7:50BubblemanOh, sorry, I was on mute. A lot of people talking about it in the chat. You guys have the triple burger flour and live rosin.

7:58JustinSo, I mean, some of the ones that are resonating really these days, for sure, the triple burger comes out very, very pale in color. We're very selective about the bag that we're going to take to make these rosins. Our neon sunshine also really resonating with the consumers. Our bubble up also, it's kind of like an effervescent soapy, but on the cush side flavor as well. Previously, what was really popular was our Turple Strain that had a lot of the citrusy kind of flavors people look for.

8:29JustinSo, and we got a lot of stuff in the pipeline. I mean, we could get into it eventually, but I'd love to share some of the ways that we're doing our pheno hunts, like across, you know, 300 different beans that are cracked and the ideas that go into selection of what will be our next rosin is, it's turned into quite the science really.

8:51BubblemanI'd love to get into that. I want to welcome Colin from Vessel Life Sciences. He's one of our regular panelists and just a brilliant hash maker and grower and all-around awesome fucking guy to join the conversation with us today. So welcome, Colin. Meet Justin and Assam over from Canara. I think I want to show about a five-minute video right now just to give people an idea. And I want to get into this more in Hash Church when people come in, whether they're hash makers, whether they're growers, whatever they kind of are doing.

9:20BubblemanYou know, this facility is very impressive. I mean, listen, if you're a small time closet grower and you think that scale isn't possible and that quality and purity are deeply affected by large scale, then you won't be impressed by this. But I certainly was impressed by it. I just loved how clean it all was and how tight it all was. And, you know, guys like myself and Colin, although we understand the value of single source and, you know, small batch products, We also understand through the schooling of David Watson, aka Skunk Man Sam, that scale is not a bad word.

9:56BubblemanThat if you want to touch the world, you're going to need to scale. And that's fine if you can only touch the people in your neighborhood. And that's fine if you can touch the people in two, three neighborhoods over. But there are companies like Kinera who want to touch all the neighborhoods. And so I am going to light up that video. I'm going to have to figure it out because...

10:16BubblemanI do have my headphones on, so I'm going to have to turn my headphones on, put my speaker on and hopefully we don't get too much reverberation when we share this video. It's about a five minute video. I just want to kind of give it a breakdown and then we'll kind of get into a little bit more of the conversation. Listen. The intense sort of pressure of running a company on this scale, unless you've been involved in such a thing, you can have zero idea of the intensity of how important it is to work Well, with your team, how important it is to communicate and just how important it is for the majority of the people to be on the ball and not like coming into work foggy or sick or this is a pretty incredible facility.

11:06BubblemanSo I'm going to get it up here real quick. We'll go into the share. I think it's right here. I'm going to turn off my headphones and get on to the Bose. Oh, there we go. I'm going to turn it on. Turning it on will definitely be helpful. All right, let's see. And give me a thumbs up if you guys can hear this okay.

11:38ColinExtremely important for us, especially at our scale, to have a reliable fertilizer company backing us. There's many things to worry about. The fertilizer can't be one of them.

11:48SpeakerWe have mega facilities here that are one of the largest here in Quebec. It's a million square feet, 600,000 square feet of canopy space right now. And we have about 250,000 square feet of active canopy. That's about 100,000 plants that we're growing here right here in Valleyfield today.

12:06IssamWe want to be the number one in the world. That means we have to set up first our standards for quality and then keeping that standards and scaling for volume.

12:17SpeakerSetting standard of quality is very important for Canara. Using cationutrients helps us achieve our goal and really achieve being a leader in this industry.

12:46ColinFrom here at Canera, we use the Cana Substra lineup. So for veg, we use the Vega A and B, both equal parts. And for the flowering part, we use the Substra Flores A and B. Of course, being at our site, we've had to do our due diligence and, you know, test other products that are on the market to ensure that it's not better either our final product or save costs at the same time.

13:07ColinSo yes, we've done some tests with dry salts. You know, unfortunately, but fortunately to date, nothing seems to beat Cana, both in quality and consistency. You know, once again, quality proves itself.

13:19SpeakerEvery week we're doing 14,000 songs. So propagation starts with the basin of our rockwool plugs. We will integrate cannanutrient into the basin and I will do about 6,000 clones every day. So the teams will come here, manicure every single plants into the format that we want. So we check plant health, quality. Obviously we also check for heights. And one by one, they will be planted in those plugs.

13:45SpeakerSo it's really important for us to have our pH and our EC set. We know we're starting our week with quality products.

13:54IssamWe do minimum two phenohunts per year, and every phenohunt is minimum 206. We want the only variable is the genetic or the phenotype. Standardizing means using Ghana, because that's what we use for production.

14:14SpeakerAfter about 14 to 21 days, depending on genetics, we will now begin our transplantation phase, which will bring them to our veg room. I will plant here in Farnham just about 1400 plants that will remain there for another 14 days. The plants are watered by drip irrigation, so by capillarity. Again, we're using canna to have their first watering and we'll go on for the rest of the whole plant life.

14:42ColinWe go through a lot of fertilizer. During one of the visits from the Canna team, we discussed some of our issues with filling and transport. They developed a high concentrate formula, which is basically double the concentration of the current one. Therefore, we have half the amount of fill-ups and a half the amount of orders. We've noticed no difference in the quality of our product. Consistency remains the same, which is what we would expect from Canna.

15:04ColinWell, the AC definitely saves on costs for us. The manipulation of the product, filling up our stock tank reservoirs, that time is cut in half. Also for our shipping receiving team, there's a lot less containers to manage and track coming back and forth. So overall, it saves us time, energy, and money.

15:22IssamWe have done a lot of nutrient tests and we ended up selecting Canna for the consistency and the quality of the product.

15:31SpeakerBeing one of their leaders, Industry in Canada, it's really important for us to focus on quality. Using Canada gives me the peace of mind where I know the nutrient line works. I've proven it with different phenol that's hit the market. As you all know, quality proves itself.

15:48ColinI would definitely recommend Canada to other producers or other people in the industry for one of the simple facts that it's just really easy to use and it's very hard to screw up, especially at scale. There's many things to think about on a day to day. Worrying about how much of each fertilizer did you put in already is not one we want to worry about. So knowing that it's an A to D simple mix, we can't go wrong.

16:18BubblemanWell, you certainly would think that simplicity would be at the top of the game for such a facility. It's a beautiful facility. There's no doubt about it. The plants look healthy. Everything is obviously looking super professional. You guys are doing a killer job. One of the things I'll say briefly about Canna Nutrients is that one of my most viewed videos on my YouTube channel Is me taking a half pound of a cultivar called Where Is My Bike years ago now, it's got to be 10 years ago, and pressing it into flour rosin.

16:51BubblemanThat shows you how long ago it is. Who the hell is making flour rosin anymore? Anyway, this was early days of rosin, and I turned half a pound of it into like 60 grams of flour rosin, and it was just like just tapping in at a 30% return from flour.

17:12BubblemanAnd my buddy Neil, who was actually growing with John, who is married to Kat from Canna. They were running the Canna there and I went out to their facility and it was spectacular. He had given the clone away to quite a few people and no one else had produced a 30% return on the clone. So I thought that was giving a good shout out to Neil and John and Canna as well.

17:40BubblemanSo yeah, what a what an incredible facility, guys. I mean,

17:47BubblemanHow do you go about running such an operation? Like your team must be so tight. You must have such incredible communication. What I see with a lot of the big companies is they end up disconnected and decompartmentalized and they don't communicate the way they need to communicate. How do you guys get around that? How do you guys manage to communicate well enough that the facility is just operational in such a beautiful manner?

18:20JustinOn my side, I think you said it, Marcus.

18:23BubblemanI can't hear. Let me figure this. I must have changed something here. Oh, yeah.

18:36BubblemanI think I got you now.

18:38JustinYeah? Can you hear me?

18:39BubblemanYeah. Sorry. It was the flipping from the speaker to the headphones.

18:44JustinI think you said it right there, Marcus. One of them, I'll for sure let Issam give his thoughts, but I think communication with this size of an operation is the key. I find my role a lot of the time ends up being ensuring that The communication pathways between all of the different departments is functional, is healthy. People aren't afraid to chime in with comments, ideas, and challenge the way that we're doing to find new efficiencies or to find better ways of working together.

19:16JustinI have a strong team of directors. You know, at the two sites, both Valleyfield and Farnham, they are quite a distance from each other. So again, ensuring that my directors are communicating on a regular basis is really the key to making sure that the load stays on the road.

19:35BubblemanYou also must have a really like seriously capable leadership team. And I don't know if it's just that I was consistently around incapable leadership teams, but there's just, it seems like there's so many more incapable leadership teams, at least from the cannabis perspective of the legacy guy, the guy that's coming up with the cannabis knowledge, but doesn't have the corporate culture information. I just find that a lot of those, you guys obviously have figured out a way to blend that legacy and corporate entity, that corporate culture.

20:11BubblemanBecause in a lot of the cases that I was kind of working under, I felt the corporate culture Wanted to kill the cannabis culture. It was so important to put this corporate culture forward that often I'd have to pull those guys aside and say, hey, we already have a culture. You don't have to replace it. It's the cannabis culture. We can build on that foundation and we can make a really great corporate culture.

20:36BubblemanAnd I've always said the same thing to the marketing people from these large companies. It's like, look, I get it. You went to school. You learned about this. You have a great understanding of how it all works. Try to think outside of the box. This isn't Pepsi and this isn't, you know, Oreo cookies. This is just something a little bit different and it's got a different history and it's got a different future.

20:57BubblemanAnd so I've always kind of tried to get, and once again, I've come up to a brick wall a lot of the times in regards to the corporate entities on how they want to allow for marketing. And so I definitely see that you guys have somehow, Sort of climbed that mountain and managed to get through that. That is, to me, one of the hardest things that I've seen in, you know, In the cannabis industry, in Canada, where everything is so federal, because in the US, because it's state, they're still willing to kind of, you know, they don't have to not cut corners.

21:36BubblemanWhereas in Canada, it's very easy to get into a situation and you get a QA, and maybe you could speak to this, Justin, where you get a QA that's kind of coming from the pharmaceutical industry. And now they've been trained from the pharmaceutical industry, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that sometimes I feel... That they implement this array of regulatory framework that's basically been deciphered by them.

22:00BubblemanIt's not necessarily the actual rules. How do you guys deal with that as well? Because I've seen it in countless corporations where they just... I don't know, there's no room to breathe when it comes to QA. And if QA says something, it's kind of the word of God. How do you guys keep your QA at the highest level of integrity without sort of pushing it over the level where you're now really just costing your company excess money?

22:34IssamThanks, Marcus, for this question. So indeed, one of the biggest challenges at the beginning When I joined Canara in 2020 and I got called by the CFO and the CEO, my first mandate was to remove the irradiation process. Are you able, if we hire you, To not irradiate our cannabis anymore. Do you have a solution for that? And as soon as I didn't, I never worked in the cannabis industry and I started reading the SOPs and seeing the way we do these testings for microbials.

23:11IssamAnd indeed it was completely adapted to a pharmaceutical, to pills and not to biological material like plants. The fact of using the method of plating on cannabis material, so it's basically you're putting a plant or a sample of a plant that has its own microbiome, it comes with beneficial bacteria or microorganisms, and then you're just putting that sample in favorable conditions on a petri dish, and you're expecting, and then you're counting the total Thank you.

23:47IssamThank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

24:12IssamThe bibliographic research and I referred to what was called the... There was a study from Genome Canada about using the molecular methods to do the... Microbial analysis, PCR. And that was my first challenge to convince our QA team and the compliance and then convincing when we have the audits to convincing Health Canada auditors that that's the way we can treat cannabis as pills. It's a plant, it's biological and it has its own microbial.

24:50IssamSo, and the other point to go back to the The communication within at this large scale. And I think the keyword is hands-on. When you have all the team, including the compliance team, knowing all the operations, the story behind the why we do these procedures, and they understand that, that will facilitate the communication and the outputs of the So the overall outputs. So when I joined, I found a management team, really hands on.

25:32IssamAnd a group of growers. It was the biggest, the funniest thing was the complementary team we had. It's a hybrid team, buddies from the legacy market with their own ideas and point of views different every day with bringing new ideas. And at the same time, I was hired as the scientific director. So all that I had to do is put these ideas and this myth, sometimes we call them myths from the cannabis industry, Thank you very much.

26:01IssamThank you.

26:24IssamA management team that is hands-on and that understands the game because usually testing, doing R&D doesn't have a direct profit, right? So it requires a lot of investment, but the The outcome or the profit is not direct. And we invest a lot of, I mean, millions of dollars every year on R&D. And the fact that we have the CEO and the CFO that are involved in the operations and hands-on together with a strong team, hybrid team of scientists and buddies from the legacy market, That brought us to another level where every hypothesis is tested.

27:08IssamData is collected. We have a strong IT team that made the standard platforms where all the knowledge is shared. And everyone in the company, even at the head office in marketing or sales, they can see what is going on in operations and in terms of innovation, the tasks, at which step we are. And so that's pretty everything. And at the same time, We are a company with almost 400 employees.

27:42IssamAnd the first feedbacks we get, our first consumers are our employees. So we have this R&D license that allows us to do sensory tests. So every test we do, we collect the data, we do the analysis, and then we take conclusions, and it goes through the sensory test from our employees, and we get that feedback. So we let our employees and the consumers set up the standards.

28:09IssamAnd then once we get to findings, we make sure we replicate that. The beauty, Canara, that we have two facilities and the foreign facility, which is still a mega facility, but at the same time, it's a medium scale. I mean, we're talking about 600,000 square feet where we can do all the tests, all the R&D in there. And that's huge. And so that allows us to replicate every finding, to replicate it at large scale.

28:39IssamSo we do it on 20 plants. Then before transferring that to Valleyfield, which is our biggest facility on 10,000 plants per room, we do it first on 1,000 plants. And we collect the data, analyze it, and make sure we lock the profile before we put it in large scale production.

29:00BubblemanDude, I love everything you just said. I love the fact that you came out with, and I know Colin's gonna love it as well, like ways to not irradiate the plant. Like that is a high level concept that most cannabis people do not understand. And it shows the value of bringing in people who are experts Not necessarily cannabis people. You don't necessarily have to have 30 years in the back of your pocket for cannabis to understand, okay, well, we understand the plant has its own biome.

29:31BubblemanWe understand that there are microbials. We've got, I mean, Kevin McKernan has been doing this work now and Colin was involved in it as well for years now in regards to kind of trying to like let these regulatory bodies understand that we live in a microbial world. And that the plant itself has microbials and the idea of, and I understand, you know, shelf life and all of these things, but what a great pathway as a large scale company to take.

30:02BubblemanAnd I applaud Canara for taking it in approaching this, this puzzle. And it's not an easy puzzle. It's easy for self-righteous people to be like, Oh yeah, you should never. Radiate cannabis. It's like, okay, well, let me know when you harvest 1500 kilos and you fail microbials, not because there's even any mold on it, but because it has some living biome and bacteria in it. Let me know if you're going to throw that away or if you're actually going to, you know, to figure it out.

30:31BubblemanBut I love the idea that your company is looking at ways to avoid that. And the fact that they understand the customer base. I also love the fact that you mentioned That it's your employees that are your customers, your first customers, that it's the employees that are able to decipher. Here's the thing, I'm an anomaly. I can go in and I can find the best one that I will like, but what I've learned over the years is that I don't speak for the everyday man.

31:00BubblemanI'm not the guy buying the mainstream products. I'm much more of an anomaly. So I recognize in my own brands as well, That, of course, I want to get on the podium with those high quality premium products, but I also want to be able to offer people the best product that they can afford. And so I think not allowing the savant who's doing the pheno hunting or the processing or the guy that has the special nose.

31:29BubblemanDon't necessarily let him decide what flavor profiles are going to be the ones for the future. Let the let the sort of the regular folks, the people who are working all different aspects of the job, not this guy that like lives in a cave and he's a super anomaly. And yeah, he has a high olfactory capability. I think that's awesome. I just wanted to say that. Welcome to Dr. Mark Sheldon, our resident chemist.

31:54BubblemanJustin, you and Mark will get along very well. He just came back from California. He was speaking at a chemistry conference, correct? What was that called?

32:06Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, the American Chemical Society's national meeting down in San Diego last week.

32:11BubblemanOkay, okay. I think that you guys will have value in knowing one another. Dr. Mark is brilliant. He's been our sort of resident chemist for the last 10 years, and he's been involved in cannabis. And I think that both Assam and Justin will have, it'll be a value for you to make sure you get Mark's number and email after the show, and it'll be a value to him as well.

32:35BubblemanI always like linking up the good folks. Colin, you had your hand up. Go ahead, please.

32:40Collin PalmerYeah, so hey guys, it's really, it's great to be in the conversation here. You know, a couple of things you've, that struck a chord with me is the plating. Like that alone took me a decade to truly understand, right? And I'm, I, you know, I've been studying this plant pretty much my whole life, right? And, but from a regulatory point of view, There's just so much to learn, right?

33:02Collin PalmerAnd I think it's really, you know, the listeners out there that are trying to get clean cannabis to market, which is the number one thing we want to do, right? No remediation, right? That is the path, right? Right now. That's for now, right? And I think that's really wonderful that you as a company and as a team have really chosen that as a path to really hone in on and not give up on because there are Plenty of operators that have, right?

33:28Collin PalmerAnd they're just like, well, I'd rather play it safe than actually put something out that's worthy of putting into your bowl. And that's, you know, I spend in my company in New York, that's what we work so hard at is getting clean cannabis to the market that's not remediated because 98% of it is. And that's an issue. You're really not giving the consumer the best opportunity to, you know, Thank you so much for having me.

34:14Collin PalmerAnd I love that you are just doing it and it's part of the roadmap for you because that's, again, those that are out there not doing sensory panels, you're doing your product lines a disservice. You need to have the conversation. It's like musicians that just record and then put it out without ever listening to stuff. You know, it's like that doesn't it's not how it works, you know, so you have to have reflection.

34:36Collin PalmerSo that's really amazing. Is there anything you know, the question I had for you, is there is there anything that you're doing You know, in terms of the flavor profiles that, you know, you're doing that you think is unique with the actual sensory panel. Is there any sort of, you know, when you get into sensory, are there questions that you use or is there, you know, do you guys use placebo formulations that maybe don't, you know, have all the constituents in there that the, you know, the others do?

35:08Collin PalmerHow do you guys approach that?

35:13IssamJustin, you want me to go on that? So, yeah, so we have this full questionnaire that we have built and it's adapted according to the sensory panel. So it's different when we do phenohunts and we are looking for new genetics to come on the market. So we just will give the participants a background of what we are looking for. So different profiles or certain, I mean, if we are looking for a GMO genetics, So they have that in mind before they start testing.

35:49IssamAll the tests are blind. It's sample one, two, three. For sure, among these three, we are allowed, with the regulations, we are allowed to do only three samples every session. So among these three, for sure, there is a control. And the control, usually it's either the... Profile that can be existing. It's, it can be a genetic that it was never grown by, by canary. And it's just, we use that as a control because we are looking for a similar profile profile, or sometimes we do a sensory on, on some R and D tests where we do implement some techniques or some trials to improve the, the, the terpenes.

36:31IssamSo the control terpenes or cannabinoids or the, the overall experience, So the control in that case will be the previous batch. Or sometimes we do the control within the same treatment, within the same block of treatments. So the only variable is just the treatment we have done. It's either nutrients, light intensity, or the... So it's one variable. Make sure we have the control. The control is always what we are looking for and the treatments that we compare to.

37:04IssamSo the participants, they don't know. The sampling is blind. The test is blind. But they know what we are looking at.

37:15BubblemanHow cool would it be if you could add a cue? Imagine if regulations allowed for this in Canada. This is just, I kind of thought of this as you were speaking, Assam. You send out a QR code, you send out three samples in one package. None of them have names, which would obviously mess with regulatory framework. But imagine the QR, you have your sensory test that you send out to any of your customers and you give them like a massive discount on the on the product, you know, maybe a 40 or 50 percent discount to the first 200 people or 300 people swath across the market.

