Ep 49 - The future of Cannabis is in the Seed. An interview w/ Ralph Risch, CEO, Phylos Bioscience

Today’s episode we interviewed Ralph Risch who is the CEO of Phylos Bioscience located in Portland, Oregon. 

In 2015 Oregon legalized Marijuana.  Before marijuana was legalized, cannabis cultivators were more concerned with avoiding police raids than genetic research. Now that it's legal in Oregon what does the advancement in cannabis & hemp seed science conducted at Phylos Bioscience mean for the end user who buys cannabis at their local dispensary? It all begins with the seeds - Phylos believes quality control starts in breeding and continues through seed production.  The final hemp & cannabis product means buyers can trust the quality and consistency of the strains they are purchasing.  

Let’s listen to the entire interview with Ralph who discusses this in more detail, and you'll learn what Auto Flower means to a successful grow operation.   This feature allows growers to skip the traditional light cycles.

Connect w/ Phylos Bioscience:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/phylosbio/
https://phylos.bio/

Phylos reimagines molecular genetic science to revolutionize hemp and cannabis production for a growing industry. Our world-class team develops high-quality seed lines bred for better, more uniform agronomic traits and improved production efficiency. Phylos is committed to developing industry-leading solutions to help you boost your bottom line, maximize space and labor time, and pull ahead of the competition with short-season varieties.

Our team of geneticists, breeders, plant scientists, and agronomists use a data-driven approach to crop and production improvement.

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Transcript

Ronjini Joshua: 0:04

In this next interview, we talked to Ralph Risch, the CEO of Phylos Bioscience, with a bit of a story past Phylos has kind of turned a new corner. And they are diving into seed genetics you help sustainable planting for commercial growers. So we talked about a little bit on the science side of how seeds are created, how they've developed these really cool genetic markers, and what they're doing to kind of move the industry forward on both the social equity side as well as the scalability side as cannabis becomes legal. Join us in the green room. So Hello, we are back in the green room and today we have Ralph Risch from Phylos CEO. Nice to see you. Yeah, good to see you. So, today, we're kind of talking about, you know, a lot of anticipation with mjbizcon. And as we were coming into this conference, what did you expect coming into it? And what do you what were you most excited about?

Ralph Risch: 1:05

Well, this is my fifth mjbizcon. And what I've learned is, and especially this year, right with the pandemic last year, yeah, the most beneficial thing of coming here is just meeting with people. And in my case, seeing people that I haven't been able to see in 18 months, you know, the cannabis community is unlike any industry I've worked in, and really just being able to reconnect with people face to face. Yeah, talk about life and cannabis. It's been great.

Ronjini Joshua: 1:35

Yeah, one of the things that I've heard this week is like, it's not just about the conference, but it's also like the bonding that's happened over the pandemic of not being able to see each other, the connection there. So a lot of things. A lot of times when I interview people usually kind of start with the journey, right? And that's like a big part of most people's story of why they're in cannabis, how they got to cannabis. So how about you? How did you get into cannabis? And what did you do before?

Ralph Risch: 2:02

So I had a career in high tech. And I started out as a software developer, I had a couple of companies that I started and grew and was fortunate enough to exit. And I was kind of happily semi retired. But one thing? Well, it something that happened to me is probably something that happened to a lot of people in this industry, which is like my life was personally touched by cannabis. I have an autoimmune disease. And it started in my 20s. And it kind of got progressively worse. And by the time I sold my last company, I thought I would never work full time again. And I discovered I basically did my own internet research, and I discovered RSO. And you kind of have to do this personal experimentation because there's no doctors that. Yeah. And for me, it was life changing. And so that got me interested in the science side. Files file science was one of the first science companies in the space. So it was a natural connection for me. Yeah. And when I started working with the company, I realized they had brought the best scientists in from outside to really understand the cannabis plant from the DNA up. And you know, I just dove in deep. And you know, here I am five years later, as the CEO

Ronjini Joshua: 3:21

very, very cool. So, I hear that Fellows is doing a lot of interesting and really cool new things. And so tell me a little bit about kind of the Philo 's mission and journey of like what you guys are doing in the industry, what you hope to achieve and how it's moving forward the whole industry as well as a whole, you know?

