So many ingredients go into the creation of a living thing. Plants are no exception to this mass of inputs environmental and intentional or unintentional. Consider water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, minerals, sunlight intensity, humidity, temperature of both water and air, include plant positioning, air flow, PH, EC or PPM, physical supports, storms and seasons. Also scheduling of harvest, growth cycles, germination, sexing, cloning, potting and planting. Other considerations are often IPM scheduling and associated preventative measures and techniques. This abundance of measures surely has a perfect combination to each cultivar or variety. To a degree the natural wild original location of each plant would likely influence its ideal conditions. Cactus live in deserts; pine trees love temperate forests. If one were to change even a single natural input to the environment, you may see a shift of genetic potential. If all elements were at full abundance and parameters were idealized, what would be the result and perhaps more importantly what would happen if they were not? One of the funs analogizes I came across was to imagine a whiskey barrel with all its planks. Now imagine filling up the barrel with water slowly. What if some of the planks were short and the water spilled over before the barrel was full? If the barrel was the plant and each of those planks was an environmental variable and or input such a fertilizer component can you imagine what would happen? The message of this analogy is a plant is only as good as its lowest plank, it’s only as good as any limiting factor.
Achieving and maintaining genetic potential is usually the goal in most agricultural programs. So, get those parameters and inputs more robust, my friends. Let’s figure out how to be more intentional and efficient with our agricultural endeavors.
To ensure cannabis is “medical / pharmaceutical” grade, as many root causes of variation within a batch must be controlled. Currently some “industrial cannabis” nations are double digit levels of variation between batches, that may make for a great “whiskey” but not a great “medicine”. Currently the majority of 30 countries and over 30 US states are in the process of making “medicine”. As such, strict control over root causes of plant variation relating to the list of variables above must be respected. This is what sets the high-quality low-cost producer apart from the low quality “let’s see how this works this time” producer. At TheraCann we firmly believe in the principle that “you cannot manage what you do not measure” and measure we do. We measure what we see as the primary metrics that will result in root cause variables ending with bad batches or batches that cannot claim to produce the same product as earlier batches.
By Gabe Gruye – Agri Systems Specialist for TheraCann International.
For more information on Cannabis grow technologies and our services, please contact Gabe Gruye, Agri Systems Specialist for TheraCann International.
