Challenges in large scale growing of medical cannabis

Presented by Steve Abboud, cannabis growing consultant

• Horticulturist, institute of agro-technics 1997 (Quebec, Canada)

• Experience in greenhouse and indoor cultivation: Cucumbers, Tomatoes, strawberries, medicinal plants (ginseng, lupin, st-john’s wort,…)

• Designated medical cannabis grower since 2004

• By 2012, supplying cannabis flowers to over 300 patients

• Supervisor/designer/trainer of multiple production sites

• Growing consultant for federally licensed producers (2015)

• Lead cannabis grower for Organigram (2016 – present)

Present situation in Canada

Therapeutics use of cannabis legal since 2001

Patients can produce their own cannabis

44 federally licensed companies handle production and distribution of medical cannabis. 50 more licenses are expected to be issued.

Up to date production surface nearing 100,000 sq. meters

Over 140,000 registered medical patients, expected to reach 400,000 by 2019

Expected production surface to be 1 million sq. meters

The challenges …

Nature of challenges:

1. Regulatory & Quality assurance challenges

2. Agronomic challenges

3. Labour/work force challenges

Regulatory Challenge

• QMS : Quality management system • Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• Input monitoring and testing, Certificate of analysis (CoA), MSDS

• Organic certification (Ecocert Canada)

• Retained batch samples (1 year after sale date)

• Traceability: batch tracking from seed to sale • Ability to retrace flower production and packaging conditions

• Ever-ready product recall systems

• Security compliance • All growing or stored cannabis under strict surveillance

• Employee security clearances

Migrating QA concepts from food industry

• Adapting quality assurance methods to indoor flower production: • Difficult to adapt food QA models to living products (cannabis flowers and leafs)

• Impact of QA methods on horticultural practices

• Interpretation of lab results on product batches

• Batch monitoring and post processing treatments • Seek and destroy

• Product quality over time (shelf life of flowers)

• Storage and packaging condition monitoring and control

Agronomic challenges

The main issue:

• No relevant or referenceable agronomic data

• No published research on indoor growing of cannabis

• Wild horticultural claims from (i.e. cannabis myths)

• Phytosanitary products not registered for cannabis (i.e. pesticides)

The growing equation

CLIMATE:

Temperature,

Relative Humidity,

VPD,

Lighting,

CO2,

IPM,

…

ROOT MEDIUM:

Fertilization,

Soil properties,

Temperature,

Watering quality,

Watering strategy,

Microbiology,

Medium EC, pH

…

GENETICS:

Cannabinoids,

Terpenes,

Population density

Pests and disease resilience

…

The only solution …

Standardize, Standardize, Standardize …

As more and more growing parameters are systematically standardized,

The resulting flower harvests become more standard and repeatable

The next challenge is strain profiling:

Finding the right parameters to optimize yields and quality

Labour/Workforce training

The human element is by far the most difficult variable to control in large scale production.

Quality cannabis horticultural training is not yet available to public

In-house cultivation training program are essential to streamlined repeatable high quality production results

The future cannabis production employees

As referenceable growing data and knowledge increases:

• Agricultural school will develop cannabis specific training

• Information networks will support growers better

• Large scale standardization tools will help identify source of issues

Thank you, happy gardening !