Ralph Risch: 3:41

Sure. So we're a genetics company, yeah. Which means we are breeding new varieties of cannabis. And for us, we looked at cannabis early on as something that needs to be grown at scale, basically a crop. And, you know, it's only been bred in prohibition, you know, kind of, you know, in basements under the radar. It didn't have the sort of scientific approach that has happened in all the other crops. And so it doesn't have the agronomic traits it doesn't, it's not ready to be grown at scale. And we set out the team set up 2014 to put together the tool set that would enable us to really rapidly breed this plant, rapidly improve it, so that when people are trying to grow acres of cannabis, it works. Yeah. And that's what we're doing. So we have, we have seed lines, now we have individual clonal varieties, and they're all enhanced in important ways for those cultivators.

Ronjini Joshua: 4:41

Okay, so what exactly are the seed like? How does that work? What How are you guys helping with the scalability side of

Ralph Risch: 4:47

it? Yeah, just give you an example. So historically, there haven't been any what we would call stable seed lines in cannabis. And so if you buy seeds on the internet or you You get them some other way, when you plant them, you get a bunch of different phenotypes, each plant looks slightly different is slightly different qualities, our seed lines, we have gone through a process to create true f1 hybrid seeds. So there is uniformity. And if you look across a field of our plants, it looks like they might have been grown from Cologne. That's just the first step. You know, it's sort of a bar, you know, a real low bar to cross, but just to have uniform seed lines was the first piece. Now we're improving the potency, we're improving the flower quality. And step by step, we're gonna bring those seed lines to the place where you can't get a better clone than you can get from seed. But it's a multi year journey.

Ronjini Joshua: 5:46

Yeah, I mean, science takes a long time. Yeah. So you know, how did your scientists kind of come up? I know, you guys have some very special seeds that are, you're talking about auto flower and photo CBD on your website. So how do you guys kind of come up with what you want to create? And what kind of seed you think would be, you know, beneficial to large scale commercial growers?

Ralph Risch: 6:11

Yeah, we listen, really, first and foremost, the cultivators that are out there are very experienced, they know what's working and what's not. Every time we go to a farm we're learning. And we, we get our breeders out in the field, we get our cultivators and tech team out in the field, and we learn what's working and what's not. And we have a set of traits that we've prioritized. We found genetic markers, or 15, of the most important traits, and we're using those genetic markers to do an accelerated breeding process. So it's not GMO, traditional breeding, but we're accelerating it because we can test the plants at a very early stage and see, do they have that important trait?

Ronjini Joshua: 6:56

So then then the quantity comes by cultivating the ones that do have the important traits? Is that what it is?

Ralph Risch: 7:02

Exactly? So we create 2000 seeds, we germinate those seeds, and we test them all, we find the 200, or the 20 plants that have the traits of interest. And those are the only ones that we grow up. Okay. And then we select on all the other criteria from those plants. Right. And, you know, breeding is really a numbers game. Yeah, if we could have a bigger facility, we would, but you know, we've got an 80,000 square foot facility. And by optimizing the process, we're able to look at a lot of plants.

Ronjini Joshua: 7:33

So baby, you're kind of focused on burning butter is actually in the seed itself, not exactly in the plants, right the plants is for, you know, you need to test them make sure the seeds are working. So what what can people expect? And who's going to need these, like kind of, I guess, commercialized seeds,

Ralph Risch: 7:52

we think there's going to be a bit of a sea change in this industry. Yeah, right now, people grow from clones, because they have to. But if you're growing from clones, you have to have a room full of mother plants, those are source of pathogens into the grow, okay, you have to, you know, in a very manual way, you've got to take cuttings off of each of those plants. It's, it's really expensive, and it's not optimal. But historically, you know, there haven't been those stable seed lines that would enable you to to replace the cloning process. We think that 60% or more of the cannabis production will be ultimately from seed. Yeah. And it's going to be a huge transition for the cultivators. And what will enable that is these seedlings?