37:49BubblemanYou get these sensory tests put in. Maybe there's a chance to win something else. Who knows? But I love the idea of sensory panels. I think it's really important to, especially in understanding flavor trends. And that's something that I definitely wanted to, you know, I've always said it that the smaller companies have an advantage when it comes to flavor trends. If a flavor trend changes quickly, often a smaller company Can move very quickly into that flavor profile.

38:20BubblemanHow do you guys deal with that in regards to flavor profiles, you know, trends becoming popular with a certain cultivar? How fast can you guys move Pheno Hunt and find that flavor and get it to market? You know, hoping that's that obviously the trend is still going.

38:41JustinMaybe I'll chip in a little bit on that one, Esam. I think one of the things that we've figured out is that there is a lot of, there's mainstays and there's flavor of the month kind of thing. And both of these are playing against each other. We want to have those kinds of options. So we've taken the time to really invest in a genetic bank where we do all of these pheno hunts.

39:05JustinThe winners don't always come out at the same time. We end up banking them in our, In our molecular lab where we basically we're taking small, small samples and we're cultivating them in petri dishes so that when the time is right, the market looks like it wants another fruity one or maybe it's more of a kush or maybe it's more of a citrus. We can go back and look at that genetic bank and we can very quickly, well quickly, I mean it does take months to propagate, but we've already phenohunted and selected the flavor we want, can go ahead and bring that back to market as we need.

39:44IssamIndeed.

39:45BubblemanSo I think the... Just took my hoodie off and my AirPods fell out. Sorry about that. I wanted to thank Tony Bologna for the sick shirt that he sent me, the Hashmaker shirt. I was pretty stoked. Oh, it's kind of bumpy too. It feels... It's pretty cool. So shout out to Tony for that. Thank you for the answer there, Justin. I had a couple other questions in regards to quality at commercial levels.

40:11BubblemanFrom a production standpoint, you know, how do you guys balance the consistency and innovation when establishing, you know, these high standards that you guys have obviously created, especially with the variability that can come with cannabis cultivation? I know neither of you guys are cultivators, but, you know.

40:32IssamYeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the genetic variability is the biggest challenge in our industry, right? So unlike other crops like tomato, cucumber, Where a limited number of cultivars is commercialized all over the world and you go to the supermarket, you know which tomato variety you're looking for. We are not inventing new genetics, new cultivars. So the cannabis market is unique and the consumers are very explorative, always looking for new genetics and profiles.

41:04IssamAnd with the limited number of genetics, the lack of genetic mapping and the poor breeding traceability, It's a huge challenge for growers to preset the cultivation strategy and maintain consistency, right? So the way we tackle that at Canara is by presetting the main parameters in terms of cultivation. And here I'm referring to lights, things that requires big investments, right? So lights, climate and nutrients. And that we preset it as a standard Canaris strategy.

41:40IssamThen we start hunting and we run through the year. We run through more than 400 phenotypes and to end up selecting just five to 10 candidates that provide the minimum requirements. And we add that preset strategy. And we also, very important here when we start our Phenohut process is we do some molecular analysis to determine if these genetics, they are free of viruses and resistance to disease.

42:11IssamWe do run sex tests as well. We don't just rely on symptoms like banana. So we do molecular tests on the DNA to determine if it's Male or female. And so that allows us to select five to 10 candidates. And from these candidates, they will go through medium scale production runs. And aggregate data is collected. We do sort of meta analysis. And the findings of this analysis will allow us to select the winners.

42:46IssamAnd these winners, they're classified into groups. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

43:18IssamSo that's the way we do it. We really set up the main parameters as a standard strategy. We select the candidates that can fit in that environment. And from there, we would select the winners. And for that, we just need some tweaking and we divide them into groups. It's difficult to divide them into with the with the Genetic variability in cannabis, it's different to separate them into hybrid, indica, sativa, because sometimes you have two genetics that are supposed to be sativa, but they grow completely different.

43:57IssamAnd that's why we have to split them into small groups. And every group has its own tweak, small tweaking. And yeah, so that's the way we do the phenohunt and scale it.

44:13BubblemanWonderful. Yeah, that's super cool, man, that you guys are really focused on the science and in-depth understanding of the plant because you can't just put a bunch of different cultivars in the same room and expect them all to grow the same or uptake nutrients the same. And so that is definitely... There's so much complexity that goes into growing cannabis. Who would have thought it? You know, we are not in a situation where we can just pick one cultivar and then grow it like they do with tomatoes and bananas and blueberries and raspberries and so many.

44:49BubblemanIt almost makes you realize that maybe just maybe cannabis will be the plant that teaches society about everything they're missing because some CFO at some banana company decided hey listen we can't have all these different banana genetics we we just have to have one and that's what we need to do and we're going to pump out 20 billion you know tissue culture plants of this thing every year and uh so it is interesting you know the way cannabis is It's because it missed that whole boat of big ag and kind of, you know, like, oh, we just got to cut it down, get rid of the majority of cannabis is still in this very rich world of genetic diversity.

45:33BubblemanThere's an enormous amount of genetic diversity available for us. And not only, you know, novel cannabinoids, but obviously in the aromatic volatile compounds. So I'd love to ask you guys a little bit about that. You guys seem to be sort of ahead of the curve over many of the companies. Do you guys have any interest in learning more about the other aromatic volatile compounds aside from terpenes and terpenoids like esters and thiols and thiolates?

46:02BubblemanIs that something that's on the future board for Canara?

46:08JustinI would say 100%, you know, that got on our radar quite early, probably over a half year now. It's not just terpenes that are contributing to the different flavors, right? There's a lot of other chemicals, phytochemicals that are in there helping out with the flavors. We were lucky enough to have a... A great in-house lab where we're in the final stages of implementing GCMS. That's really going to allow us to quantify all of these terpenes, but also start to look at Other flavorants, like you're alluding to, aldehydes and esters and all of these small molecules that are contributing a lot to the flavor experience.

46:53BubblemanSo definitely on that process a little bit that you mentioned, what is that exactly? A method of...

46:59JustinThank you so much for joining us.

47:18JustinAnd then at the end of that separation, you hit them with mass spectrometry, which allows you to identify which molecules are there and present in certain concentrations. So you can really start to back out what is the molecule that might be responsible for a more nuanced lemon flavor or a pepper nuance, for example. Sometimes what you end up seeing is synergistic behavior between a small little dash of an extra flavor and molecule all of a sudden translates into a big impact in terms of the overall terpene experience that they're enjoying.

48:00BubblemanThat was a doozy. Dr. Mark, you have any comments on that? You're a resident chemist.

48:09Dr Mark ScialdoneHey, guys. How are you doing? Yeah, it's great to have this conversation with you today. Yeah, I mean, this is the value of having in-house analytics. You know, it's one thing if you're just, you know, producing and sending flour and samples over to third party testing labs, which I imagine you have to do just to get it on dispensary shelves. But having that capability in-house I know I had a couple clients who were, you know, sort of resistant to, you know, well, wait a second.

48:40Dr Mark ScialdoneWe do third-party testing at another company. Why do we have to do this here? We grow weed, right? We don't need to hire a chemist and get this expensive analytical instrumentation, which looks really cool and everything, but, you know, at the end of the day, what you do with it is probably more important than just having it itself. But yeah, Justin, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, Looking when you're when you're doing phenohunting and you know there's some nuances in GC that you have to understand too is that typically what we did was a headspace measurement where you're heating up a sample and you're just looking at what volatilizes out.

49:18Dr Mark ScialdoneMore recently people are doing direct injection methods to get a better idea of what the terpene and you know I won't say aromatic Aromatic to a chemist means something else, but I mean, what does that volatile fraction look like? And yeah, I think the folks at Abstracts have done a great job and really, you know, pointing out some of these tropical sulfur Thank you for joining us.

50:02Dr Mark ScialdoneThen the terpenes, I mean, our noses are so sensitive to these thiols that they don't need to be there in a really huge quantity in order for you to kind of smell it. But yeah, that skunky or, you know, you ever... Open up a bag of weed and you're like, hey, did somebody just step in dog shit or something? It's like that real shitty smell. They correlate that to this guy.

50:28Dr Mark ScialdoneI don't know if you've seen this guy in your analysis. Skettle. Skettle, right, right. So that's the shit terpene or it's not even a terpene at all. It's actually, it's an indole. And yeah, I mean, it's super interesting because you don't usually find nitrogen containing compounds Thank you so much for joining us today.

51:12Dr Mark ScialdoneA lot of those compounds are responsible for the carcinogenic properties of tobacco because when they burn, they form these degradation products that are super toxic. But like in cannabis, you know, I mean, there's really when you look at the essential oils and you look at the terpenes and everything in there, there's really no nitrogen containing compounds at all. So scaffold was a Thank you for watching.

52:01Dr Mark ScialdoneSo yeah, I mean, you know, all these things can be deduced. I mean, here's a question I'd like to ask you guys. I mean, this is something that, you know, has come up. I was just actually out in California talking with Ian and the folks at Abstracts about this, which is that, you know, these volatile sulfur compounds, in particular the pre-enolated thiols, are so volatile and so...

52:28Dr Mark ScialdoneFugitive, meaning that they're just, they're gone, that they're really great indications of flower purity. And it goes to the question of, you know, how does one set shelf life parameters? You know, typically in cannabis, you're like, oh, okay, you just throw out 12 months shelf life. Okay, yeah, you're, You're done after 12 months or after then you're just not going to have the same product you had when you first put it on the shelf.

52:59Dr Mark ScialdoneSo what do you guys do? I mean, obviously there's countermeasures to kind of keep things more fresh, but I think like these volatile sulfides in particular, which actually are even difficult to find even on the best I mean, I have a triple quad in my lab and I could tell you that, you know, we even have difficulty because you really, to detect these things is one thing, but to quantify them at such a small level is really exceedingly difficult because you need to have good calibration curves and really good experimental technique to be able to quantify these things.

53:39Dr Mark ScialdoneBut is there any guidance that you've learned around shelf life? Again, just thinking about how you would analyze compounds, say like at six months and say, okay, yeah, that doesn't meet specifications. So in the jar, that stuff, we're going to take that stuff down. Is there any guidance that you can give on, you know, how you set shelf life for particularly flour?

54:12JustinOh, you're muted. I mean, so that's a really great question. And I like that idea too of if there could be some kind of molecule, be it a terpene or other flavorants, where when you stop detecting its presence, you can correlate that to this is past its shelf life. I think that's a really fascinating idea. I mean, I think it's trickier with flour to preserve a lot of these, a lot of those nuances to the flavor.

54:44JustinI mean, you can go ahead, store it at cooler temperatures. Maybe you're storing it in the dark. Maybe you're, you know, backfilling with nitrogen to create, you know, a non-oxidizing atmosphere. So I find it's trickier for flour. I don't necessarily know how you would do that. Maybe it is really an accepting that that degradation happens over time and putting it into place like the testing like you just described.

55:15JustinI can say though on the other side of things when and I deal with this a lot from the transformation side where I'm either doing solventless or solvent-based hydrocarbon extraction, and I am finding constantly new ways of preserving more and more of the aromants, be it do I now look at when I'm freeze-drying bubble hash, for example. There is clearly molecules that could be coming off during the freeze-drying that I'm now looking into ways of capturing and reintroducing.

55:47JustinWhen I go ahead and do all of my extraction workup, Later on to activate the oil, I'm like capturing terpenes at minus 80 degrees. Every little bit counts and then reintroducing those back in, even if they're small quantities. But the goal is to be as true to the natural plant expression as possible in terms of what's coming out of it. I know we lose some post-processing, but we really are constantly striving to make sure that we capture as much as possible.

56:21BubblemanTo me, it's as simple as being about a cold supply chain. You know, that's why we Cut it down fresh frozen. You know, the fresh frozen is going into a cold ice filled reactor. The hash is going right into a lyophilization oven. When it comes out of there, it's going right into a freezer. I'll say that, you know, it was no huge trick when Tony started doing Blue River terpene extraction.

56:46BubblemanHe wasn't doing some like futuristic non-existence process. But he was precipitating the vapor back into a liquid at like minus 80 degrees Celsius. And when you do that, you get water clear volatiles as a result instead of these like yellow ones that seem to come with the heating. So to me, all cannabis products are degrading. It's a no brainer. But when you make them very cold, you can slow that down to almost you know i mean i i kept i kept dry flour in my freezer for six years not even well sealed and when i pulled it out i made some bubble hash with it and i pressed that bubble hash into rosin and that rosin for whatever reason it and it was like a baby's diaper it's literally what it smelled like it was the stinkiest rosin i had ever produced to this day like i'd open it in one side of a room and way on the other side of the room people would be like what the is that it had such a rank smell and i do believe that these styles and phthalates and other compounds they it's not only that they're at an infinitesimally smaller percentage it's that they travel and move differently They just don't seem to be on the same pathways as a lot of the other aromas, as you will.

58:22Collin PalmerDr. Mark, I wanted to jump in on, you know, we've been putting flower out in the commercial sense for quite a while, 15 years now. And I think what we've found, this is not a silver bullet, but there's a correlation between water weight Our room size, like the headroom of how much atmosphere is in that particular vessel. You know, we've tried things like nitrogen, which we know affects it in a kind of a weird way.

58:49Collin PalmerBut we've we found removing that that air from that that vessel and then hermetically sealing it is the best opportunity to give that consumer what we see behind the curtain, as I say. That's what we found. And there's, you know, there's a way that you can cure your flower with the right water weight to lock these things in in a way that that kind of allows it to kind of settle.

59:14Collin PalmerSo it's not constantly off gassing. But those are the things we found work work fairly well. You know, it's we're just not there in terms of Thank you for joining us today.

59:37Collin PalmerYou know, we have plastics and all these things that don't really, they're not meant for these types of chemicals, right? And a lot of cases, these things eat through, you know, the seals. So.

59:49Dr Mark ScialdoneWhat do you mean by CPG? Just so I know what you're talking about. Consumer packaged goods. Okay.

59:55Collin PalmerYou know, like we have to have a whole assembly line. You have to have people, you have bags of cannabis that are out for hours on end. That modality there affects it, right? You have all these touch points that, You know, adversely affect the product before it even hits a jar. It could be sitting there for five hours because the guy's got to pack every, you know, got to pack it all out.

1:00:15Collin PalmerAnd that's a that's an issue. So we need to then what's the room ambient, you know, RH at, right, that they're working in? What's the temperature of that room? You know, a lot of these people, as Marcus kind of pointed out, You know, I see cannabis moving really fast around the world and country and different states, and there's no cold chain for it. Like, why are the wine fridges for wines?

1:00:37Collin PalmerWell, it's because we're trying to preserve these volatiles, right? And I think that's kind of the same ideology Marcus was kind of throwing out there. It's like, we actually are a cold chain, you know, industry, which we don't really treat it like that, you know?

1:00:53BubblemanYeah, no, that's very true. Well, that costs money.

1:00:56Dr Mark ScialdoneThe logistics of cold transport is an expense.

1:01:00BubblemanBut how does strawberries afford it?

1:01:04Dr Mark ScialdoneHow does spinach, like spinach, man, they don't have the same margins as us, I hope. Ice cream. Think about ice cream. How would you manufacture and deliver ice cream without having cold transport logistics? I mean, but here's the thing, man. Like when you're in a large, like I was on just watching the video before, very impressive guys. Like I always like seeing these huge facilities and you got to know that, you know, when you're growing at that scale, right?

1:01:35Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd you have, you know, a huge room coming down. If all that stuff is in the market within, you know, a matter of weeks, yeah, you're getting a nice fresh product and certainly something that you're going to, you know, say, yeah, this is really, I'm getting good value for my Canadian dollar because look, I'm really, you know, the Thank you for joining us.

1:02:23Dr Mark ScialdoneWith the idea that, you know, fat flour, like any perishable good, can basically lose value over time. You know, I was, I was on high at nine news the other day, Marcus, and I did this story was from two years ago, but it was really interesting comparison that they did of similar genetics grown indoors and outdoors. Two different varieties. And these were at farms up in Garberville.

1:02:53Dr Mark ScialdoneSo they were, you know, well experienced cannabis grows. And they actually did the sampling at Columbia University at a chemistry lab there. And what they found was just absolutely interesting because, again, how you cultivate this plant is not necessarily... You know, going to be reproducible from facility to facility. And what they found, I thought, was really super interesting is that there was more oxidation of the cannabinoids on the stuff that was grown indoors compared to the stuff that was grown outdoors.

1:03:28Dr Mark ScialdoneSo I thought it was really super interesting. The other thing, and I think there's anecdotal evidence, but now this is experimental evidence that shows that the amount and the terpene profiles in the sun-grown cannabis was way superior to what was grown indoors, you know? You know, the environment, certainly the biome and the soil, I think, you know, from talking with Josh and Kelly over the years, is one of these things that really feeds terpene biosynthesis within the plant.

1:04:03Dr Mark ScialdoneBut the other thing that I thought was really interesting here is that they were seeing oxidized products like CBN and other really things that you wouldn't expect to see Steve, Brett Maverick, Brian Schroeder, Brownie Mary, Cannabrand Solutions Team, Carl, Carrie Cutler, Cheryl T Rose, Chip, Chris Bennett.

1:04:37BubblemanWell, you have to think of the grower. Who was that grower? And at what level were their capabilities to execute and control an indoor grow to do that? Because if you took 10 indoor growers and tested it against outdoor, you might find a different sort of Level of information. Talking about that though, Mark, in regards to, you know, what allows the plant to express itself. I did have a question for these guys in regards to, I guess, Assam.

1:05:10BubblemanThis would be a science, you know, let's get into the science of it sort of thing. How do you see the nutrients interacting with cannabis genetics to either enhance or unlock certain traits? So obviously I've seen massive differences just from a light spectrum. I've seen just one light spectrum changed, the same clone in the same room, being fed the same nutrients, but turn out very differently. How do you see the nutrients interacting with cannabis genetics to either enhance or unlock certain traits like potency, flavor, or yield?

1:05:52BubblemanAnd you're muted, Assam.

1:05:54IssamOh, there you go. Sorry. So let's go back to the basics in the science. And the plant uptakes nutrients under some specific chemical forms, right? Example, nitrogen is absorbed by the plant in form of ammonium or nitrate, right? Or phosphorus is absorbed by as orthophosphates. So usually the commercial nutrients, They come in as a standard chemical composition. And when interacting with each other at the root zone and with oxygen or water, they will form new molecules that can be absorbed by the plants.

1:06:38IssamSo it's very important to use well-balanced nutrient recipes so that will facilitate these interactions and eventually lead to maximize the plant uptake. You don't want to have nutrients that are just building the root zone and increasing the EC. And that affects, it has a direct impact on the osmotic pressure and then on plant capacity of absorbing water and its movement across the plant, the cell membranes, right?

1:07:08IssamSo that affects directly the yield of the growth and obviously the yield of the plant. Moreover, I think it's an indirect impact, but the nutrients may play a huge role on potency and flavors. How is that? So cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids, these are all secondary metabolites, right? They are produced by the plant in response to certain stress conditions. And usually in cannabis, we aim for with that generative irrigation, watering, We aim for water stress to stimulate the plant to produce more of these secondary metabolites that we are looking at.

1:07:54IssamAnd the biggest definition of degenerative irrigation is having big drybacks. And usually these big drybacks, they result in salts building at the root zone, which that may lead to phytotoxicity. So sometimes The growers, they try to maximize the potency flavor through maximizing the water stress during the generative. But the fact that the nutrients, that the recipe or the form of the nutrients is not suitable for absorbance by the plant, that limits, gives them a limited margin of manipulation.

1:08:42IssamSo they have to flush. They have to generate runoff to reduce these salts at the root zone. And that affects the, that, that means they're giving more water and they are, that affects the water stress and directly that will reduce the secondary metabolized production. So in the plant that you end up with lower cannabinoids contents or terpenes. Uh, content, uh, content. So that's the, the direct and, and direct, uh, relation that I see between nutrients and, and, uh, and the cannabis, uh, cultivation.

1:09:18IssamI mean, at the end, there are no miracles that we can expect from, from, from nutrients, but it's, it's, uh, we have to, we have to look at it as the human, human nutrition. You should never enter or overfeed. Uh, when you go, you're bringing your baby to the doctor, he will ask you about He'll check how much weight he gained. And the type, he will ask you about the diapers.

1:09:45IssamWhat is the quantity of excrements, the color? And that's the runoff in our case in cannabis, right? So we have to look. We have to look at that, monitor every day and adjust the feeding schedule to not build salts and at the same time maximize the water stress to maximize potency and flavor.