Ronjini Joshua: 8:38

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So I think I read something about your social equity program, and you guys, you know, donating seeds and kind of taking a position of, I would say, like, just responsibility for, you know, helping moving the industry forward in a positive direction. Um, can you tell us a little bit about how you guys are donating seeds in what you're doing

Ralph Risch: 9:03

there? Yeah, I think so we view ourselves as a triple bottom line company, that's something that we even at the board level committed to over a year ago. And so we've got an environmental component to that, and we've got a social justice component. And you know, personally, I think that in the cannabis industry, we have a special responsibility to advocate for social justice, because the war on drugs, you know, the victims of that war have been people of color, predominantly. And those people are now largely not participating in the industry. And you know, it's a problem that is not going to be easily fixed. And I won't pretend that we're going to be able to do more than, you know, step by step, try to make a contribution there. For us, the first piece was to start donating seeds to farmers of color. So each of these last two years we've done At a million seeds, and we have some amazing partners who help not just get those seeds to the farmers of color, but then support them through the process of growing those hemp crops.

Ronjini Joshua: 10:13

Oh, that's really cool. And usually how many I, you know, I'm not a grower, so I don't know how many seeds use, like this million seeds go to like how many different farmers you guys?

Ralph Risch: 10:24

Actually as many as 200 farmers, okay, okay. Yeah. So that, you know, they're all different sizes? Yeah, some of them are just getting going with him. And I would say, I don't have an exact number, probably between 102 100 farmers this year,

Ronjini Joshua: 10:39

and how do you find these people? Or how can people apply to get this?

Ralph Risch: 10:43

We have a couple partners. One is there's a Black Farmers Association that we work with university or Oregon State University is another one. And there's a list on our website. Okay. Yeah, where people can find an organization that's near them that can support them.

Ronjini Joshua: 11:03

Awesome. So one of the questions I have, you know, this is kind of like more of a seed question. But you know, you're talking about you just mentioned this million seeds. And you know, what is like when you're dealing with working with seeds, and I don't know if it differs from if it's like a produce seed versus a natural seed or whatever the case may be, what is the net of like germination? Like how does, you know, you mentioned like, maybe 20 plants will germinate or, you know, out of out of 200. So, you know, what is usually the gnat fall off, like, what did people

Ralph Risch: 11:35

know, actually are seeds? I have a germ rate, a germination rate always over 90% Oh, my gosh, okay. Yeah. And so that was a 6%, fake number I used. Yeah, so that's an important piece. Yeah, they need to be 100% feminized, and 96% germination rate. And these are the kind of numbers that we target so that people know when they buy our seeds that they're going to get a crop out of them.

Ronjini Joshua: 12:01

And how long does it take to produce some, like, some types like this science? It's like, sounds really involved, you have to do I mean, you're, you're working with genetic markers. So I imagine, along with that, along with testing them with the growing and, you know, testing them out, how long does that typically take the cycle to create these,

Ralph Risch: 12:21

it took us many years to build the capabilities to genotype the plants, right to do that DNA sequencing. And we even partnered with a company called Illumina, which is the biggest sequencing device company in the world, to build a cannabis specific device. From there we ran 1000s of plants through, we were able to use that DNA data to find the genetic markers. That's when we started the breeding process. And for clonal cultivars, we can turn out new plants every three months. Yeah. But for seed lines, it takes two years to create an inbred line two to three years. And so once we've done that work, now that we've got the foundation, we can create new seed lines every year that are enhanced, okay. But we're also always creating new inbred lines. And so it's, if you look at the timelines for our team, they'll sometimes talk in terms of five to 10 years.

Ronjini Joshua: 13:27

That must be painful.

Ralph Risch: 13:30

In this industry, where things change so quickly, yeah, it's it's hard to think of those timelines. But we know that there are some fundamentals that won't change. And the the trades that we are targeting, are those fundamentals, you won't see us trying to hit trends with our seeds.

Ronjini Joshua: 13:46

Right, right. Well, looking at what I saw at mjbizcon, at the conference and walking the show floor a little bit, and even pre conference, a lot of the stuff that we're reading is like the seed is the future of the cannabis industry. And we are seeing like, a lot of these companies pop up that say, you know, we're the best seed and and, and we're the best seed and so you're seeing a lot of people now starting to talk about that a little bit more. What really kind of differentiate seed, what were the qualities that people should be looking at when they have to compare, you know, you versus someone else?