1:10:10BubblemanInteresting. And so how do you think the nutrient genetic relationship will evolve as we grow our cannabis industry? Do you have any sort of predictions for where Where Canara and Cana Nutrients might take this, you know, like I've always thought personally, for example, and I don't, you know, listen, my, my understanding of the science is still very rudimentary and basic. I just learned what I learned from my passion of cannabis, but learning about how cannabinoids and volatile compounds are produced inside the glandular trichome head.

1:10:44BubblemanWith these different vac walls, plastids, phenols, and terpenes are as the building blocks that kind of get together and create CBGA and then start producing all of these different cannabinoids. I wonder if there's a way to feed the plant. You know, everyone's trying to manipulate structure and weight and flowering time and all these different things. And I'm just over here thinking like, Man, if I could manipulate anything, I'd just try to like manipulate the resin production.

1:11:18BubblemanSo for either of you can answer that question.

1:11:21IssamYeah, so I think with the only way I see it, and I'm interested to and curious to see how this will evolve in the future with the evolution of science and the studies that are being conducted in academia or like the deep sequencing and genetic mapping of cannabis, I think some correlations between some genes and some traits like potency and resistance, they will end up being revealed, right?

1:11:48IssamSo a direct correlation between a gene and THC content of the plant. And this will bring many perspectives like studying the effect of specific nutritive elements, nutrients, on the expression of the genes. So basically, if I add more nitrogen, would I overexpress that gene that is responsible for THC content?

1:12:18IssamAnd I think I'm confident with that Canara and Cana with their commitment to research, science, and continuous improvement will not miss this opportunity as soon as these genes are revealed and these correlations are revealed to explore this topic. One other point that I see in term of relation between nutrients and genetics, and I'm curious to know what is your take on that, It's something that I've proposed to Canada to work on in terms of research project, is the correlation between the ash color and the nutrients content in the flower.

1:13:01IssamI don't have any straight answer for that, but I'm curious to explore it and study it.

1:13:09Collin PalmerYeah, I think, you know, there's, I think since we were kids, we've been talking about ash, right? Ash color, is it white? Is it black? Is it this or is it that? You know, I don't think there's a silver bullet here, but I, you know, a lot of things that I've, You know, come into a deep conversation over is water weight and how that water weight plays a role in how that flower burns and whether or not that color of white or black is there.

1:13:39Collin PalmerI think it's less about your nutrients to be real based on that theory and just decades of trying it every which way. You know, I do believe that there's

1:13:53Collin PalmerYou know, there's a lot of different ways to get there, but I would also encourage everyone to look at the ring of oil, the roux, as it's called. I feel like it's far more important because, as Marcus kind of pointed out, that really those are the essential oils dripping down and contributing to the effect and flavor profile of that said product. So, you know, that's kind of where I've kind of landed after Being in my head and talking about it with many friends over the past two decades, you know, but it's a fun thing to talk about because it's, you know, in tobacco, it's a thing.

1:14:29Collin PalmerAnd I spoke to a lot of geneticists in that world about that topic and how, you know, what did you do to get your products to burn clean? And they talked about water weight and just it was all about water weight when they told us about the curing process. So I don't know if Dr. Mark, if you have any thoughts on that, but that's what I came up with from talking to other experts outside of our field that deal with burning material as their livelihood.

1:15:00BubblemanYeah, no doubt. I wanted to kind of get back to that gene synthase thing that Assam was talking about. That really kind of, and the connection of, you know, the R&D that could potentially be done where you're sort of, you know, the nitrogen on getting the THC to express itself as an example, that goes deep. That is like a bottomless pit of information and data that could be found in there.

1:15:25BubblemanAnd combine that with the understanding of using these molecular labs, Thank you so much for joining us.

1:15:50BubblemanGene synthases that are present, but specifically ones that are turned on or maybe to be able to, you know, turn them on quicker than traditional breeding processes.

1:16:08Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, I could probably just add an analogy here because I think we've talked about this before. So like when you're when you're growing for oil or grown for hash, you know, the analogy of like You know, just apples, right? You grow apple trees for apples, right? And it's not like to make apple cider, you take the entire tree and jam it into a grinder and squeeze apple juice out of it, right?

1:16:34Dr Mark ScialdoneYou pick the apples, right? And that's the ashing. You're picking the apples, right? So if you're talking about increasing apple density or increasing trichome density, so in this case, trichomes are the apples, right? Or you're talking about, I think what you're referring to, Mark, is making those apples

1:16:57Dr Mark ScialdoneI mean, I don't even know.

1:17:02BubblemanI mean, I guess I would follow the mechanism. If I managed to get onto the pathway and found some way, I would see what the result was. I don't know if I would. I mean, sure, obviously, any CFO is going to be like, if we can double the production of resin, we're upping our margin. I would be more interested in being able to Quickly manipulate flavor profiles and be able to create those flavor trends in shorter periods of time.

1:17:34BubblemanSo awesome if we can produce more resin, but if not, wouldn't it be cool to be able to figure out a way to manipulate flavor profiles in the plant while you're growing it?

1:17:46Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd again, just as a convenient analogy, when you think about apples, how many different varieties of apples are there? Do they taste different? They look different, and certainly there's different genetic underpinnings.

1:17:58BubblemanYeah, how did apples do that when bananas and blueberries and raspberries all got completely fucked? Their entire genetic pool is just in the tank. But apples, for some reason, have this incredible... You know, were apples not one of the foods in the botany of desire? It was, right? Johnny Appleseed. Yes, of course. Interesting. Also.

1:18:24Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd again, as, as humans, especially with cannabis are, are breeding for flavor. They're doing what you're already talking about, maybe without even knowing it. Right. So when you're, you're going through your grow and you're doing Fino hunts based on, and it great to, you know, do what these guys are doing, which is now, now you can run it on a GCMS internally. Right. And you could look at maybe how plant morphology And different flavor profiles can be indicative to different selections in your breeding.

1:19:00Dr Mark ScialdoneBut I think what's totally cool is that if you could understand down to the pathway, I think we were talking about this earlier, as to what type of plant stress leads to a certain expression of a chemical profile in a cultivar That that could be a set of tools that you can use on other cultivars and to try to, you know, again, be a little bit more productive in your phenol hunting because you're able to really key in on what are the important things.

1:19:36Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd you're absolutely right, Marcus, that has to be traced back to nutrients because the plant is growing in fucking soil or rock wool or wherever the plant is growing, right? That medium You're basically growing a plant to its healthiest stage where, again, it's gonna maximize trichrome production and really put out that chemical profile that certainly, I think, Thank you so much for joining us.

1:20:26Dr Mark ScialdoneHow many different varieties of cannabis are there compared to how many different varieties of apples, right? So I guess the marketplace will really be the ultimate test on, you know, What different things are out there that we haven't discovered yet? And, you know, is that the kind of thing, again, where if you look at a chemical profile, you can indirectly say, well, okay, it's this is what, you know, like the things that abstracts are doing and other folks to identify.

1:20:58Dr Mark ScialdoneThank you for joining us today.

1:21:20Dr Mark ScialdoneYou know, enzymes are upregulated just before harvest. So you can put that content into the trichome and really get, you know, a closed loop and understanding how the plant's producing those and ultimately how to put them in your products.

1:21:34Collin PalmerYeah, I think, you know, Dr. Mark, I sent Marcus a paper, a white paper I found almost a decade ago at this point. It's from 2012. And it's the Journal of Enzymatic or Enzyme Inhibitation and Medical Chemistry. And it talks really specifically about fungi and the use of fungi. And I said, yeah, that's the one I just sent over to him. And when I found this paper, In 2013, whenever I found it, it really set that light bulb off to exactly what you just said.

1:22:08Collin PalmerThere is kind of a formula to getting there. And it's very clear to me. It's just doing enough experiments and controls to kind of get the SOP. But it's very clear. I mean, when you look at this paper, it is clear as day. I mean, it's spelled out right here. So it's really, you know, all the tools I think are at our fingertips here. It's just a matter of kind of applying them and finding the right modality for it.

1:22:36Collin PalmerBut it's really a fascinating paper. If you don't have it, Mark, I'll send it to you. It's a great read.

1:22:41Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I know about Ambrox. Ambrox is a very interesting sesquiterpenoid compound. When I was looking to get postdoctoral funding, I actually wrote a proposal on synthesizing Ambrox because from what I know, it's a very interesting molecule that's used in flavor and fragrances, more in like perfumery and stuff like that. But they actually isolated, I think, from the gut of the sperm whale. So, yeah, it's super interesting that mammals actually make these compounds too, as well as plants.

1:23:15Dr Mark ScialdoneBut yeah, you can see... Fever Terps! Yeah, you can see that there's a sesquiterpenoid kind of skeleton in there that resembles beta-caryophyllene or hemolyne and realize that, yeah, you know, why would Mother Nature have a different set of chemistry in different organizms? So, yeah, I mean, these terpenoid biosynthetic pathways are everywhere, man.

1:23:38Collin PalmerYeah. But yeah, Dr. Fetaconguy is another one for those in the audience. That's an easy one. You can buy, you know, plenty of that around to use in your beds. So, you know.

1:23:52IssamYeah. It's funny that we are talking about that. And Colin, you mentioned the inducing gene expression through fungi inoculation. And to link that with the volatile organic compounds that Marcus mentioned at the beginning. I mean, I take it from another angle. It's one of my best research projects that I've worked on. It wasn't on cannabis. It was on barley. And we have tried that. We have in vitro and in vivo.

1:24:24IssamSo we have tried inoculating barley roots with some fungi. Some of them are pathogenic and some of them are just beneficial. and we have noticed that the so we we spoke about vox the volatile organic compounds in terms of terpenes and profiles but i would take it from the biology angle which plants communicate through these volatile organic compounds and the the funniest thing we found in that in that project was uh that what we when we inoculated The barley roots with some fungi like fusarium that the plant in response to that inoculation released some volatile organic compounds that communicated with the surrounding plants.

1:25:12IssamAnd that made them more resistant to another fungi that is pathogenic to the plant. And I'm curious to see if I'm able to explore that in cannabis.

1:25:25BubblemanThere's a paper called Traversing the Fungal Terpenome, and it is the oldest known language, this language that's just happening like billions and trillions of time a day everywhere. This is a crazy form of communication that we're just really starting to... To kind of understand, it's interesting. So you've worked obviously with a lot of different plants to some, you know, obviously Canara's growing process is pretty top tier.

1:25:58BubblemanCan you walk us through sort of one unique cultivation technique that you've implemented that's made a different in plant health or output for Canara?

1:26:09IssamYeah. So, uh, I think we, there are two techniques that are, they're, they're worth to mention in here in this, in, in this session that we've tried. Uh, we haven't, we haven't, uh, uh, introduced them into large scale, but we succeeded applying these techniques. They are not new techniques. They exist on other plants, but we try, I think we tried them for the first time on, on, on cannabis.

1:26:32IssamAnd, uh, the first one was grafting and we were able to graft We have our Cuban Lynx genetic and the early lemon berry. These are two sativa genetics. And at a certain point, we found some symptoms that are similar to root-borne diseases like lithium and fusarium. And we wanted to explore if we graft the Cuban Lynx on an early lemon berry rootstock, would we have the same profile of the Cuban Lynx that we are looking for?

1:27:07IssamWhile at the same time giving to that plant a resistance at the root zone to root-borne pathogens. And we succeeded doing that. And the fact that we have done the grafting, it didn't change the profile on the flower when we harvest. So that was one of the techniques. So for those who are, we found potential genetics that help, they have all the traits they're looking for, but at the same time, they're sensitive to root borne pathogens.

1:27:39IssamThis can be a technique to be used to avoid that. And at the same time, since we are at large scale and we do cloning many, many events of cloning on the mother plants, And we generate thousands and thousands of clones every month. So that plays on the genetic uniformity. And for that, we have tried the meristem tip culture. It's basically it's in vitro, it's isolating and culturing.

1:28:11IssamThe apical mary stem, the shoot tip from the plant. And that allowed us to, we started from virus contaminated material and we were able to generate virus free material just in vitro and restart mother plants from there. And we gain on genetic uniformity, especially at our scale, since we do a lot of cloning events. You have to preserve the genetic and that's what we do. We have, besides the lab where we do our HPLC, GCMS analysis to track the cannabinoids and terpenes, we do also have this in vitro culture lab where we treat the plants, preserve the genetics to always maintain that initial profile we selected.

1:28:57IssamAnd I think this is also a huge step forward, especially today with the emergence of A lot of pathogens like the hoplite enviroid and the many possible mutations that may happen and outbreaks. So succeeding this technique was a game changer for us and we gained a lot of uniformity with this technique.

1:29:23BubblemanNice. Well, it seems like you guys are sort of focused on the whole process all the way through in an exceptional top tier manner. I guess a question for you, Justin, in regards to post-harvest processing, that can really make or break a product. You're more responsible for the extraction processes. So do you also let the team know like how you want them to go about drying, curing, or trimming to ensure the final product lives up to your standards?

1:29:51Justin100%. That's a great question. We're, I mean, we're striving for fresh frozen as much as possible to try and preserve all of those flavors. So, I mean, we look into ways that we're taking down these really really large rooms uh we we try to take them down all in as short a period as possible so that you know when you're taking down a gigantic room the time between the first plant you harvest and then the last plant you harvest in some cases can be like 10 to 12 hours Thank you for joining us today.

1:30:46JustinThen we get to the extraction machine. The extraction machine, you know, the temperatures we're doing some of our extractions are minus 45, minus 50 degrees Celsius to really, again, preserve as many of these volatile terpenes as possible. When we go ahead and process to make vape pens, We have special techniques to really treat the terpenes very gently, but still go ahead and activate the cannabis, you know, through decarboxylation.

1:31:18JustinWe've now looked into, there's new equipment coming out as well where you can achieve 100% decarbing and like you're only at about 70 degrees Celsius, which is like much, much more comfortable for those terpenes. You know, you're preserving the degradation. So, Constantly looking for new ways to make sure that that's happening. And I think we do see a correlation between the tweaks that Issam's doing in the garden with his team and the quality of the nutrients, the way that we have a stable and consistent environment, for example.

1:31:54JustinI will get certain lots of the same strain where I'll be like, oh, ESAM, this one now, this CLI, the terps on it are crazy. I got like 16% terps or, you know, this crop of Cuban lynx, it only had 12. And we'll go ahead and we'll look. What was it about this grow compared to the other one that was different? Even though we're growing inside, there's still seasonality that plays into, you know, during winter growing is not the same as during summer growing.

1:32:25JustinSo yeah, we're all talking and we're communicating. Capturing the data and then making data driven decisions about what's next.

1:32:35BubblemanWell, that that literally answered my next question, which was about scaling up the grow operations and how it's no feet, small feet. And what's been I was going to ask you what a key lesson you've learned about maintaining quality control. So as Canara's grow facilities expand, but you basically explained it in the sense of, you know, harvesting those big rooms and trying to pay attention that the humidity changes and the dryness of that last plant is going to be, you know, just really, it always seems to play into one thing, which is awareness.

1:33:08BubblemanAnd the only thing you have to pay for awareness is attention. That's it. Just fucking pay attention.

1:33:18Dr Mark ScialdoneCorrect. I asked about the decarb at 70. So what type of apparatus is that? Is that just a reactor or some kind of closed vessel system?

1:33:34JustinYeah, I mean, the equipment is out there. There's lots of videos about it. It's called the Pell Polar Reactor. We just started playing with this over the course of the last year, and it's very fast. You know, from a chemical perspective, I'm trying to understand how the kicking off of a CO2 molecule is somehow... Thank you for joining us.

1:34:18JustinGoing ahead and this was like, I guess, research towards rosin vape pens and stuff like that is where the salt.

1:34:24BubblemanYeah, we use one, but it's the rosin reactor. The rosin reactor made the Pele reactor for them. It's a smaller version, I believe. And I think we're talking about the same thing. It's a little decarb that auto burps and decarbs and you can monitor it over your phone or whatnot.

1:34:43JustinYeah, it hooks up to a laptop. It's really cool. It has a nitrogen little cylinder.

1:34:48BubblemanAnd like you said, it burps as needed and stuff like that.

1:34:52JustinI mean, it does take a little bit of tweaking to really dial in how it's going to work for your strain. But that is also the beauty of having my HPLC lab in-house is I can go ahead and play with times and temps during a decar process to really find out, oh, Maybe I only got it 70. Maybe now I'm at 100%. And also, I think what is interesting too is

1:35:20JustinI don't necessarily know if you, I know we're de-carving to avoid clogging and crystallization and things like this, but sometimes it's, I don't think you necessarily have to go up to a hundred percent de-carving. And if that for, to create a functional vape pen. So if that's the case, you know, you can start to look, go a little bit more gentle. And does that translate into preserving some of the more nuanced flavors from strain to strain?

1:35:50Collin PalmerYeah, it really challenges a lot of what we were taught. It's sort of how I stumbled upon it with jar tech, just low temperatures, right? And I think this device really does a great job of taking that a step further and taking the pounds per square inch of the jar and how that's playing a role, because that's also playing a role in this as well. You know, to make the perfect cart, you know, and I think it's really interesting that you're using it in this way.

1:36:18Collin PalmerDo you find when you guys do batches, when you're collecting data, doing the same varietal, do you find different data points come from the same process?

1:36:31JustinI mean. I think I still haven't nailed down my SOP, so I'm still like trying new variables. I would say I would, I'd be able to give a better answer to that with like another three, four months playing with it. I've probably only tested three genetics in it right now. The reproducibility seems to be there. I really, really, first of all, the color of the oil that comes out of a process like this is like, it's so clear, it's almost glowing.

1:37:02JustinAnd I'm doing very, very cold, colder than usual hydrocarbon extraction. So like and I get really nice color there as well. So, yeah, I don't think I can answer that question yet. I don't I just don't have the data.

1:37:17Collin PalmerWell, I love your answer, though, because it's it's it's steeped in in more experiments. Right. It's it's kind of what's great about it. Right. I think that's the best. So, you know.

1:37:29BubblemanIt definitely retains terpenes and your terpenes go up when you lose that decarbed weight loss thing, you know, you end up with a higher percentage of volatiles and the little bit that I was lucky enough to use it with Andrew Winson, who's the CEO of the Rosin Reactor Company sample reaction, sample automated. So yeah. That was lucky to have him come to my lab. We ran, I think, a kilo, maybe around a kilo of rosin.

1:38:05BubblemanIt was cool because what happened was we set it all up and then we had it on the laptop and we had it through a little app on the phone so you could monitor the process on the phone. And we left the lab at maybe four o'clock and around 630, he texted me. He said, I think something's wrong. It's not working.

1:38:31BubblemanAnd so it was actually Corey back in, I think, Florida, who had been monitoring it and told Andrew. So these guys are like on the ball. I said, what a great service to be able to offer to do monitoring. Like you get a subscription and they just set it up where, yeah, sure, you can monitor it, but have it as a backup alarm system where you have a company that's doing your monitoring for you.

1:38:51BubblemanAnd if anything is sort of out of the ordinary, the heat's building up, the The pressure's building up. It's not auto burping through those little solenoids. At first, he thought the resin was so sticky that it had sealed them shut. But in the end, we found out it was actually the motherboard in the unit, which he just pulled out like a piece of Lego, popped in a new one.

1:39:11BubblemanAnd although he was like, oh, I'm sorry that that happened. And I thought, you know, man, that was amazing, actually, like how quick you were able to Thank you so much for joining us today.

1:39:45JustinYeah, I think I'm French too.

1:39:48BubblemanSo yeah, no, I think you're right. I think you're right. It's definitely like same, same, but different. Same company made it. Um, but, um, yeah, anyway, um, I see Chimera is in the chat room.

1:40:02Dr Mark ScialdoneMaybe is it stirred? Is it a stirred reactor? Um,

1:40:10BubblemanNo, it has a probe that goes down the center of it, but it's sealed. And when you pop that lid off, oh my God. I was also impressed with the color of the rosin. It just seemed to preserve both the color and those aromas. So it's just a sealed reactor.

1:40:32Dr Mark ScialdoneThere's nothing that you can heat.

1:40:34Collin PalmerYeah, and it has a jacket around it, right? So it... You know, it's a jacketed.

1:40:42BubblemanAnd then the computer itself, you can plug two in. It's got a little laptop that sits on top of the brain and then it's got the little PFDs. You can kind of plug two reactors into it. So you can have, you could do as much as 10 kilos of product at a time, or you could do as little as, you know, a couple of 500 gram reactor sizes.

1:41:03BubblemanSo it's definitely a good little unit. I will say that. I wanted to ask Assam a question actually about sort of his experiment with his experiment experimentation hat on because it's cool that you get to do this R&D at such an incredible facility and sort of use what you've learned over the course of your education and experience to kind of you know try new things so have you have you tested or any processing methods that have surprised you you know maybe something that boosted terpene retention or or even potency?

1:41:44IssamSo just to let you jump on that, since the processing is, he oversees the processing of the biomass, but in our case, in the cultivation, like while growing the plants, We divide the cycle into 15 phases, 10 to 15 phases, depending on the genetic. And every, so basically every week is a different phase. And we play a lot with the, so the beauty with our greenhouses, with our facility in Valleyfield is that we can use the, we have HPS lights, we have LED, and we can supplement with the sun.

1:42:24IssamAnd we have noticed that the light spectrum has a lot of impact on the terpenes, on the profiles, and eventually also the cannabinoid content. So by splitting the entire cycle into... By splitting that into different phases, we look at, we have certain traits that we evaluate every week. And the tweak happens on a weekly base. So we look, let's say the first thing is to look at rooting rate, then the diameter of the main branch.

1:43:04IssamThen we go and we start with our molecular lab. We start monitoring since day 42, the cannabinoids content. And for that, we adjust our recipes and light profiles according to the traits that we get from the previous phase. So actually at the beginning, we were just hunting genetics And using what the info sheet we get from the breeder. It's a 56 or 63 or whatever day's genetic.

1:43:42IssamYou just apply it as is. And till the day at that time, it was a project with French Econology where he brought the, we had some meetings with him and he brought the idea of trichome ripeness During the last three weeks of the flowering cycle and the correlation of that with, depending on the destination of the product, if it's going to fresh frozen, if it's going for hash making, or if it's going for dried flowers.

1:44:16IssamAnd the interesting with that, although we didn't finish the project because Frenchie passed away, we didn't finish that, but we were able to adjust our harvest time based on that. And we had this research project with McGill University that we financed.

1:44:36IssamWe studied the correlation between potency, terpenes, and the harvest time, and trichome ripeness. So we had the electron scanning microscopy at the McGill University, and we had our lab where we test the cannabinoids. And with that, we were able to maximize, to define the right harvesting time to maximize yield, Cannabinoid content and terpenes. But then in processing, I think Justin has more knowledge in there, the way we process it to obtain, to maximize the yield.

1:45:16BubblemanYeah, and I would add to that, Justin, how you're streamlining Canara's processing pipeline to handle larger volumes without losing that sort of craft level attention to detail on top of the question I just asked Assam.

1:45:29JustinSo I would say I mean, just to break down sort of how I'm doing my experimentation is I have basically four... I utilize my four directors really to do some of that. So I have an extraction lead in Valley Field where I do all of my butane extraction in the little bunker. We're constantly looking at new technologies, which is, it's really, it's a cycle there for the, it's really how to keep improving production, increasing production while keeping the oil consistent.

1:46:01JustinAs I, for example, will get a bigger gas tank and then it leads to bigger material columns and then it leads to better and faster recovery of the butane to come back and put into this whole thing while still maintaining my sub minus 40 temperatures is really constantly being challenged. Ways of speeding up, for example, diamond formation while maintaining high terpene components is another deep one. Like, do we do it in closed vaults?

1:46:32JustinDo we do it under pressure? Do we do it with plays and temperature? I have other leads where they're looking more at Different kinds of vape pens where we're constantly looking at, is it the standard coil in a ceramic, porous ceramic? Is it now a mesh? The new one that's coming out lent from the e-cig industry is the chip style vape pen. So you're only heating oil at the interface.

1:46:59JustinWe're constantly, I have a three-man team focused purely on How do we get better and better at making our rosins? So we actually love participating in some of these legacy style rosin competitions. And, you know, I feel that for us is our big, It's kind of like how we gain street credit. If we can impress some of the legacy guys with some tasty rosins, then we know we're doing something right.

1:47:28JustinSo lots of experiments there. But to come back to that other secondary question, how do we maintain the quality while still scaling up? Like we were discussing before, we have a very rigorous R&D sensory system where everything is tested multiple times before we even let it leave the door. What I really appreciate about working with the owner and CEO of the company Zohar is this is one of the only CEOs I've ever met that knows how to use every single one of the pieces of equipment in our facility, walks both of our facilities in Farnham and Valleyfield every single day, And we have, we've done it.

1:48:12JustinAnd it, sometimes it kills me and creates operational complications, but if something doesn't taste good, we end up just pulling the plug and like, we have no problems either destroying it or, you know, turning it into, turning it into whatever bulk to use for, maybe we even sell it B2B, you know.

1:48:33BubblemanI love that your CEO walks the room and actually knows how to use the equipment. To me, a red flag at a facility if I'm working there is the CEO just coming in one time for the photo shoot and holding the bag and holding the jar and going into the vault and taking these like five photos and then the lab Never sees that guy again for like the next year and a half or whatever it is.

1:49:00BubblemanI think it's very important for a guy running a company like that to at least have as good of an understanding as you can of the process so you can have even more confidence in the people that are operating and running those processes when you see them doing it correctly.

1:49:21BubblemanI wanted to welcome Wade into the room. He snuck in a little while ago and I didn't get to say hello, but hello, Wade. I hope you're doing okay, brother.

1:49:29JustinHe's on mute. His camera's off.

1:49:35BubblemanI know he's with us.

1:49:37SpeakerYes, I'm here. I got my camera turned off because... No explanation needed, brother. Yeah, I will come back and shine on here.

1:49:54BubblemanWell, we're just happy to have you.

1:49:57SpeakerLoving this deep dive on the extraction process and the professionalism being described. Thank you.

1:50:08BubblemanAwesome.

1:50:11BubblemanWell, we're almost at the old two-hour mark, the halfway mark of Hash Church today on Sunday, March 30th. Well, in fact, I do believe it is my birthday tomorrow, March 31st. I'll be turning 52 years old. 52 years young, the old 73. I say that and my son will say, you're 73? I'm like, no, I'm born in 73. Do I look 73? And then he'll go, kinda.

1:50:42BubblemanGot me, boy. Got me. You're a youngster. Yeah, that's what they say. That's what they say. I'm not sure if I agree, but...

1:50:55Dr Mark ScialdoneIt's not the years, it's the mileage.

1:50:59BubblemanWell, I've got a question for Assam. We've got a passionate audience here at Hash Church that's paying attention right now. What's one piece of advice you'd give to cultivators, big or small, who want to use nutrients to elevate their game, inspired by what Canara is doing? I think you've kind of answered this question, but I want it to be specific because I want to make a nice clip of it after the show is over.

1:51:24IssamYeah, so as I mentioned, you hear me, guys? Absolutely. So, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I think the main two criteria is when talking about nutrients and its correlation with plants is to look at the, uh, uh, the gaining weight as referring to the human nutrition and the, the quality and quantity of, uh, excrements, right. Uh, unfortunately in, in, in cannabis, We can't look at the gain in weight because that's the yield.

1:51:55IssamAnd if we wait to look at that, probably it's too late, right? So the main criteria is the quality and quantity of runoff we generate. So that makes the, in the substrate, the main aspect to assess if we are feeding well our plants or not, right? So in term of quantity, I think we have to target the 10 to 20% runoff during the vegetative watering and no more than 15% in the generative.

1:52:30IssamIn terms of EC, and this is according to my experience, I mean, it's nothing in the book, but it's my own experience, my own point of view, is unlike other substrates like soil and cocoa, when growing a rock wall, I recommend monitoring the EC at the root zone and not at the runoff level. For better accuracy. Because it's different. It's inert. The rock wall, it doesn't have the same criteria as the cocoa or the soil.

1:53:04IssamSo that's why this may maybe have an additional cost. Like you have to invest in sensors that are able to give you real-time readings of the EC at the root zone. But I guarantee that the ROI is evident in there and especially for large-scale growers. The other point is the weekly leaf analysis. I mean, it's a good practice. Well, I recommend not making drastic change based on the results of these analysis.

1:53:39IssamThe reason is that the standard nutrient branch that the labs are using as a reference are very general and they're not genetic specific. And I think it needs further studies to be specific to group of cultivars. Because you get your report, you send samples, leave samples, you get a report, oh, you're overfeeding on nitrogen or calcium, magnesium. But what is the reference?

1:54:10IssamAre we taking a general one for all the genetics? But we know they don't behave all the same. So that's why I would take just the general. When it turns to red, phytotoxicity, you have to intervene and reduce your nutrient concentration. But we shouldn't go into the details and do drastic changes just based on the leaf analysis.

1:54:38BubblemanWell, it's good advice doing it at the root zone and not the runoff. That's, geez, if your levels are high at runoff, then it's going to be much worse right on the plant. Good little tips. I see Etienne just rolled in. He's driving, rolling, rolling heavy. How you doing, Etienne?

1:55:01SpeakerCan you hear me?

1:55:03BubblemanI absolutely can. Not only can I hear you, I can also see you.

1:55:08SpeakerHey, hi, everybody. I am on a Puffco journey. One of our veterans needs our help. So I'm along with Mike D here from Veterans Action Council. If you can flip it, yeah, that's Mike. What's up? And we're on a four-hour road trip into the mountains to take care of one of our own. So we'll keep you posted and you'll like who we're delivering this to. So stay tuned, everybody.

1:55:38SpeakerThis one's a mystery.

1:55:40Dr Mark ScialdoneSounds good, brother. Sounds good. Hey, Issam, that was a really interesting discussion. Just so our audience knows, because I'm not sure everybody is tuned in on this. Tell them what EC is and why it's important.

1:55:59IssamYeah, so EC is the electrical conductivity. It's the measure that reflects the amount or the concentration of nutrients in a sample or at the root zone, depending how you're reading it, from which sample you're starting. So the EC is the, in simple words, it's just the concentration of nutrients you're giving to the plant or at the root zone. And that has a direct impact on the osmotic pressure at the root zone.

1:56:35IssamAnd the osmotic pressure has a direct correlation with water absorbance and water movement within the plant. And so obviously a direct impact on the growth, on the yield. And the other point, as I mentioned earlier, is with our... Goal to maximize the water stress to obtain more cannabinoids and terpenes that comes with some secondary effects like the huge drybacks we are aiming for, they result in higher ECs, which means salts building within the root zone.

1:57:16IssamSo that's why we have to use balanced recipes and make sure that All what we are delivering to the plant is uptaken and not just building within the rules. Yeah, excellent. That's great.

1:57:31Dr Mark ScialdoneYou know, I mean, as a chemist and, you know, as a scientist, I love this connection, right? Because, um, Uh, certainly like if you think about, uh, you know, you think about electrical conductivity in plants or in soil, what the, you know, that that's like some electrical measurement that you should be making on a, a phone or a device or something, right? It doesn't necessarily compute with some people on why electrical conductivity is important in living systems, but I think you explained it beautifully and, um,

1:58:10IssamWe do have these. At the beginning where we just started, we were using the runoff. And then with some probes, we do the EC readings in the runoff. But as Marcus mentioned, sometimes we have these high values of EC in the runoff. But at the end, we started using some probes to read the EC within the root zone. And we found that there is a gap. So the reference of using the, in Rockwell, and I know in Soil, with the pull-through method, it works.

1:58:40IssamIn Soil, you should look at the runoff. In Cocoa as well. But in Rockwell, I think it's better to make, it's more accurate to make the readings at the root zone to make better decisions.

1:58:55Dr Mark ScialdoneAbsolutely. And it's not specific for any, any one salt, right? It just basically gives you an overall level of how much Thank you so much for joining us.

1:59:32IssamThe, the other, so one of the, we, I, I spoke about the, um, the correlation between nutrients and the ash color and Colin mentioned that there is a direct correlation and I believe so the, the, uh, water activity and the, uh, the ash color, uh, together with the, which affects the temperature of combustion, right? So, but the other, the other point that affects the temper, we, there is the compaction when you roll your joint.

1:59:58IssamThere is the water activity, but at the same time, I've heard about supplementing at the end of the flowering cycle, supplementing with calcium and magnesium. These two elements, they're known to increase the combustion temperature. I've never tested it, and I don't have real data or scientific data on that, but I'm curious to explore it. And Dr. Mark, if you have any... Phil, what's on that?

2:00:25Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, no, I mean, it makes sense just from an overall atom economy. And I also heard the same thing with silicone, right, as well, right? I mean, you're adding basically mineral content into a plant matrix that ultimately, if you're going to consume in a joint or by smoking, yeah, it's going to create the ash that's sort of left behind. And I would think that There's sort of like, like in many plants, a balance to strike that's sort of like optimizing, you know, for canopy size.

2:01:07Dr Mark ScialdoneI think we were talking about it before, like, you know, getting the apple analogies that you want to grow an apple tree that's got, you know, more apples than less apples, right? Because the more apples you have, the more trichomes you have, the more hash oil you have. The higher your potency, the higher your, yeah. So I saw some data at the ACS conference that talked about the correlation between potency and terpenes.

2:01:33Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd that's a real, you know, it's a linear relationship. So the higher, and it makes sense, right? So the more trichomes you have, The more cannabinoid synthesis machinery the plant has, the higher the cannabinoid content. And those cannabinoids are stored in the trichome in basically a sea of terpene and terpenoid kind of molecules. So yeah, it all makes sense. But the wonderful thing, I sit here and I listen, I'm a trained chemist, and so I love these discussions where we're talking about, you know, these things on the periodic table.

2:02:19Dr Mark ScialdoneI've been looking at ever since I've been a chemistry student, you know, for the last 50 years of my life, I look at the periodic table, and we're talking about what we're talking about manganese, we're talking about silica, we're talking about, you know, all these elements that are part of our natural world. And I just love the intersections of chemistry with the plant, which really gets me off

2:02:44IssamAnd I would be curious to see the example you just took, like the direct correlation between potency and terpenes, which makes a lot of sense. These are both secondary metabolites that are produced by the plant. But at the same time, what I'm curious to see is the curve of the yields. In correlation with the secondary metabolites. Usually what I have noticed is the more you get secondary metabolites, cannabinoids and terpenes, the less is the yield.

2:03:16IssamAnd this is, I mean, it's not a peer reviewed finding, but this is according to the aggregate data we are collecting on a daily base. And that is the biggest challenge is to find that sweet spot where you get your maximum of yield, but at the same time, your maximum of cannabinoids and terpenes.

2:03:39Collin PalmerYeah, I think, you know, to talk on the genetic side of things, I feel like the basic level where, you know, if we're using the crayon box as the analogy here, we're just using primary colors mostly. So we have all these carry-ons that have never even been used yet or You know, we've looked at them, right? But there's a lot more out there in terms of things to explore in terms of just plant genomics that, you know, from a commercial perspective, it would take a lot to bring them into, let's say, a 10-week cycle You know that you you may or not be may or may not be locked into, but most commercial facilities are locked into a single schedule.

2:04:19Collin PalmerAnd I think that's not very conducive to finding novel things. You know, you're really you're kind of pigeonholing that ability in some respect. Because you can only look at a very specific subset of genetics to work with. So that's one thing I wanted to kind of ask you guys. Is there a set schedule that you guys kind of look towards in terms of your selection and in terms of your yield?

2:04:51Collin PalmerWhat varietals are you guys kind of looking at in terms of that? What do you run typically? How do you guys look at your schedules?

2:05:01IssamSo basically it depends. So the goals, the criteria we're looking at are set since the beginning. Usually it's according to the brand. So let's say for tribal, we are looking for genetics that are between 25 and 30% THC. 30% THC because in Quebec, we have the limit of the, we cannot exceed 30% THC. That's the regulation in Quebec. So we always look for that in terms of potency.

2:05:30IssamFor in term of yield, I mean, if either we take it in term of ratio per plant or ratio per square meter, we're looking at 400 grams per square meter. That's the minimum yield that we should aim. And very important in there is the ratio of C buds and A buds and trim, because you don't want to end up with 400 grams per square meter, but 80% of them are C buds that you don't know what to do with that.

2:05:58IssamSo we're looking at the ideal ratio for us is 60%, 40%, 60% A and B buds and 40% C buds. So these are the main criteria that we set since the beginning, 2% at least for terpenes. And obviously the main criteria, the main remaining criteria is the sensory test, is the smoking experience. So we have these three checks, yield, potency, terpenes. Yeah, but fine. How is this?

2:06:32IssamHow is the smoking experience? And that feedback, we get it first from our employees, which with our sensory tests. And then sometimes we launch genetics with two different phenols. Like we have two different winners. And we launch and we let the consumers set up the standards and select the winner that we'll end up producing at large scale. So that's the way we see it.

2:06:59Collin PalmerSuper cool. So, you know, when you guys are pheno hunting, you have another facility you kind of highlighted early on in the discussion. What's a minimum lot that you look through when you do a pheno hunt of a single varietal? What's that look like for you guys?

2:07:16IssamIt's three rounds. The first round is germinating seeds, popping up the seeds, and then that's one plant. We tried flowering the same plant from seed, but at the end, we preferred that one plant, we vegetated as a mom, as a mother plant, and we take clones from there. So the first run is 20, we take 20 clones, 20 to 30 clones per phenotype, because we run through 400 phenotypes a year.

2:07:49IssamSo we do 30 for the first round and we do the first selection. The first selection, we don't even need to go through to the sensory test step. It's basically selecting, setting up the environment and locking the main Thank you for joining us today.

2:08:31IssamThen we look at the potency and at the same time we track it over the last two weeks, three weeks of flowering. So at the same time we define the optimal harvest window for that genetic and the terpenes. Once we run through these, it's the first selection, we select five to ten candidates. There are suitable or we were able to adapt them to our strategy. And from there, these five to 10 candidates will grow them at 200 plants each, basically one table each.

2:09:06IssamAnd that gives us the flexibility. When we do 200 plants each, that's one table of growth. And that allows us to tweak the irrigation accordingly and start defining the feeding profile for that phenotype.

2:09:24Collin PalmerGot it. So the question before you go any further here. So how many seeds do you start with? Because I think we kind of skipped over that. You went right to cloning. So what do you start with in terms of the lot?

2:09:37IssamLike what is what's a lot for you guys when you every run we go either it's 10 to 15 genetics to 10 to 20 seeds each.

2:09:46Collin PalmerGot it. Okay. Okay, cool. So, all right. It's good insight for everyone listeners. So, so when you get to that, that stage of being able to commercialize it, you're looking for particular metrics, which you kind of rifled off some of them are the for you guys in house, is it more about the sensory or is it more about Thank you so much for joining us.

2:10:37IssamThank you for joining us today.

2:10:57IssamThank you very much.

2:11:20IssamAnd that's to confirm all the traits. So potency, did we define the optimal harvest window? Do we confirm that we got the yield we're looking at? Potency and terpenes. And we replicate the sensory test to make sure it wasn't just a run. We are able to replicate that and make it consistent. And with 1,000 plants, that batch we can sell if it passes all the checklist. And then once all of that is checked, we can grow it at larger scale in the other facility with 10,000 plants per row, per greenhouse.

2:12:01Collin PalmerCool. So that's really detailed. You know, I think to kind of give the listeners a little bit of vulnerability in how difficult this is, how often do you say, hey, this is just at a thousand plants, this isn't it. Like, let's move on. Do you guys find that often or is it not often?

2:12:21IssamIt happens very, very often. Sometimes, I mean, we have seen quite frequently some genetics that get, when we grow them at 1,000 plants in their own room, We found that some genetics, they behave differently when they're grown in different conditions and larger scale. And we may lose on yield. So we may lose on the smoking experience. So that's why that genetics, they get rejected and they will never make it to the other facility where we do the large scale.

2:13:00Collin PalmerGot it. So, you know, from a cultivation mindset, I'm hearing perhaps there's there's inconsistencies and maybe hot spots in the room where, you know, you're not, you know, you know how it works. It's just there's there's just things that from the basic environmental point of view are not going to always be the same. And the plants, you know, are not adaptive to that, you know, that spot or that particular part of the table.