Ralph Risch: 14:21

Sure. First of all, I would say Seeing is believing, okay, and any, any seeds you're gonna buy, whether they're ours or someone else, try them in your own grow and see how they perform and and talk to the company you're buying them from, and see how much support they can give you in terms of SOPs or or information to be successful with the seat. I would say the the low bar that everybody should be hitting is uniformity. 100% feminization rate, you shouldn't you should not have different phenotypes and you shouldn't ever have a male in the ground. If people are hitting that bar, and I know that sounds obvious, yeah, it just hasn't been that way until recently. Yeah. You know, then you can start to look for all the other traits that that growers want to have?

Ronjini Joshua: 15:14

And is that particular to like, you know, are you or your, the traits of your seeds are going to be different than the treats? Or somebody else's seeds? Or like, you know, do you think at the end of the day, it's going to be kind of like, like, oh, we like this design better than this design? Or do you think it's gonna be a mixture of a lot of different ones?

Ralph Risch: 15:33

I think there will be a lot of successful companies in the space. There's room for a lot of players. Yeah, I will say, in our case, we feel like a laser focus on the needs of our customers, is going to enable us to turn out seeds that make them happy every year. And then if other people can do the same, great, you know, it's better for our customers, it's better for the industry.

Ronjini Joshua: 15:56

When you guys are developing the science, do you think about how they're going to be using it at the like the end product? Or do you are you really just focused on like getting, like you said, uniformity, and these, like certain markers that you guys want to hit so that you can have a successful flower? But like, do you actually also see, okay, this is they're probably going to be using it for this. So this is how we want to design it.

Ralph Risch: 16:18

Yeah. I mean, it's it's only science to a certain point. Yeah, it's an art. Yeah. And our, to give our breeders credit, they're scientists, but they're also artists, and NEC that we are shipping out, we've grown it multiple times in our own facility, and then it partner facilities, we've looked at it in different climates in different regions. So yeah, we're very much real world breeders. Yeah. And not just not just their theorist or scientists,

Ronjini Joshua: 16:42

right. I think also even like what you guys are doing with the science and technology, I think getting it set up for that when everything is opened up, people can be ready to go.

Ralph Risch: 16:54

And you know, we've always said it follows. We have a window of opportunity here. Yeah, the big traditional ag companies aren't in the space. Yeah. And it enables groups like us and some of these cultivators and product people to really establish a footprint here that will give us the ability to, to last

Ronjini Joshua: 17:18

last Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's, it's really exciting. Because like a lot of the brands that we're talking to and people that we're talking to, it's just like such a very volatile time for the industry. So like, there's so much that can happen in a positive way. Yeah, for sure. So a lot of people are looking forward to everyone, you know, doing the right thing and moving everything forward and going in, like doing all the right checks and balances to make sure that it happens that way. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Thank you so much for talking to me.

Ralph Risch: 17:46

It's my pleasure. Thank you for doing this. It's really been great. Yeah, absolutely.

Ronjini Joshua: 17:50

Question. Yeah, please, please.

Ben Michaels: 17:52

So what I found really interested in what you said is like everything, basically, that you've planned for, is sounds like about five to 10 years, you know, in the making with the seeds. And I think that's really cool. It used to do you don't follow trends, what is what is true five to 10 years ago, that is finally now coming into flourishing with these plants. That is still true, you know, five to 10 years later what the market wants what are leads and what what these you know people get in the seats want need

Ralph Risch: 18:22

something we said five years ago is that the market was going to need seed bonds that were stable. Yes, ality Yeah, and people didn't really understand that because they viewed seeds as something that you buy when you want to hunt for some new things to clone out. But we always thought there's a big percentage of the production will ultimately have to be done from seed and that has proven true

Ben Michaels: 18:47

but like when you when you were originally like selecting these seeds because is it all hemp? Or is it all some of the cannabis

Ralph Risch: 18:53

that we have both hemp and cannabis seed lights? Yeah,

Ben Michaels: 18:56

were you trying to target because like now everybody you know talking about trends like everybody's like, complex terpenes and the more complex terpenes are Yeah, no, I mean what what kind of like foresight did you have specifically with the THC based, you know, plants,