2:13:26Collin PalmerI see that a lot in commercial, right? It's part of just our livelihood in terms of what we experience. But so that's, you know, for the listeners out there, that's a lot of money and time. And, you know, that takes a lot of effort. You know, not many people are willing to go that length. Most people run You know, a 10-pack or a 100-pack or even, and they will go right into production after selecting those parents from that, so.

2:13:56Collin PalmerYeah, correct.

2:13:57IssamAnd that's the beauty, as Justin mentioned, what I said at the beginning. That's the beauty of having a CEO and the CFO that are passionate, and they are hands-on, and they're every day in the facilities. And so, honestly, I never had to convince the CEO to invest in R&D. Sometimes, I mean, most of the time he's the one bringing new ideas and deciding to put money on these.

2:14:24IssamProbably, although there is no direct income, there is no direct profit from that test, but we invest millions of dollars every year on R&D and that's the beauty of what we do.

2:14:38Collin PalmerSuper cool. I mean, it's a lot of risk taking. It's stuff that I live for every day, but not many outfits are willing to put that kind of forth.

2:14:48Dr Mark ScialdoneNo, it's few and far between because it's sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to really, truly de-risk the return on investment on that R&D piece, right? So if you're in production mode and you're just producing, producing, producing, It seems like sometimes R&D is not always clear on how you're going to get that ROI. Sometimes? Well, I mean, I think actually Justin and Issam here are examples. Well, they are.

2:15:24BubblemanIt's a rarity, though. It's a big rarity. And it also really what it speaks to is the level of success that Canara's having. And a perfect example, when I did hash hits in Canada for Bubble Man brand and the pure hash joints, we needed very specific material. I would say... 85% of people had no idea even how to dry. Like if you wanted to get trim or smalls, they didn't know how to dry it.

2:15:54BubblemanThey just didn't know how to like maintain it. They didn't know how to have it in a vault. And when I got the first material from Canara, It immediately did everything I needed the resin to do. It checked all the boxes, how it looked, how it smoked. I could press even a farmer's grade sift out of a 160 or a 170 screen. I could press it into a sticky lump in my fingers.

2:16:22BubblemanAnd that's, you know, on a scale of being that big and being able to produce resin that's just still good. It's like I said, it's far and few between. So the fact that they've had that level of success that they're having, you know, and then not only taking that and not just like, you know, putting it into bank accounts, but taking a big chunk of it and doing R&D.

2:16:47BubblemanTo me, that's kind of... The style of big MSO company I could get behind. You know, it's like, okay, we're going to do it this way. You might not like everything, but we're, this is how we're doing it. And we're going to, you know, top tier growing and processing and distribution. And like every aspect of that company has to have capable people running it because there's just, I've seen companies collapse with just one or two incapable people in the wrong position.

2:17:18BubblemanLike it really is that delicate of an ecosystem when you're building a company of that size. So yeah, shout out to you guys for pulling it off and having a sort of integrity in the sense of, you know, still wanting to better the plant or, you know, push the plant and the plant science forward, which of course we're Big proponents here at Hash Church. Geez, I wanted to welcome Clover in the house as well.

2:17:46BubblemanJeremy just popped in. He's in Oklahoma. He helps run my Bubble Man brand in Oklahoma and also must have a nose on him because I haven't met him in person. But I can tell I somehow like I'm attracted to these people. I pull them in and they're the people who just seem to have a really good ability of pheno hunting and using their nose. And so he's got all sorts of nice cultivars going on in Oklahoma.

2:18:13BubblemanAnd Fuck, someone said 16% Terps earlier. I think it was you, Justin. Jeremy just pulled a 15.9 off of Live Hash Rawson, if you can imagine. Welcome, dude.

2:18:25CloverThanks. What's up, Hash Church? Just want to say thanks for having me, man. So super excited. I've been listening the whole time, man. I'm just going to say very impressed with everybody's knowledge here. A lot of really smart cats in here. I could just sit here and soak this all up and not even say a word, honestly. I love learning more than anything. But yeah, man, we've got to say that everybody's been loving these Bubble Man hash hits like crazy.

2:18:52CloverI mean, the response I've gotten has been absolutely nothing shorter but spectacular. I mean, they love Bubble Hash out here and the fact that it's ready to smoke, man. It's just, it's a home run, absolute home run. So we've been super stoked getting that launched off the market. And like you just mentioned, you know, the live raws and that, that actually, that particular bash that we did, I think we only produced maybe about, I'd say about close to 20 pounds in total of that.

2:19:25CloverAnd it was a strain called Gouda Berry bred by Exotic Genetics. Gosh, and I believe that combines the rainbow chip and red pop, I want to say. But yeah, phenomenal hash rosin. But yeah, guys, I'm super stoked to be here. So I'll be a fly on the wall just kind of hanging out and listening and everything. But if y'all have any questions, man, just pop them at me.

2:19:53BubblemanSounds good, brother. Thanks for popping in. Appreciate you. Yeah, that good berry is insane. Actually... Consistently, when someone puts something in my bowl and I'm like, oh my God, what is that? They'll be like, it's blank by exotic genetics. Exotic genetics is crushing it in the sense of... Coming out with some really great, great cultivars that people are having, you know, good, good results with, particularly in washing.

2:20:20BubblemanYou guys must, Justin, when you guys are choosing cultivars like, and Assam, I guess this will be kind of connected to both of you. You guys kind of have to work together, I'm guessing. When it comes to, I mean, obviously Assam's growing all the flowers, so he's growing the flower for flower, but he's also growing flower for extraction. Do you use some flower just for extraction or are you more doing trim or how's that sort of work out in the sense that like, obviously when you're doing extractions, it's ideal if you can grow cultivars that are specific for washing or extracting.

2:20:56JustinThat's a great question. I think when we start to see winners through the various ways we do pheno hunts like Issam was discussing, We of course like to go and we'll evaluate it, put it through the whole gamut of possibilities, right? Is it good for, is it a good washer? Is it better for hydrocarbon extraction? How does it factor into when we're making our blends of old school hash?

2:21:25JustinSo interestingly, I mean, one of our flagships, for example, Cuban Lynx, It washes terribly. The bud structure is just not amazing. But when we blast it with BHO, it's our best yielder from hydrocarbon, and it's our number one selling vape pen. So it's really interesting. We go ahead and we put it through the whole gamut of experimentation. We are getting more and more routine as far as the post-processing goes for evaluation.

2:21:58JustinBut when you guys were talking a little bit about genetics and sequencing for specific terpene, you know, terpene metabolic processes, one of the things that we're now is on our list is now we've started phenol hunting specifically for rosins. And this is like looking at the multi-headed trichomes, the weak stem head trichome stuff. So Yeah, we acknowledge that not every strain is meant to be turned into every product type.

2:22:31JustinAnd we're taking a step now in the direction of we're going to set up some smaller rooms specifically for controlled cultivation towards rosin cultivars. And you guys will probably be seeing within the next year some really interesting stuff coming out.

2:22:49BubblemanWell, go find that Where Is My Bike at 30% return grown with can of nutrients. That's just insane. That's like a, that could really affect the outcome of a skew when you go from, you know, a 17 or an 18% to an almost 30% return. It's absolutely mental. Terpenylene rich too. Great for anxiety attacks. My favorite. Is that how you market that? Are we allowed to market in Canada yet?

2:23:23BubblemanOr is it like still pretty, pretty brutal?

2:23:27JustinIt's pretty brutal.

2:23:30BubblemanAll clandestine style. And tell me this, because you were mentioning the 30% limitation. Is that for extracts as well?

2:23:40JustinThat is for everything. Well, I mean, extracts here in Quebec are very special. Like there's no fun gummies, no fun chocolates. We have dehydrated cauliflowers sprayed with cannabinoids. And then there's some little biscuits too that came out. Again, coming back, they've just now put through We're going to be able to start selling vape pens in Quebec, but the vape pens have to be diluted to 30% potency as well.

2:24:14BubblemanWhich is like a whole other branch of R&D in my group. Can you make products for the OCS and the BCLDB and all these other provinces that are obviously much higher because that's how we see the NUGS live hash rosin and whatnot?

2:24:29JustinMe and Esam's lives are divided into two categories. There's Quebec, and then there's the rest of Canada. Sounds about right.

2:24:38BubblemanSounds about right. Wow, 30%, eh? They gotta figure that out, man. Especially like, what a disservice to do to a province of hash smokers. Like, come on, man. Like, you have the province of hash smokers. If you could just... I mean, my God, in Quebec, if there was no limitations, you could just do a hash brand, nothing else, just old school hash, that's it. Becca Valley, finger hash from Nepal, you know, Afghani hash, whatever the, you know, old school, Moroccan style, Lebanese style, blonde and red.

2:25:15BubblemanQuebec would be very, very, they would receive that well. It's too bad that they, yeah, Dan, I guess you're right. They're their own country. Cody Packer said, that's why you've got to make your own or just live in a different province and then you can go buy your products at the Canada store.

2:25:34JustinPeople in Quebec, we have medical places you can buy. And some of them, one that we work with, Mendo, great guy, Jay Schwartz runs that. Yeah. Within a few clicks, you can have your medical papers and then be buying whatever potency product you really want, right? But it's not everybody that's willing to go ahead and do that.

2:25:57BubblemanAnd everyone could and should. I implore you all, if you're listening, do that. That's how we force their hand.

2:26:07JustinInterestingly too, I have a whole line of, I call it Quebec dabables formulated using CBD dominant resins and cultivars and stuff like that. I sell as much QC dabables as I sell ice water hash all of Canada. So it's like there are people here in Quebec that really want these dabables. I can't wait to bring them the real deal when it happens.

2:26:34BubblemanI bet. I bet, man, that's crazy. Working there for all this time and you can't, well, I'm sure it'll change one day. We're just, we're a little stubborn as Frenchies.

2:26:44IssamSo it was a big challenge. I think you can imagine the amount of money and R&D we did put in the last two years to make. I mean, the idea at the beginning sounded like weird. How to make infused pre-rolls and vape cards for Quebec that are under 30% THC. We were looking at each other and how we make that. But there is audience. There are people who are interested in that.

2:27:14IssamAnd the surprising is our number one selling skew today is the infused pre-rolls in G-Sherp infused pre-roll in Quebec. And so that was a big challenge for us to make it.

2:27:30BubblemanYeah, no doubt. It's just, uh, it seems a little bit behind the times at this point. I remember when they first announced it and I was like, okay, that won't last forever. They're just kind of, yeah, that's a weird stubborn move and play that's just sort of unnecessary. Hopefully they get past that sooner than later and see that, uh, That it's a moot point. All they're doing is hindering and slowing.

2:27:56BubblemanThey're not really stopping anything. And if all you have to do is go get a medical license, which really, keep in mind, was the entire... Canadian, you know, cannabis community. Everyone was like, well, I'm going to go get a, like, what do you mean? Of course I'm going to go get a license. Like what you want? You think I want my door kicked in and like get into trouble.

2:28:14BubblemanAll I have to do is get a, this pink slip on my wall that says I can have a hundred plants. And all of a sudden now I can do that. So yeah, makes sense to, uh, that's cool. If I was in Quebec, I'd for sure have the license. I do have the license. I'd be ordering, uh, I'd be ordering, uh, The high potency stuff, but that's cool that you're doing the Quebec dabables.

2:28:35BubblemanI'm glad that someone's sort of caring for that market and doing it in a somewhat conscious way where you're not just putting in, like, hopefully it's, you know, something that's a little bit better, maybe some, some type of, I guess.

2:28:47Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, these, these stupid THC limits, we have one here. I'm just over the border guys in Vermont, right? So I guess I'm pretty close to Quebec, right? I think I could see Quebec from my window.

2:29:02Dr Mark ScialdoneSo, like, you have to intentionally adulterate the material, right? Because what you're extracting is north of the limit, right? So, so, so what are you, what are you adulterating the material with? Can you say?

2:29:19JustinYou said it was CBD oil. Well, we actually have three CBD dominant strains that we use right now. So we're of the opinion that we don't want to be using distillates and isolates because it's kind of harsh on the throat. So we're going ahead and like, okay, so we'll have to do hydrocarbon extractions of CBD strains. And then How do we blend those into a butter or a diamonds and sauce style product?

2:29:53JustinAnd it's interesting too. I mean, you guys have probably done dabs where you take a little bit of two different strains, put them together and they all of a sudden have Even a more interesting flavor. So that's kind of what we've seen happen. And thankfully, it resonated with consumers as well.

2:30:11BubblemanYou want to know the greatest dab I ever had of my life or inhalation of cannabinoids, period. And I've mentioned this on Hash Church again before, but I'm going to mention it because, you know, you guys seem like capable folks that might just figure this out down the road. But the greatest dab. Most flavorful dab I ever had. And I'd love to buy a product like this where you could buy the flour and the concentrate from both.

2:30:36BubblemanAnd then you use it in a very specific vaporizer that has two bowls, one that vaporizes the flour, the other that vaporizes the live hash rosin or whatever the extract is. And then those bowls, they go down through separate glass tubes and only do they join At your mouth. So they don't mix in the tube. They come into your mouth. This is my buddy, Brian Ratcliffe created this glass pipe for me.

2:31:05BubblemanHe created a couple of them prototypes where they were just these sort of spinning glass tubes that came up and then they joined right as they met. And when you took that rip, Of the flavor of flour and extract simultaneously, I cannot tell you, like, forget about the fence on like, oh, extracts are better than flour, flour is better than extracts. They are both the best together.

2:31:33BubblemanAnd so hopefully one day we see a pipe that comes out like that. Hopefully one day even we see a product. That is sold like that. I'm not sure Canada probably has some stupid regulations that say you can't sell flour and extracts in separate packages, but together we have the most ridiculous rules. I do pray for you guys and everyone else in the Canadian regulatory framework that it gets more reasonable.

2:31:58BubblemanI don't mind the fact, you know, there's aspects of the regulation that some people call overregulation that I'm like, actually, I'd like to see that regulation for the air and the water and the food that we consume. I think cannabis could teach a lot of those industries about proper regulation, making sure what you're doing isn't... Poisoning and killing the end user, which I think food is definitely processed food for certain is like when I think of a processed rosin and someone, you know, grew the flower and then they liophilize the or process the flower into hash, liophilize the hash, took the hash and pressed it into rosin.

2:32:42BubblemanThose are all processed. I don't look at them necessarily the same way as like an over processed food that seems to. Interact negatively with human systems, if I could say. Whereas with extracts, I don't feel that at all. You know, I've been smoking extracts, hash in particular, chronically for the last 25 plus years. Thank you for watching.

2:33:28BubblemanWho knows? In the end, it's funny because cannabis has to follow such strict regulations in a lot of the markets, particularly in Canada. While alcohol and tobacco can literally sell two of the most dangerous recreational drugs on the planet, just literally responsible for millions of deaths worldwide annually, in fact, but... Here we are following strict regulations. I guess that's what we'll do in the cannabis world. I'm glad you guys are doing it.

2:33:58BubblemanI'm glad that it's working out. So you did mention Nuggs. You did mention Tribal. What was the third brand called again? Was it Orchid? Correct.

2:34:07JustinYeah, our third brand is Orchid, which is our wellness brand where it's got basically CBD included and we're bringing out new strains in that brand as well.

2:34:22BubblemanOkay, so sort of a different market. So you've got Tribal, which is what you were talking about earlier, which was your sort of premier cannabis, like it's flower, right?

2:34:33JustinCorrect. Tribal, we do, well, we have under the Tribal, we have a whole suite of vapes through the hydrocarbon extraction. We have what we call an FSC, full spectrum extract, which is effectively a diamonds and sauce product. Okay. And then on the Nuggs hand side, that's really we have our old school hash, our ice water hash, our rosins. We also have a line of vape pens associated with some of our Nuggs genetics where we do mashups of strains for, you know, again, more synergistic flavor profiles and that kind of stuff.

2:35:13BubblemanI always called it lucky day instead of mashup because I always thought people would be like, what's this? And I'd be like, well, it's just like a bunch of hash that I had that I took and I put all together. And now it's your lucky day because you will never, ever, ever again in the history of the world smoke this hash with this profile. You know, just mixing random things, not measuring ratios or anything like that.

2:35:36BubblemanBut that's cool. Three brands. I'm going to get some of the live hash rosin here in the next little while. I'm pretty sure my daughter's dispensary, Happy Isle, sells the Nuggs live hash rosin. I'll have to check it out.

2:35:54Dr Mark ScialdoneSo do all of the concentrate products have that 30% THC limit? Just in Quebec. Only in Quebec. Just in Quebec.

2:36:05BubblemanI know, I was concerned as well, Dr. Mark. I love the look of concern on your face.

2:36:12Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, again, I'm close to Quebec. I could see it from my window. Well, what are your limitations? You said you had limitations. Yeah, no, I appreciate the question, Marcus. So here in Vermont, we do have a concentrate limit on... Thank you for joining us.

2:36:43Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd try to make a terp fraction as cannabinoid free as it possibly can be just for this reason. If something comes back too high, then they just dumb it down with terps and then resubmit to try to get it, to try to get the, you know, right results so they can make it to the dispensary. But, you know, and that's, thank you for explaining that, Justin. I think what you guys are doing is certainly, you know, doable and certainly, you know, ethical.

2:37:13Dr Mark ScialdoneBut man, in this industry where you have people who are going to try to cut that with the cheapest shit they can possibly get, like maybe take the dregs from their, from their, you know, you know what I mean? Like try to add something in there to dumb it down. Right. But. Make sure that they're not, you know, throwing the bank out with it, you know, so they'll use some, you know, this is again where this whole vitamin E acetate, maybe about three or four years ago, came to prevalence because people realize that, oh my God, THC distillate costs a lot of money.

2:37:50Dr Mark ScialdoneLet's cut that stuff with something. Dude. Right.

2:37:54BubblemanIt's a definite vector for fuckery. There's no doubt about it, Dr. Mark.

2:37:58Dr Mark ScialdoneTotally. Right. And just because Justin and Issam are doing it right, that doesn't mean there aren't unsworthy players out there that are going to do it all wrong, right?

2:38:07BubblemanGo ahead, guys. Throw them under the table.

2:38:09Dr Mark ScialdoneWho are the unsworthy players? I know you know them. I'm just joking. As a chemist, Marcus, they came to me and they're like, you know, how can we dumb down our oil? And still create a safe product. So, you know, in the nicotine vape world, there's all kinds of diluents that are used. When I say diluent, that just means something that you're going to cut your oil with to lower the cannabinoid content, you know, maybe to make it a little more fireable in the cartridge itself.

2:38:43Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd people have used things like... Well, not vitamin E acid, but things like triethyl citrate. Triethyl citrate's a very interesting compound because it's basically three molecules of ethanol, one molecule citric acid, right? Sounds okay, right? I mean, citric acid and ethanol, okay, that's in food, you know, all that kind of stuff. Now you're vaping this into the lungs. And so I think inhalation toxicity versus oral toxicity, two different ways of administering these things.

2:39:17Dr Mark ScialdoneYou can get very, very different numbers in those all together. So I think what you guys are doing is definitely the way it should be, which is that you knock down your THC numbers by adding another cannabinoid that's hopefully Allowed and so like when you're when you're doing like like I guess the most disappointing thing is that you know that the highest quality product is that that that virgin extract right Justin like when you're when you're squeezing that rosin or it sounds like you guys do BHO and everything and you make that that terp sauce and it's like man this is like the full essence of the plant Oh, my God.

2:39:59Dr Mark ScialdoneNow I got to dumb it down. Really? My government is telling me I need to add stuff to this. It's just like that just, you know, again, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I never want to do that. Right. Unfortunately, here in Vermont, like. That 60% limit as opposed to 30%, you're right at the ragged edge of where a good rosin is going to test.

2:40:24Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd so I think the people who put these THC caps in place were all like, oh, well, what about the children? What about, you know, It was all this concern about high THC potency being something that's somehow going to deleteriously harm the users who consume it. But again, I think they're right at the ragged edge of where... You can get rosin to test, kind of like in the low 60s, maybe mid to higher 60s for some other strains, because you're getting a fair amount of terpenes in that fraction too.

2:41:01BubblemanI just had bubble hash come out at 75% THCA and it was 81% total cannabinoids. Bubble hash, I never turned it into rosin.

2:41:10Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, so like if you get a product like that in my state, you got to dumb it down, man. And it just sucks, right?

2:41:18BubblemanWell, considering you're doing backflips for getting that product in the first place, you're like, get it. And then there's like someone in the corner going, oh, guys, I hate to piss on your parade, but we're going to need to cut that with some Delta 8, some vitamin C acetate, maybe a little coconut oil.

2:41:39JustinNo, there's limitations.

2:41:40BubblemanCanada, obviously you must know them, Justin, as a QC guy. We're limited in Canada with what we can even do with, correct?

2:41:54JustinYeah, I mean, it was interesting seeing, like I was just mentioning, Quebec is now going to let us start selling dab of vape pens in February. So towards that, they recently set off some more Some of their data package for us to learn from. And they have actually, I'm looking at it now, they allow the addition of long chain triglycerides, diacetyl, and 2,3-pentanedione as diluents to the vape pens.

2:42:25JustinAnd honestly, one of the things I'm most proud of to be able to say for my vape pens, there's only one ingredient. It's cannabis extract. Yeah. Nothing else goes into it, right?

2:42:34Dr Mark ScialdoneThat's the way it should be. So am I hearing this right, Justin? They're allowing the addition of diacetyl. Are you fucking kidding me? Really?

2:42:46JustinThe way that they said it is additions to the list of ingredients to be declared. So I don't know if it's... I guess it's open for interpretation there. They're saying if you're using these things, you have to declare it.

2:42:59Dr Mark ScialdoneAh, okay. So they're not condoning the use of those diluents. They're just saying that if you use these diluents, you have to report them. Well, let me just tell you something. Diacetyl, you do not want to use at all. I mean, that's the thing that's... Thank you so much for joining us today.

2:43:43Dr Mark ScialdoneWhat combustion of flour is without the combustion, right? So the notion that you're putting stuff in there that's never in the flour to begin with is just, oh man, that just curls my toes. I can't think about that. It's crazy.

2:44:02JustinAnd I think one of the things that also I'm proud of is we have a large group of cannabis enthusiasts at our facility between ESAM's teams and my teams, but they're such cannabis purists that if that was ever something that they were asked to do, there would be so much pushback. They would call us out right away, you know, and They're all, they're constantly showing me this guy's doing it wrong.

2:44:32JustinOh, this guy giving props. He's doing a great job here. So yeah, it keeps us honest as well, you know, because we give respect to the plant is really what they always tell me.

2:44:42Dr Mark ScialdoneGood for you for having an educated workforce there because, you know, I'm sure in other corners it's not the case. And yeah, you have people who just want to make, you know, money and Anything to get that product out and on the shelf. But man, imagine that like looking at a concentrate product and, you know, there being a little disclaimer on there that diacetyl has been added or one of these other things has been added.

2:45:12Dr Mark ScialdoneOh my God, you stay as far away from that stuff as you possibly can. And that tells you something about the ethics of that, you know, the underpinnings of that brand too as well, right? Yeah.

2:45:26BubblemanThe old curls my toes, eh, Dr. Mark? Might be the quote of the day. That's what BC Trichome Farmer is saying. Quote of the day, Dr. Mark, curls my toes. I need a curled towing or a toe curling dab is what I need.

2:45:40Dr Mark ScialdoneI already have curled hair.

2:45:42CloverThat's the thing. I can't. It's going to curl my hair.

2:45:45Dr Mark ScialdoneI already have curly hair. That's awesome. But let me ask a different question. So when you guys are doing extraction and you're looking at, so you're, You're doing BHO and you're doing solventless, is that right? And I would assume probably you're also doing distillation too as well, like maybe taking some of your trim and distilling it too as well?

2:46:13JustinI would say we're one of the interesting examples of a vertically integrated cannabis company that uses up every single bit of the plant. So I am for sure making all of my premium products with fresh frozen product, but I also have, you know, infused pre-rolls and other products where I'm blasting trim. So all of the trim gets blasted, turned into cured resin. And so now I have my fresh frozen and I have my cured resin and I use that to support and develop.

2:46:46JustinAnd it's part of my tools that I use in R&D for new product development.

2:46:52Dr Mark ScialdoneRight. So are you going through, you know, batch by batch and say, like doing a small pilot batch before you dedicate an entire batch to production? Like, are you doing any, maybe like an R&D run at a smaller scale to see how the material comes out before you commit an entire batch to it?

2:47:14JustinSo, I mean, I think what I'm getting out of this is like almost how do you, from batch to batch, depending on the season, depending on a lot of environmental conditions, I could have oil that's slightly darker or lighter and have varying amounts of terpenes in it. So rather than doing a small batch and saying, okay, this lot is probably best suited to be used over here, We just, we just gather more data on it.

2:47:44JustinSo like I have a, like a color scale and I get all of my guys when they're doing the pour, for example, from a hydrocarbon extraction, they're pouring it directly on the sheet next to the color grading. It gets associated to color grading right, right away. And a certain threshold that's bright enough stays for my vape pens so that, you know, the guys can, can hold up a cart and they look at it and they're like, oh, okay, that's great color oil.

2:48:11JustinOtherwise, if it's too dark but still very, very flavorful, we end up creating some of our infused pre-rolls with it. So we have this great product line right now called Trifectas, which we've been able to combine flour from, for example, a single strain like triple burger, Then we go ahead, we create a diamonds and sauce. We separate the diamonds and sauce. The sauce obviously has a lot of cannabinoid components in it.

2:48:40JustinIt's typically very dark. We mix that with the grind, goes into the flour, and then the exterior is dusted Thank you for joining us.

2:49:03JustinBecause it might have been visually a little darker, we've gone ahead and it goes into the joint where, you know, the flavor is all there. Maybe it's just a little bit darker, so people might be off-put by that. But at the same time, we can't go too light because people will associate material that's too light off-put. We're not that guy.

2:49:25BubblemanOur industry is insane. The fact that people are purchasing with their eyes only that they're not allowed to really smell it or touch it or feel it. It's just this lack of sensory experience that everyone's purchasing with their eyes. And I think it's really why everyone's obsessed with having these lighter colored resins. I would agree. It's definitely a driving force, which is weird because it's like, I just want like, I want something pure to be the driving force behind that, you know, rather than, uh,

2:50:03Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, well, pure THC is as white as snow, or I'm sorry, THCA, right? So THCA isolate is white. And I think, again, there is a human preference, I guess, to see things that are quote unquote pure as being white and pure and not like yellow or orange. Careful now, Mark. Well, I'm just joking. No, but like, like if you talk about the purity of the full expression profile in the plant, I think someone was talking about this earlier, right?

2:50:38Dr Mark ScialdoneSo you're basically, all these are secondary metabolites and not all of them are colorless, especially the flavonoids. Flavonoids are highly colored compounds. And when you get that full spectrum extract without CRC, without eliminating anything, the best butane extract you can get at like minus 80 or minus 40, yeah, you're going to get color in there, man. And, you know... I think when they first started doing CRC, well, to back up for a second.

2:51:12Dr Mark ScialdoneSo CRC stands for Color Remediation Chromatography. And chromatography has been used on cannabis extracts for Coons Age now just to do... To clean out pesticides and whatnot, you know, people, you know, grow under different conditions. Sometimes you're buying from the open market. You don't know what that material was sprayed with. Right. And almost like the way Colin was talking earlier about irradiation. Thank you for watching.

2:52:00Dr Mark ScialdoneThe COA. So you know what? We're just going to put CRC or let me just back up and just say chromatography into our process because we don't want any bifence rate or any Eagle 20 or anything that Thank you for joining us today.

2:52:42Dr Mark ScialdoneYou're not seeing any pesticide contamination or any other unwanted crap that could be in there that you'd want to clean out chromatographically. Because yeah, you do end up removing all that color and everything. And ultimately, if you're getting the THCA isolate, there's no color at all. It should be, you know, white as snow, right? There shouldn't be any color in there. Trace amounts of color can certainly impact the value of like say a THCA supply.

2:53:12Dr Mark ScialdoneSo if you're kind of like off white or a little bit yellow, you may not get the price that you would get for absolutely pristine white THCA isolates. That said, I just wanted to ask one other question to my friends north of the border here. You know, down here in the States, we have this whole hemp derived market that is just really upset a lot of people.

2:53:37Dr Mark ScialdoneSome people are on board with it. Some people think that these two things ought to come together. It's all the same plant in general. Do you guys see proliferation of hemp derived products that aren't part of the regulated Thank you. Thank you.

2:54:05JustinI haven't, well, I haven't seen a ton of it, except I've seen a lot of drive in some of the terpene manufacturers. There is a drive to get terpenes derived from cannabis products to be able to sell and then infuse things with. So I've seen hemp being used for just like as a source of what they would call hemp derived terpenes. I also, I had one at a previous company, I had one client that was forced to grow all of his, I guess, CBD flower from seeds.

2:54:47JustinSo as opposed to cloning, like we all do now with mother plants and that kind of a selection, I remember walking into the guy's greenhouse He showed me he had planted a thousand plants. It was supposed to all be, I think it was called umpqua, was maybe the strain or something like that. And there was such variability in all of the plants. Some are tall, bushy, and everything in between.

2:55:15JustinAnd I mean, his operation didn't go fantastic, but There seem to be different legislation or rules regarding how you can propagate hemp or sometimes what's called CBD flower, I guess. But I haven't seen a ton of it in Canada.

2:55:34BubblemanYeah, I don't know why we haven't gotten onto that. You know, they figured it out with their farm bill. We don't use the farm bill per se. We're just part of the Drug and Peace Treaty. It's right in there. Hemp is 0.3% THC, but we never really went that way. And that might be because it's not written the same way in Canada, because I'm sure if it was...

2:55:58BubblemanWe would have the same people doing THCA hemp products all across Canada.

2:56:04Dr Mark ScialdoneRight, THCA flour, right?

2:56:07BubblemanWell, no, they do THCA flour, gummies, extracts, live hash, rosins. There's companies in the U.S. selling all of those products.

2:56:15Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, so that's not happening in Canada?

2:56:19BubblemanNo, anything that's like THCA, like in those percentages... It's considered cannabis. It's considered like it's the, you have to be either in the medical or the recreational. And hemp is just, you know, hemp in Canada is actually hemp. We actually grow it for grain and we grow it for stock and we grow it for like, you know, all the shit that you can grow.

2:56:42Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, it's not type three or, you know,

2:56:45BubblemanNo, it's real hemp. Like for instance, if you're growing for seed oil, well, then you're going to use a variety that produces as much seed as you can possibly get. And that's rich in the amino essential amino acids. If you're growing it for, um, say fiber, which less people do, um, You plant them so tight together. They're totally different cultivars that have been bred differently than you would grow for seed.

2:57:14BubblemanSo they have their differences.

2:57:18BubblemanSorry, did I cut someone off there?

2:57:25BubblemanThree hours and going strong. Three hours and going strong. I haven't really checked in with the group, but I'm sure there's a good amount of people watching right now. I don't know how many. Okay. Over 300. Nice. Very cool. Very cool. Man, I would love to come out there one day and tour the facility with you guys.

2:57:52JustinHey, we'd love to have you, man.

2:57:53Dr Mark ScialdoneWhere is your facility at again?

2:57:56IssamFarnham. We have one in Farnham and one in Valleyfield. Okay. Help me with a little bit of... The Valleyfield one is closer to you. The Valleyfield one is closer to your environment. So how far from the Vermont border would I have to travel for that? I would say 100 kilometers from... and probably the same from Valleyfield, yeah.

2:58:20BubblemanThat's not too bad. Jeez. I'll have to get on a plane and fly for like five and a half hours.

2:58:32BubblemanBut I do need to make it out there one of these days soon for sure. And the last time I went out to Quebec was to visit a beautiful canna grow. I actually posted it up on my YouTube channel. It was a beautiful, beautiful resin grown with completely and totally experimental LED lights like 10 years ago when LED lights were kind of like... You know, they were kind of like, I don't know about these.

2:58:58BubblemanPeople didn't understand. Do you find it difficult to grow with all the different lights? You have to learn and have a pretty, I mean, LED and HPS are pretty substantially, like they're very different.

2:59:14IssamActually, we use both of them. And as I said, according to the cycle of the crop, we adjust. So we add more. We activate. We have different stages for each. And we activate them over time based on the plant demand. So when we're looking for, we don't want to have a lot of red. Thank you so much for joining us.

2:59:54IssamBecause at that time, the plant is focusing on building the mass and the flower, and that you have a risk by having a lot of 100% red spectrum, you have a risk of bleaching. So it's finding The equilibrium between lights and the feeding schedule together with the climate for sure. What we see now is we are moving. We have our InforNEM facility where most of the rooms, the flowering rooms are with the HPS.

3:00:23IssamIn Valleyfield, it's hybrid. It's HPS, LED, and we use the sun. We supplement during summer especially. So now in Farnam, we are moving towards LED. And the beauty with that is the flexibility of using the same room for mother plants and for flowering. So that gives that with HPS, we can't use the same room. Since now, our farm facility is more for the R&D and producing clones for value field.

3:00:55IssamSo we want to transform all the rooms to LED because that gives us the flexibility depending on the demand. Thank you so much for joining us today.

3:01:31SpeakerYeah, I'm reading funny stuff. We're going through the David's collection room and he kept a lot of not like a lot of crazy stuff, but this one is particularly funny. May 4th, sorry, May 1st, 2014, he was registering for a Marijuana State University study about how much cannabis you use. So I thought I would pop on and share that. That's hilarious. You know, like just, he obviously saw that this was a study being done in the news somewhere so that you could log on and do.

3:02:07SpeakerSo he logged on to contribute his use. You use marijuana on 30.1 days in a typical month. You drink zero standard alcohol drinks. You don't smoke cigarettes. And then down and it says later, it has all these report outs on what's, you know, what he's doing. And at the end it says, how do you spend your time in a typical month? You spend 421.4 hours under the influence of marijuana.

3:02:33SpeakerI just thought it was funny.

3:02:39BubblemanYeah, for those of you that don't know, I don't know Issam and Justin, if you know, but yeah, our dear friend and mentor, David Watson, aka the Skunk Man, Sam, has passed away recently. And so Ryan's over at his house and just going through some of his... Some of his collectibles that he's been holding on to all these years. And so it's good. We're going to start.

3:03:03BubblemanWell, Ryan has been posting them on his Instagram, which is, is it breeding cannabis? That's right. Yeah. Breeding cannabis. Yeah. You, you, you, I'd like to introduce you to Issam and Justin as well. They're over at Canara in Quebec. Ryan is a breeder chimera. He's been breeding genetics for quite a while. He did some pretty incredible work over at Napro. And I think you guys would also appreciate It would be in your best interest to know each other and have just have contact with one another off of off of the hash church platform.

3:03:35BubblemanCool. Nice to meet you guys. Nice to meet you. Yeah, Ryan's got some special genetics in the bank for certain. He's he's different when it comes to breeding in the sense that he really likes to follow The correct pathways and militantly so under the guidance of the skunk man, Sam, over the years. And yeah, we love him for it. So he produces some pretty nice genetics. He's in the market right now under which companies are selling some of your genetics?

3:04:11BubblemanIt's Victoria?

3:04:12SpeakerOh yeah, Victoria Cannabis Company. They're growing a line and we're doing a couple of little breeding experiments for them in-house too. Yeah. But yeah, yeah.

3:04:23BubblemanThese guys at Kinera have incredible facilities and incredible capabilities when it comes to R&D and, you know, focusing on bettering their SKUs and the plant. And I just think that you guys will have synergies and you should definitely have a conversation afterwards.

3:04:39SpeakerOh, absolutely. Yeah, when I get back from Amsterdam in some time, I had been living just up the road in Ottawa, so. But my plan was to be moving back out west, but maybe I can come see you guys before I leave.

3:04:56SpeakerYep. Pleasure.

3:04:58BubblemanAwesome.

3:05:00Dr Mark ScialdoneI think Issam and Justin, I want to ask something based on a comment that you had said earlier. I thought maybe when Justin was speaking about R&D, I think maybe Issam had said it, that you're... One of your owners or one of your vice presidents is really interested in R&D or like a high principal up in the company who holds purse strings is okay with doing a little bit of R&D.

3:05:28Dr Mark ScialdoneYou know, that's kind of a somewhat of a rare thing in the C-suite of a cannabis company to have somebody who understands that R&D again might have a delayed Return on investment. So like, why am I buying all this scientific instrumentation and why am I hiring a chemist? And, you know, how do I get, how do I get return on that investment and how do I get stuff back to my bottom line?

3:05:55Dr Mark ScialdoneSo it's super refreshing to know that in your C-suite, you have somebody who values R&D and understands that there may be a little bit of a lag time between when investment is made in that R&D Everyone will actually come back to the company.

3:06:12IssamOh, absolutely. It's the CEO himself. He's the one, like, I think we, me and Justin, we're both PhDs and he's there every day. He's the one challenging us. He's the one bringing ideas. Like, we have this, we have our IT team that built for us a platform where we collect this mega data every day and generates reports either in terms of yields or that behavior. And he's the one looking at these charts and these graphs and the following day he came to challenge us.

3:06:45IssamDid you see that drop in term of potency at the last week? Why that happened? Can we correlate it with the feeding schedule? Can we correlate it with the climate? What happened in term of temperature or humidity? And so he's the one bringing ideas. So that way you don't need to convince them, oh, I have this idea and I have to invest money in it to R&D it.

3:07:08IssamHe's the one actually bringing the idea and asking us to investigate it and perform the test in a scientific approach from which we can get findings that can be applied in production.

3:07:23Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah. Because, you know, a lot of R&D fails. Most times that, you know, we think we know what we're doing. You know, the plant and science humbles us into this, oh, we don't really understand this, you know? Especially in Canada. To have failure after failure after failure and still have a supportive CEO, count yourself lucky. That's a great situation to be in.

3:07:51BubblemanYou think you're growing that cherry pie, but you get that humble pie.

3:07:55Dr Mark ScialdoneOh, yeah.

3:07:57BubblemanWe've all been there. Ah, there's nothing wrong with a little humble pie here and there. It's not a bad idea. Keep you humble. Keep you humble. Well, I just loaded up the Puffco. I'm going to go for a little dab of doodles.

3:08:14Dr Mark ScialdoneMost CEOs of large cannabis producers down here in the States, MSOs and whatnot, are probably more concerned with raising money And, you know, keeping their company alive in a very competitive market where most companies run at a loss as opposed to a profit. So, you know, CEOs of cannabis companies down here in the States are fraught with so many other issues that R&D is just kind of beyond their bandwidth, to be honest.

3:08:57BubblemanDefinitely the truth of the matter. It's definitely one advantage they have for certain. Yeah.

3:09:05Dr Mark ScialdoneSo is the CEO, like, was he a cannabis guy? Like, is he somebody who understands the plant and really kind of made like a personal connection before he head up this company?

3:09:17IssamHe's actually a pilot and he comes from the IT world. So he never grew a plant. He never consumed cannabis. And he was there since day one. We had some consultants coming and everyone has his point of view. So he ended up concluding that We have to build our own way of growing and producing. There are no rules, general rules. There is no book for cannabis, and we have to build our own book.

3:09:50IssamAnd there is started the idea of testing every aspect, every single detail, It's tested. It goes through a scientific approach, hypothesis, treatments, data analysis, conclusion, replication at medium scale, and then it goes to production.

3:10:14JustinI would add to that ESAM too. So synergistically, his role as CEO, his name is Zohar, great guy. But we have our CFO who is also driving this, and he's more of the deep legacy knowledge about cannabis, Nick Sosiak. He has fantastic ideas, really respects and loves the plant. And we have on Zohar's side challenging us with new ideas and new concepts. But Nick also, he's coming at us like when he first described the trifecta to me and Issam, we were like, our minds were blown and we're like, okay, we're on it, you know?

3:10:51JustinAnd so they worked really well together, those two people, and they're a huge part of what is making Canaris successful.

3:11:03JustinThat and the resin. The resin is a huge part of what's making Kinera successful. Well, that was all Zohar that really, he designed and worked and identified the extraction equipment and then brought, I came in and I've been continuously upgrading the equipment, increasing production capacity and R&Ding all at the same time.

3:11:28BubblemanBeautiful. Well, good on you boys. Good on you. ATN is back in the house. Sorry I had to mute you for a second there, brother. You were creating a little bit of a wah, wah, wah, wah.