Ralph Risch: 19:13

a few things, we we set our sights on some minor cannabinoids early on. And we now have some minor cannabinoid plants that are producing a much higher quantity than has been seen before. And we're now also seeing some of the medical research validating that those minor cannabinoids can be really helpful. So that's a big victory for us. On the THC seed front. You know, it's funny, I, every time I say this, people like that's it. But we knew that seeds would have to be consistent. They have to have high potency. They've got to have bag appeal, or at least you know, extract well. Yeah, but, but literally, it's the first Holy Grail was to get seats that were consistent, you know, true f1 hybrid seats, and we've nailed that. I don't want to get too much into futures, but all the other good stuff is coming. Right, you know, and we can kind of build on top of that seat platform.

Ben Michaels: 20:12

Yeah, absolutely. No, that's cool. That's really

Ronjini Joshua: 20:15

cool. Yeah, I think a lot of companies are like, just you, they're trying to get a system in place, that's going to work for them. And then they can get creative with all those things after, you know, with everything else, and, and they still have a little bit of time right there, the window is still open for right now. Which is the other exciting thing. I mean, we've had contact with so many high level people and CEOs and people that have been in the industry for a very long time, but are still accessible. And I think that we know, for people like me, and people who are podcasting or doing media that we know is also going to close just like it did with the tech boom, where, you know, at the very beginning, when everyone was in the startup, you can talk to people really easily, you could walk up to them and chat with them. And and you could do that now, like here at mjbizcon. It's really cool. You can it's easy to get access to people. Yeah, that's gonna be over in like five years, you're not going to be able to talk to, you know, CEOs or you you'll, you'll, you know, there'll be shutting the door on people's

Ralph Risch: 21:11

will be accessible. Okay.

Ronjini Joshua: 21:13

But yeah, no, it's it's just very exciting time. But I again, appreciate you coming. And do you have something to add to that?

Ralph Risch: 21:20

I did. So you were asking about traits. And an important trait that we identified early on is auto flower. And if you're not familiar with auto flower, typically cannabis doesn't flower until it you turn it the light cycle to 12 hours of light, 12 hours of darkness. It's a 1212 light cycle, with auto flower, they flower when they're ready to flower independently of the light cycle. And it's a subtle thing, but it is incredibly important. It means you don't have to have light deprivation infrastructure, it means that they can be grown in a in a very short grow window, you know, in in northern regions, it means they can be grown at the equator, where it's always at 1212 lightcycle. Right. And so that autoflower trade is one that we we put a bet on early on. And we think that's going to be a critical part of the production.

Ben Michaels: 22:19

I'm very excited about that I was working for a client of mine trying to take photos in there, give me a tour of the whole place. No, like, oh, by the way, the lights on the med site, which had the more beautiful flower to take pictures of was at 1245. And so like I was like, it gives me like two hours to go take pictures like like I can do this. I can see that being really huge. And then and then I mentioned probably bringing out some of the plants because I heard that you know, a lot of some of those strands, and those exotic ones start to hurt. And that will disrupt the whole crop cycle as well.

Ralph Risch: 22:53

Yeah, it's another great example. And again, this is where we listen to the growers. And if you weren't in there grows, you might think that all that you need to do is come out with, you know, new colors and smells, right. But plants that Herme and specifically some varieties, I'll just give you an example. There's a variety called GMO very popular, it'll hit 30% THC, and people like the aromas. It has a tendency to hurt. And so we developed a variety of GMO it's a, you know, a derivative variety that is hurt resistant. And that's a subtle thing.

Ronjini Joshua: 23:33

It's a big deal.

Ben Michaels: 23:34

It's yeah, a lot of money for them down the line, right like for these growers. That's why these seats are I'm excited. Yeah.

Ralph Risch: 23:42

You get a Herman your grow and and it can pollinate in a whole room and destroy your crowd. So that could be a millions of dollars problem. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 23:52

This has been very informative. The science Well, the science of cannabis is like still just being discovered, I think. I think it's, we're just going to hear a lot of other things coming up too. But thank you so much for joining us.

Ralph Risch: 24:05

Yeah, thanks. Great question.

Ronjini Joshua: 24:06

Yeah, absolutely.