3:11:40Etienne FontanIs that better? It's much better. All right. Well, it turns out that I'm at Wade's house. We just delivered Puffco Pro. Thank you very much, Puffco.

3:11:55BubblemanHell yeah. I see it in Wade's hands.

3:12:00SpeakerOh, there he is. That's awesome that you're up there. Hey, Wade.

3:12:06Etienne FontanSo, yeah, I'm going to go back to mute. I'll let Wade share, but he's, unfortunately, he loaded his the wrong way and he had to send it in. So, of course, if y'all were made aware, Wade kind of burned himself. Andrew Berman, Andrew Berman, And so we thought it best to get him one. And this is my day off. So I just drove four hours. And yeah, it's here.

3:12:33Etienne FontanIt's going on. So he's getting his release. So thank you, Puffco. And yeah, much love. And let's get Wade on that list. He needs some love because yeah, if anybody who needs some absolute hash love and using it for his chemotherapy, it's our man. So a tip of the hat. So sorry, I wasn't on hash church today. I was on a mission with my boy Mike over here trying to get to Wade.

3:13:03Etienne FontanSo we made it. It's rainy. It's not the best day, but now it is being here with Wade. So back to you. Much love.

3:13:12BubblemanDelivering the Puff Co. Delivering the ability to safely dab is like shout out to Puff Co. for that because that's pretty awesome. Shout out to Etienne.

3:13:22SpeakerYeah, ATN is homie.

3:13:24BubblemanWow. Four hours drive. Go to see Wade. How awesome is that, man? You're going to get to chill out with Wade. Wade's got a Puffco now. Shout out to you, Wade, for your Puffco. I love my little my little unit. I would just say what you always have to do. I would definitely if you have a cell phone, get the app. It's pretty cool to have the app set up to it.

3:13:44BubblemanIt's called the Path Browser. You search for it on the App Store and that'll tell you how many dabs you took and it'll kind of Do a few little cool things, but yeah, what a cool little unit. Keep it clean and don't put too much in and it can last you. Awesome.

3:14:07BubblemanOur community is taking care of each other. Go ahead, Wade.

3:14:10SpeakerI had one, I don't know, a month, six weeks ago, and I think I tipped it over and didn't realize it and let it, Robert R. Reilly Jr.: Thank you very much.

3:14:43SpeakerYeah, I'd forgotten how to use it. From my experience with this device, which I like quite a bit, it's ideal to start off with nice material in the bowl. And for me, as soon as I taste That beautiful complexity that the oil can have. And yeah, ATN fixed me up with a nice dab here this morning. But as soon as you taste it, as soon as I taste it, I need to stop.

3:15:15SpeakerBecause if I keep going, I'll do what I did this morning, just now, a few minutes ago, where I got too much in my lungs and my lungs said, no, we're not doing that right now. And yeah, it put me into a spasm of coughing and discomfort. But at the same time, I love the experience of the top of my head going, boo!

3:15:39BubblemanIndeed. I was going through the same spasm while you were going through it because I was coughing and I sort of blew out and then I looked up and you were doing it and I was like, yeah, I'm coughing with Wade right now.

3:15:51SpeakerWell, part of what I'm really enjoying about this morning's conversation, I must say that the processes that y'all are describing with butane and whatnot, I have an old fashioned, uninformed

3:16:10SpeakerThank you for joining us.

3:16:36SpeakerI've been fascinated by the conversation about how to get under a certain percentage of THC. And as a patient myself and a longtime advocate of the minor, quote unquote, minor cannabinoids, I'm happy in a certain way to hear that one of the ways that you mitigate That problem for yourself is by using CBD oil along with your THC oil. Because again, there's a therapeutic benefit there that's undeniable for virtually every person.

3:17:14SpeakerI just got to say, my goodness, I got to talking this morning. And yeah, ATN made reference to a very embarrassing and deep teaching that Wade got about two weeks ago. When in the middle of the night, I woke up enough to find a lighter and a roach that was in the ashtray and sat here in my chair and lit it. The problem was I had oxygen going at the same time.

3:17:51SpeakerAnd so for about five seconds or so, I had a very direct personal experience of what it is to have your face on fire. It trimmed my mustache real nice. Third degree burns on my upper lip. A little bit of that same action on my lower lip. Third degree on the underside of my nose. Thankfully, this device that administers the oxygen to me was down here instead of up in my nose, because that would have been really ugly.

3:18:26SpeakerSet the inside of your nose on fire. Anyway, that's why this is here. I spoke out to universe saying I got to stop putting flammable stuff in front of my face because, yeah, I seem to be needing supplemental oxygen for comfort at the very least. And and I'm pretty determined in my desire to consume cannabis. And I'm fortunate enough to be in a state that doesn't have odd limits and be surrounded by people like Etienne and Mike and some of the local folk here.

3:19:08SpeakerI haven't forgotten about the compassion program you want to do. Marcus, I'm getting together a list of local folk, but I'm thinking I maybe would touch base with you of some suggestions you might have to give it a more international flavor.

3:19:30BubblemanAbsolutely.

3:19:32SpeakerOn that note, I think I'm going to stop talking because I've talked more here in the last few minutes. Well, it's this thing. I'm happy. My God, I had a really beautiful, beautiful inhalation and it really works for me. You know, the long-term of manage... No, I'm not going to go there. Anyway, this is very helpful. Wade, you try to keep those puffs to as small as possible so you're not blowing out your lungs and coughing.

3:20:07SpeakerSo good to see you. Really nice to see you, Ryan. And I shared at the beginning of this rant here that what I had learned in the past is as soon as I taste that beautiful flavor that's properly done, concentrates. If I stop then, it's manageable for me. Right. If I get greedy and keep going, and I got greedy this morning, no question about it, because it tasted great.

3:20:39SpeakerAnd yeah, I get such immediate relief with the type of pain that I manage.

3:20:54BubblemanWell, that puts a smile on my face to know that you've got that little unit now and you can manage that pain as need be. We're very happy to have you on as always, Wade. And it's nice to hear you talk. It's nice to hear you be happy. And I'm sorry that you lit your face on fire. Legend though, like who else did that? Like Richard Pryor, you and Richard Pryor, man.

3:21:13BubblemanLike that's a legendary. And also even the way you said it, you delivered it with almost an unapologetic, comedic, Thank you so much.

3:21:42SpeakerJust to be clear, I laugh about it every time I tell the story. I haven't told it to many folks because it's so embarrassing. I mean, really, you know, I mean, I was a mechanic for years. I know what oxygen can do. You turn oxygen on fire, man, you got a good fire going right now. And yeah, this thing has given me two liters of oxygen a minute.

3:22:08SpeakerAnd yeah, I sat here in the middle of the night and I laid back and brought that lighter right up to that little short smoke I was going to have another puff on. And all of a sudden, yeah, it took me, really, I was half asleep. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on and then to get this oxygen thing off of my face.

3:22:32SpeakerAnd it melted, by the way. It burned long enough that, yeah, it melted both of these little probes that give me all that oxygen. And yeah, like I said, it did a real good job of trimming my mustache on this side. Singed the underside of my nose pretty good. That's actually healed up. I'm really grateful for... We made a cream for years. Do you mind me keeping going here?

3:23:01BubblemanNo, I would love for you to... Yeah, because Justin and Issam maybe aren't as familiar with your history. So please go ahead.

3:23:09SpeakerWell... One of the things I did back around 2015 or so was the Caladrius Network called upon us to get serious about a cream that we had been making for skin cancers. And And we were very one-pointed in the same way that it sounds like you are one-pointed in your approach to concentrates. We were one-pointed on creating a cream that every ingredient would assimilate into the skin easily.

3:23:51SpeakerSo no beeswax, no water, no... Funny business. It was all basically plant oils and cannabis oils and a few very specific terpenes. And it did really miraculous things.

3:24:21SpeakerThere's a condition called epidermis spilosa. It's a genetic condition.

3:24:32SpeakerAnd the cream didn't, it didn't reverse the genetic condition, of course. But what it did do is give immediate relief for pain and promote healing of the skin because epidermolysis bullosa,

3:24:55SpeakerThe proteins that help the skin bind to our bodies don't form properly in these kids.

3:25:08SpeakerAnyway, because I can't tell these stories without pouring my eyes out with tears. I saw pictures of a little girl, two years old. You could see the bones in the bottom of her feet. It's how catastrophic this stuff can be. Anyway, yeah, we made a lot of jars of cream for these kids back in the day, but we still make it for me.

3:25:40SpeakerAnd yeah, I got to say in the last, I guess, would have been two days ago, it was two weeks ago that, yeah, I set my face on fire. And I have used that cream pretty much Sometimes every 15 or 20 minutes on my nose and my upper lip, especially my upper lip. It's amazing how readily the tissues, certain tissues heal more quickly and readily than others.

3:26:13SpeakerAnd thankfully for me, at least, the lip is this, the lips heal pretty readily if you keep them free of infection and yeah, do something to promote the healing of the skin. So yeah. I've been using a lot of my cream lately, and I'm grateful for it. I'm really excited about having this thing here. I'm going to fire it up again.

3:26:46SpeakerYeah, the history of the Cloud Race Network is really, I kind of view it as one of the highlights of my life. I met so many amazing people. families who yeah our mission statement was to provide education and if appropriate cannabis therapies to the families of catastrophically ill children at no cost to those families ever and catastrophically ill is a very specific definition um

3:27:30SpeakerBasically, it means we don't have a medical answer for that condition. And it's typically fatal. There are a number of conditions that qualify. Most of our kids were cancer, epidermolysis bullosa, and seizure disorders.

3:27:57SpeakerSo I had an opportunity to

3:28:01SpeakerReally get to explore the compassion side of cannabis work.

3:28:09SpeakerAnd I just want to throw this out there and then I promise I'm going to stop. I've really been thinking about what is compassion?

3:28:22SpeakerAnd I think compassion is a verb. It's an action word. One can feel empathy for another person's situation.

3:28:37SpeakerAnd that's a beautiful thing. That's how we grow our hearts. That's how we grow our understanding of who we are and where we are in the world. But compassion comes into play when you do something about the suffering of another person.

3:29:04SpeakerYeah, compassion is a verb. So on that note, I'm going to go back to enjoying this beautiful device that Etienne and Mike have brought to me today. And go back to listening to some people who are deeply and beautifully professionally doing the work that I love. Thank you. And thank you, Marcus, for this forum. You carry the weight, brother. I just got to say, thank you. Thank you.

3:29:35SpeakerAnd I got a feeling Sam's listening in. I'll leave it at that.

3:29:41BubblemanAwesome, dude. As always, it's powerful. Powerful.

3:29:47SpeakerI love that you're benefiting from the cream that you created for so many others.

3:29:54SpeakerQuite a beauty in that.

3:29:58BubblemanYeah, there certainly is. Well, we'll make sure we get Hillary Black on the Compassion episode when we do that. You can put her on the list, Wade. Or in Valerie.

3:30:11Etienne FontanI'm going to give a special shout out to Monica for these amazing cookies, as well as taking care of Wade. It's not easy. And I just wanted to give her a shout out for Support Networks Matter, especially for those that are ill. And she has been nothing but the same for him. So I just wanted to give her a shout out. Yes. Miss laughter, Miss needs love.

3:30:36BubblemanAbsolutely. That's it. She really loves it. Feel good. Ash Church Vibes on a Sunday afternoon. Well, or on a Sunday evening or on a Sunday morning, depending on where you are, or a Monday morning for that matter. Some people are in the future. It's very true. Oh, my goodness. Well, we got a half an hour left. We've done three and a half hours on Hash Church so far.

3:31:06BubblemanWe've gotten some pretty... Man, there's been some great... Absolutely great. In fact, I'm reminded to say this because what Wade just said about compassion is 100% getting clipped and turned into a clip for this week as well as the one Issam when he described and explained EV. That's a good one as well. Both differently good, but equally as informative and, you know, of value to hear and to know.

3:31:41BubblemanSo thank you both. Thank you everyone, really, for being a part of the conversation today. We've got a half an hour left, so I'm not sure if we want to open it up to some questions or if we want to just, if there's anything in particular you guys wanted to discuss that we didn't maybe hit on that you kind of wanted to discuss in regards to anything going on over at Canara.

3:32:04BubblemanWe did discuss a lot.

3:32:08JustinI would just make a question.

3:32:11BubblemanGo ahead, Justin.

3:32:14JustinI just wanted to say it's really humbling to hear Wade come across and share those stories. There was always a part of what I was doing in studying chemistry and wanting to get into pharma and stuff like that to help people. When I lost my mom and dad, I was kind of wondering What, what is it I'm doing just in cannabis? Like maybe I should have been developing a drug to help somebody, you know, and it's kind of really feels good to see that cannabis is helping like a guy like Wade, you know, so big thanks.

3:32:58SpeakerWhat an amazing thing that, that Rosin now exists and, and devices like these ones to deliver, right? I mean, Talk about change in the world.

3:33:08BubblemanIt's unbelievable. It's unbelievable, dude. Can you imagine? You just go buy this little device.

3:33:14Etienne FontanWho are handicapped or who are challenged, right? Because, I mean, before what? Using a blowtorch and then using emails and there's heat and sensitivity. This now puts it within reach. As you said, you look at Wade. I mean, he's sitting here able to use it. It's easy to practice. We put the little water in. We charged it on the way up and boom, he's in business. You know what I'm saying?

3:33:37Etienne FontanAnd all he has to do is add a little more. By the way, the pro, the dish is obnoxiously deep. Oh my God. So we kind of packed a little more in there for him because I have to clean this out every one.

3:33:47SpeakerI was like, no, this one we've added a little more.

3:33:50Etienne FontanJust because, yeah, I'm surprised how deep the pro is compared to the regular one, which is I'm using the proxy. So, yep, yep, yep.

3:34:02BubblemanI will say he may benefit from A, keeping it on the lowest setting, which will come as default blue, and B, not putting in too much if you can. Because that's what's grabbing him by the throat. If you put in a smaller dab, he'll still get like the benefits, but he won't quite get that same. I mean, unless he's hitting that fucking Gouda Berry from Jeremy over there with the 15.9% terpenes.

3:34:31BubblemanI will be honest, when I saw that, I thought, fuck, how much is too much? Like, there has to be a number where we get to where it's like, okay, this is now too much. This is, you can't inhale this percentage of volatile. Like, what do you guys think that number is? Like, it can't be far from 16. Can it?

3:34:53SpeakerWell, again, it's dose makes the poison. It's not the percentage. It's the amount of milligrams that you're taking in. So who knows? It probably depends on, it's probably different by every terpene as well, I would say. Certain terps are going to be more caustic than others.

3:35:09BubblemanYeah, that makes sense, as they are. Anyway, that's just a side thought. But yes, very powerful words from Wade. Thanks for recognizing that, Justin. Did you have something you wanted to say as well, Issam?

3:35:25IssamWell, Justin, I want to say respect Wade. Happy that you shared this story with us. That's why we like and we love what we do is by seeing these stories and we see the impact of what we do directly on the community.

3:35:43BubblemanYeah, I'll never let them dress down cannabis with the word recreation. It's recreational. I just call it preventative. It's like, okay, well, you're just like using it as a medicine still. It's just under the guise or the disguise of recreation. But I'm a firm believer that if you're using it in your life, it's probably giving you some benefit. Although I will say, And I have still seen people get confused by this thinking like I met a guy with Crohn's recently in Europe and he was quite he was having a bad like flare up and I felt really bad for him.

3:36:24BubblemanBut he was like, oh, I got to get like a certain strain. And I was like a certain cultivar. Like, don't you mean like shouldn't you be orally consuming this or even using suppositories? And he was like, oh, I don't know. Like, I just I just puff. I'm like, I think that you would be, I told him to, you know, check out Colton Turner and look into the sort of the consumption of oils orally or suppositories because that's much more beneficial for something like Crohn's than taking dabs.

3:36:56BubblemanSo there are still people that think like, oh, I've got a brain tumor. I'll just take some dabs. Slow it down a little bit. It's like, I keep the dabs, but I'd add the oral consumption of cannabinoids as well. That is for sure. Not all terpenes are good terpenes, says Mojave Richmond. Interesting. Yeah, the ones that can strip the grease off of your engine, like D-limonene, that's the one that you probably don't want in the highest...

3:37:29BubblemanPercentage.

3:37:30SpeakerTerpenylene too, and too high concentrations feels, I mean, they're so structurally similar to limonene as well. But yeah, I think that those two in particular really act as solvents, right? They really dissolve things.

3:37:49Dr Mark ScialdoneHydrocarbons. They should. They should. They were born to do that. As they should. I don't know if this is going to make you feel any better, Wade, but it'll probably make everyone laugh. So my first, and Justin, you'll love this being a chemist. My first chemistry experiment when I was a kid, they used to have these things called chemistry sets. Justin, I don't know if you had a chemistry set.

3:38:19Dr Mark ScialdoneGilbert.

3:38:20Justin100%.

3:38:22Dr Mark ScialdoneDid you, did you have the Gilbert one?

3:38:23JustinI'm not sure what it was called, but yeah, I ruined a lot of my parents' furniture.

3:38:30Dr Mark ScialdoneSo, so Wade, you're going to love this story. So I got the chemistry set. I don't know. I may have got it for Christmas or something like that, but it came with a thick book and I got it right around the time that I was just learning to read for the first time. So obviously I couldn't read this thick book. But, you know, I kept on looking at the box and the box showed a young child like me, like a boy with the goggles on and the apron, right?

3:39:01Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd holding a test tube over the lit alcohol lamp. And then there was a parent in the foreground kind of observing, you know? So I was like, okay, all right, let's see if we could recreate this, right? So, you know, I got the goggles on, put the apron on and everything. And I don't know if you recall, but you open this basically metal case and it had little shelves in it with all these inorganic salts, like mostly things like calcium chloride and sodium sulfate.

3:39:35Dr Mark ScialdoneI mean, things that are just completely unreactive, right? And so I, you know, I took the test tube and the test tube holder and I started, you know, putting a little bit of each one of the solids in there and, you know, nothing really happened. And I'm like, okay, they had a jar of phenolphthalein indicator, right? Because one of the experiments was, you remember this, Justin, right?

3:39:58Dr Mark ScialdoneTurning water into wine, right? You do a titration and what starts out as a clear water white, Thank you for joining us today.

3:40:18Dr Mark ScialdoneThank you for joining us.

3:40:42Dr Mark ScialdoneAll right, so we're going to talk a little bit about what we're going to talk about today.

3:41:06Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd so I went upstairs, snuck a pack of matches out of the kitchen drawer, you know, came downstairs and I lit that alcohol lamp on fire. And you probably remember when you light a match inside a house, you could smell it all throughout the house, right? You could smell it. Someone lit a match, right? So my mom was upstairs and she smelled, you know, oh wow, someone just lit a match in the house.

3:41:28Dr Mark ScialdoneWhat's going on, right? And so I lit the alcohol lamp on fire and I was holding the test tube. I had my goggles, I had my apron, you know, just like, and the test tube starts bubbling away and everything, you know? And then my mom came down the stairs and when she did, I turned my head to see who was coming. And when I did that, I must've tilted the test tube slightly And it hit a hotspot and all that stuff came out onto the alcohol lamp and shot this blue green flame up to the ceiling.

3:42:05Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd it singed my eyebrows, you know, and it was the first time I ever smelled burnt hair. And my mom came downstairs and she's like, that's it. You were supposed to wait till your dad got home. You and chemistry are over. That's it. You're never going to do chemistry. You and chemistry. That's like, I got this big lecture from my parents. But yeah, so Wade, my first chemistry experiment.

3:42:29Dr Mark ScialdoneAt the age of six or seven years old, how old I was, was yeah, burning up my face too. So, you know, you're in good company, man. And you never forget this. To this day, when I smell singed or burnt hair, I think of that experiment with the test tube and the alcohol lamp and everything. And yeah, I think they took my chemistry set away from me and told me I'm never going to do chemistry again.

3:42:56Dr Mark ScialdoneNow here it is, you know.

3:42:58BubblemanLittle did they know, bro.

3:43:00Dr Mark ScialdoneLittle did they know.

3:43:02BubblemanYou and chemistry are done.

3:43:06Dr Mark ScialdoneYes. I don't know if you had a similar experience with your chemistry set, Justin, but that was my first experience.

3:43:16BubblemanThat's bonkers. Lucky you didn't burn the house down. Yeah. With your damn chemistry.

3:43:23Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, that's right.

3:43:26BubblemanJustin would be like, I just wanted to help people with my chemistry, but I burnt the apartment complex down that we were living in with my chemistry set.

3:43:35Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, luckily I was in the basement and we had an unfinished basement. So there were just, you know, rafters. There wasn't like a hung ceiling. I wasn't going to catch anything else on fire. It just shot this blue green flame up to the ceiling, right? There must've been some halogens in there, eh, Justin, right? To get that, that color. That's awesome. I like telling the story because everyone knows my history as a PhD chemist and I've been in the lab for God knows like 50 years.

3:44:10Dr Mark ScialdoneSo it's kind of like, yeah, you never know how you're going to get doctorate. I was always interested in chemistry. Were you interested in chemistry as a kid, Justin? Is that why you got into chemistry? What's your story?

3:44:26JustinI'd say I got into chemistry. Well, at first, as a young kid, I had the chemistry set probably same age as you, about six or seven, started playing around with it. And just being, it got me curious about, you know, how things work in general. And yeah, it carried on through. When we got into the lab, like, you know what it's like when you're doing your PhD, you got your bench, you got your experiments and your project.

3:44:51JustinAnd Like, how much fun can you have with liquid nitrogen? And like, how much fun can you have with like dry ice? It was, McGill is a really fun place to just grow and learn about chemistry.

3:45:05Dr Mark ScialdoneWho did you work for at McGill? My supervisor was Hanadi Sleeman. Okay. And what kind of work did you do? Was it synthetic or?

3:45:15JustinSo she, it was DNA nanotechnology, sort of like from Ned Seaman, who created the DNA origami. She was a colleague of his and kind of brought that to McGill as a drug delivery project.

3:45:31Dr Mark ScialdoneCool. So what kind of techniques were you learning in graduate school? Were you doing like Like blotting and sequencing or more microbiological or were you doing synthesis stuff?

3:45:46JustinWe would synthesize our DNA, probably call it like anywhere from 10 to 120 base pairs in length, but we would program it to form very, very specific three-dimensional structures to encapsulate drug molecules. And then we would, you know, inject them into rats and see where they accumulated and then made hypothesis about how things work.

3:46:11IssamOh, cool.

3:46:13JustinOh yeah, I'd love to chat offline if ever you're curious about that.

3:46:17Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I mean, I'm a chemist, chemist. I love it all. I love inorganic chemistry. I did a fair amount of, you know, sort of product development chemistry during my time in industry. In the last dozen years, I've did mostly consulting in the cannabis industry, you know, helping... Places get up and running and testing labs, starting up a couple of testing labs. And yeah, it's just, it's so cool to see the intersection now between chemistry and cannabis, right?

3:46:50Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd like you were saying before, you know, having GCMS, you know, in-house and HPLC. I mean, it's just, it's so cool, right? Because these are instruments that you and I used in graduate school and we never thought, oh my gosh, this would be great skill to have For some cannabis industry, some years later, we didn't know that our training wheels were basically looking at these things in our academic research and now applying it in cannabis.

3:47:23Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd I just went to the ACS meeting down in San Diego and you walk through the expo there and you just see that there's all kinds of Innovations. One of the things I saw this time that was new to me anyway was a mass spec for TLC plates. So you can take your TLC plate, put it right underneath the sniffer, and the sniffer basically runs the mass spec of your spots.

3:47:55Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd you can do the top spot on your plate. You can use the bottom spot. So there's so much Great innovation. And I'm thinking, man, I'd love to have that thing in my lab. How much does that thing cost? Oh, $150,000. Okay. I don't think I'm going to have that in my lab anytime soon. But man, just all kinds of innovation around experimentation. There were a couple groups that were talking about using AI for process and plant design, which I thought was pretty cool.

3:48:25Dr Mark ScialdoneBut I didn't really see the direct application, but they were talking about You know, mining databases for, you know, pharmacophore discovery, you know, and looking at different ways that AI can maybe see patterns that it would take humans, you know, a lot longer to kind of discover. So lots of cool stuff.

3:48:52JustinI mean, I know we're nerding out here, but like the one place I would love to see what AI will do is like computational chemistry, right? Where they have all these theoretical environments about how maybe a cannabis molecule interacts with different kinds of receptors. You know, you... To have to leverage that kind of technological advancement and say, well, we think this cannabinoid can do this, and this one could be related to that.

3:49:16JustinIt would be fascinating to see.

3:49:18Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, I mean, really, the elements of rational drug design have been around since the 80s. I mean, the idea of looking at a receptor and then mapping out a molecule that's going to fit exactly in that receptor and Thank you for joining us.

3:50:04Dr Mark Scialdonemove through parameter space a lot quicker uh but we've been using in chemistry in general for rational drug design we've been using that methodology for for years it's just how productive is that methodology for sweeping out entire libraries of compounds you know like if you could make i don't know like benzodiazepine just to talk about a Thank you so much for joining us.

3:50:52Dr Mark ScialdoneThank you so much for joining us.

3:51:20Dr Mark ScialdoneThank you for joining us.

3:51:41Dr Mark ScialdoneYou know, a genetic algorithm where you're learning every time you dock a new set of structures, you're getting some energy calculations to tell you which ones are better than others. And now you could refine that structure and try to increase interactions in other areas of the receptor. One of the questions that we were asked is, We found that hydrogenating CBD and turning CBD into what's called H4 or tetrahydrocannabidiol completely adds a, there's like, you've heard it a lot.

3:52:20Dr Mark ScialdoneCBD is non-psychoactive, right? You can consume CBD like a dab of CBD and it's not, but the hydrogenated compound knocks you in your chair. So something that's going on there. And I think it's an allosteric inhibitor of CB1. So we really don't know, like, well, hydrogenating does what? Okay, it introduces a couple of stereocenters to the molecule. It certainly changes the activity of the molecule because when you do a tab of hydrogenated CBD, it's psychoactive like THC.

3:52:56Dr Mark ScialdoneSo yeah, developing new ground rules to understand how chemical transformation affects their biological activity can be something that maybe AI can help us understand quicker.

3:53:12JustinThat's fascinating stuff, man.

3:53:15Dr Mark ScialdoneYeah, it truly is. And it's so cool because, you know, this stuff has all been designed for pharmaceutical guys with big research budgets. And, you know, I'm just a professor at a small college here in Vermont, so I don't have a lot of money to spend. But you could tell, you know, that these things are meant for places like Pfizer and Merck where they're doing, you know, you know, high power drug discovery.

3:53:39Dr Mark ScialdoneBut, you know, they could be equally useful in cannabinoid realm as well.

3:53:45JustinAnd there's so many minor cannabinoids out there that like, I can't wait till we start to isolate and then experiment with and see what comes out of all of that knowledge would be incredible, you know?

3:54:00BubblemanWe definitely have a long way to go. There's no doubt about that, which is great. It's exciting. If you're getting into it, you're just graduating student who's, you know, doing their PhD and wants to get into cannabis. There is real value to be learned and to be had. And I always kind of said it, you know, when we were in a prohibitive state, when things were prohibitive and it was just so illegal and you could get prison sentences and all of these things, It kept a lot of good people from being engaged with the industry-dash community.

3:54:37BubblemanAnd that's the one thing I've seen about with legalization is, sure, there's a ton of people that are involved now that just wanted to put their hat in the ring and, you know, give it a shot. They don't really have a full understanding of how much you have to be doing right. Like, it's unbelievable when you really think about it, especially to do what, you know, a group like Canara is pulling off, which is to...

3:55:00BubblemanBe successful in such a difficult market, particularly in the Canadian federally regulated market. It's not a super easy market to do it in a way that doesn't involve, you know, all the other sort of shady moves that companies were doing, trying to get like the black market shut down and trying to get illegal store, like just focus on your own thing, focus on growing great cannabis, focus on getting good genetics.

3:55:26BubblemanAnd focus on making good products. And that's, to me, what it's all about, especially when you're, I mean, you guys, I'm guessing you sell in almost all of the provinces and territories in Canada.

3:55:38IssamYeah, yeah. Well, you said it, Marcus, it's focus. That's the key word. It's focus and, I mean, concentrate on what you're doing. I think our strategy now is to focus on the Canadian market. There is a lot of room in there before going to the international market. And that's why the keyword is really, really focused in there. Let me guess, in the couple of minutes we have left, let me just bring it back to biology and Jump on the opportunity of having Ryan with us here and ask him about, from a breeder point of view, how he sees the evolution of the breeding programs together with the genetic sequencing happening.

3:56:21IssamDo you think in 10, 20 years, we still have the term sativa indica? And what are your thoughts, guys, about the genetically modified cannabis?

3:56:33SpeakerWell, we shouldn't even have the terms sativa and indica now. I mean, to me, indica is all drug cannabis, everything. To me, sativa is hemp, right? So I don't use those terms to describe the variations in chemical profiles the way that people traditionally use them. I call what people call sativas equatorials. I think it just differentiates them from the more northern varieties.

3:57:03SpeakerThank you for watching.

3:57:26SpeakerAnd I think when you start looking at cannabis varieties based on set, like at least the terpene profiles, it gives you a good way to kind of just put, you know, put the plants into groups that have more or less similar effects, right? And then I look at the thiols and the esters and those other, you know, volatile compounds kind of as extra flavoring layers within those classes.

3:57:55SpeakerAnd with just those variables, you can really break cannabis down, I think. So, yeah.

3:58:05IssamI love that description, I think. And that's where I started at the beginning where we said it's we do our own experiments and then we divide these genetics. We don't rely on sativa or indica. We just do our own experiments and divide it into small groups based on the terpenes profile and sometimes based on operations. Like what group, certain genetics within a group, they need certain specific operations.

3:58:32IssamAnd that's the way we split it at Canara.

3:58:35SpeakerYeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. They, you know, everything is a hybrid at this point in time, even between the equatorials and the more northern varieties anyway. So when you start talking about, you know, I mean, I look at plants, even, you know, you hear people say sour diesel is a sativa plant. It's like sour diesel's got beta-caryophyllene in it. That's not a trait of an equatorial plant.

3:58:58SpeakerUm, but it's maybe it grows a little bit taller. So people have tried to classify it in that category. I just, I don't find them very informative, right? I find that actually quite misleading. Um, and when you, when you start looking at a plant based on its actual chemical constituents, there's a lot of information, you know, depending on the lab format, we came up with a whole lab format, uh, called the Fido facts to, to show how, um, You can kind of see on paper how a plant might affect you, right?

3:59:33SpeakerAnd as you use this tool over and over and over again, People start to notice that they get, even if they're not looking deep into the compounds that are in the flower, they're getting exposed to the same major colors that codify the terpenes. And so they start to get a feeling of like, oh, I like the wine with the green label, right? So it's like you're planting a subtle message into their mind that helps educate them, even if they're not really going deep, deep, deep into the conversation.

4:00:04SpeakerRight. And of course we want everybody to go as deep into the conversation as possible. I think it's good because it's like, if you're actually trying to understand what type of cannabis really works for you, it's really quite informative. Right. But so much of the market is still just so focused on THC and, you know, the government, um, The government distributors and the government regulators really, even though they pretend that they don't want to be, they really do play to that fact, right?

4:00:33SpeakerThey only buy things that are 20% THC, like you were saying before. So it's like you've got the federal government saying we don't want people taking these high cannabinoid concentrations all the time, and then you have the provincial distributor discriminating against plants that have lower cannabinoid content. It's really... It puts the consumer in a pretty, you know, you don't have a lot of diversity to choose from.

4:01:02SpeakerAnd it also shapes what the producers can grow, right? So it's really a bizarre little thing. And, you know, when you look at some other markets like Oregon, CBD containing flour, like a type two flour, it actually has a little bit of market share, right? Like there's a category that could exist. And really because of the way the Canadian operators or the Canadian distributors operate, it really blocks that flower out of the market.

4:01:30SpeakerSo it's interesting. I chatted with ATN, with a friend of ATN's yesterday, a gentleman from Holland here that's an activist, and they're going through this early stage development of what they call the Dutch experiment where they're allowing commercial growers to work with certain coffee shops. And they're already having all these problems that Canada has, of course, fell into with just the way that they set up the regulations and they try to treat it like plutonium.

4:02:02SpeakerAnd it just it kind of it'd be really interesting to help the Dutch or to at least have them tap into some Canadian knowledge so that they can see a system that's farther down the road than they are. And maybe hopefully they can identify some key problems, right, that the regulations have created, you know, like people buying shelf space. Right. So they haven't even started selling the cannabis yet here.

4:02:31SpeakerAnd they're already having, you know, certain certain growers will only sell to certain coffee shops. And when you have regulations that the other coffee shops have to buy from one of six growers operational. I mean, it's like when you start when people start saying, no, we're not going to take your business. That's really shapes the marketplace. Right. So. Yeah, I don't know. It's funny. It's funny to watch it play out.

4:02:55Etienne FontanIt is. Well, not only that, pardon me just for a second, going on that, he also said... Only one of the producers is producing equatorials, right? As opposed to there used to be multiple people that would produce things because that's why I would go to Katsu, right? That's where you get your equatorials and they sell by the bud, not necessarily by the gram, but that's where Sam got his.

4:03:19Etienne FontanAnd so when he told me, oh, you go to Katsu, Rob told me go to Katsu. Well, now you've only got one producer now in the Netherlands who's doing those equatorials, right? So the limitation is going to become quick and the diversity is going to become the challenge, right?

4:03:36SpeakerWell, they've licensed, I think they licensed 11 growers, but only six of them are operational or cultivating at the moment.

4:03:42Etienne FontanI think it's 10. They're up to 10, but six are up. Yeah.

4:03:45SpeakerYeah. So it's wild. It's wild.

4:03:50BubblemanYeah, it's definitely different. It's definitely different the way they're doing it in Holland. And it's not just like growing flour. It's like everything. Like if you have that license to produce like hashes, traditional hashes, whatever you're going to produce, they want to produce it all in country. They want to remove the whole obviously smuggling aspect of the hashes that have been coming into Amsterdam for since forever.

4:04:14SpeakerYeah, but the question becomes, can they offer that product diversity? And, you know, as you know, in Europe, people really are used to consuming a specific way, which is loading up a bunch of tobacco with a little bit of hash. And so if the people can't get that product anymore, are they going to then go to the black market and start buying it? Right? So it'll be interesting.

4:04:36Dr Mark ScialdoneThis tobacco thing bothers me, man. It's like, does that have to happen, Brian?

4:04:42SpeakerIt's cultural. It's so incredible.

4:04:44Dr Mark ScialdoneI know it's a cultural thing. I know it's a cultural thing, but like, you know, Marcus was talking about Spanibus, about just being choked out by all the tobacco smoking that happens. I mean, I know it's a tradition and everything. And I remember when I went up to play music in Windsor, Ontario one time, and in between sets, they're like, hey, we're going to go outside and get high.

4:05:08Dr Mark ScialdoneAnd I didn't realize, yeah, these are basically tobacco hash spliffs. And I took a big draw one. It wasn't right for the rest of the night. But does it really have to have tobacco in it?

4:05:21BubblemanFor them, it does. But I will say this, and I wished I'd pulled it off because I mentioned it maybe a month or two prior to Spanibus that if people were interested to reach out to me, and I could have easily figured out a way To kind of call it a whole, a five-day event or a seven-day event. But the key would be to get in with a coffee shop or a club, a private club, and make it so, you know, you rent the place for the whole week.

4:05:48BubblemanAll of their customers are still able to come there. And for that matter, I'll even buy them each a gram. They're just not allowed to smoke tobacco, spliffs, or even flour. And just make an actual non-smoking, dabbing environment at some of these events. very popular and it would show just how how popular because here's the beautiful thing the people who don't want to be exposed to all that smoke that's fine we don't have to be but the people who are they're like the meat eaters they eat the cheese pizza and the meat pizza yeah but we just eat the cheese pizza so you know stop eating our pizza no that's not what i meant actually but um It is the truth of the matter.

4:06:32BubblemanThe smokers can enjoy the non-smoking environment. And I think showing them that, because you're right, it is cultural, but then show them something different within their own culture. Show them what can be possible, because it is nice to go home at the end of a nice big session with people and not smell like ashtray. I'm a big proponent of that. Listen, that's four hours, four hours and five minutes we pulled off.

4:07:02BubblemanThat was an incredible hash church. No joke about it. Really, really stoked for Canna. Thank you, Canna, for the sponsorship. Give them a little quick little show, the solution for growth and bloom. These guys sponsored the show today and helped bring on Justin and Assam from Canara, as Canara does have a close relationship with Canara. Canna, they thought it was a great idea to, rather than represent themselves, have one of the groups that is, you know, actively purchasing their nutrients for the production of all of their products.

4:07:39BubblemanSo really big thank you guys for coming on and sharing with us, Justin and Assam. Definitely love to have you guys on another time and get into some of the deeper sciences and chemistry as we often do here on Hash Church. I want to definitely thank Etienne for driving all, Etienne and Mike. I keep forgetting Mike. Sorry, Mike. You're not forgotten. For driving all the way out to pass that on to Wade.

4:08:04BubblemanThat is awesome. Bravo. Thank you. Shout out to Wade, who's just like puffing on his puff coat. Putting a big smile on my face, dude. That's what's up, buddy. That is what's up. Thank you, Ryan, for coming out as well and sharing some of your goodness with us. We're definitely going to have to do, definitely going to have to go deep on a breathing episode as well here in the near future where we really get into the discussion of breathing.

4:08:30BubblemanI think Assam would make a good addition to that, Ryan, and then maybe you can help me organize a group of panelists. I just don't want to invite the wrong one that's like, hey, Ryan, what's your favorite strand?

4:08:47BubblemanRyan will be texting me going, what did you do? Who is this? I'm just joking. Thanks, Jeremy, for coming. You said you were going to hang out and listen, and listen, you did. We appreciate it, brother. We're going to do like a Bubble Man brand episode one day where I bring all the partners from all the different seven, eight states that are currently doing the brand, and we'll be able to talk about and meet each other and have that sort of hash church as well.

4:09:12BubblemanSo, Thank you, Colin, for always being on time and coming in and sharing your time. Sorry, your internet dropped off. At one point, I just looked up. I was like, where the fuck did Colin go? Then I see this little text. My internet's back. I'm like, ah, that's where Colin went. He went away with his internet. Isn't that interesting how we're controlled by the Wi-Fi? If we especially don't have that cellular backup system going on.

4:09:36BubblemanDr. Mark, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming and sharing chemistry with us and engaging with Assam and Justin and sharing funny stories.

4:09:44Dr Mark ScialdoneWell, thank you for introducing me to another cannabis chemist. Justin and I have already exchanged emails. We're going to try to set up some time to chat. So Marcus, thank you again for For being the Sherpa that basically leads the way. So I appreciate the connection to Justin. I can't wait to... Be on a deep dive with them someday. Awesome.

4:10:08BubblemanWell, thank you, everyone, for watching. Everyone that's in the chat room right now that's been hanging out. Thanks, Bingo Lombardi, for holding it down. I would be remiss if I didn't thank Tony Bologna for the Hashmaker T-shirt. This shirt is so sick. It's like it's bumpy. You can feel the it's just got a nice texture to it. Totally made to look like Thrasher. As a young punk skateboarder growing up in the 80s, I was a thrasher.

4:10:36BubblemanSo this shirt touches and it was a birthday, early birthday gift as it is my 52nd birthday tomorrow, March 31st. So I'm going to celebrate that, maybe hopefully get up on the mountain or something. With my boy. And you can check Tony out if you want to get one of these shirts. He did just print up 25, but I'm sure he'd print up more if you want to support his little business.

4:10:59BubblemanHe can be found on Instagram at TonyBologna22. So that's T-O-N-Y-B-O-L-O-G-N-Y. A22 on Instagram, Tony Bologna 22. You can get yourself a Hashmaker shirt and support Tony because he's good people. Thanks everybody for coming out and we'll see you next week. Thank you, Kana. May the full mouth bless your bowl sooner than later. That's it. That's all I got. I'm going to enjoy my Sunday. I should say you should do the same.

4:11:32BubblemanPeace out, everybody.