How to Use Stress, Biological Activation and Biomimicry to Influence the Genetic Profile of Cannabis

What’s the genetic profile that you’d like for your cannabis plants? You can achieve it – or get as close as possible – through a combination of stress and your growing media’s potential to support your efforts based on its porosity, biological activation, and biomimicry.

With the threat of cannabis commoditization looming and the ongoing problem of oversupply in many states, now is the time to start doing genetic testing and trials, so you can create cannabis that stands out in the market.

President Biden’s recent announcement calling for a cannabis scheduling review brings us closer than ever to federal legalization and interstate commerce. Cultivators who win in the cannabis industry of the future will lead in one of two areas – price or profile – and by profile, I mean the quality and genetic makeup of your plants.

With that said, the answers are available to us in science and real-world application outcomes.  We work with cannabis cultivators all the time who use bio365 living soil and are able to push the genetic profiles of their plants around to influence chemotype expression and produce a better, terpene-rich, more flavorful product.

Let’s take a look at some of the key factors that make this type of manipulation possible and effective.

Biological Activation and Water Management Stress

When plants are stressed, that stress influences the genetic potential and chemotype expression of the plants. It affects the profile of the product, but it can also impact yield. Therefore, it’s a tradeoff between stressing a plant to increase quality and chemotype expression vs. absolute yield. In a market that is likely to get far more competitive in the future, cultivators have to make strategic decisions about what they want to achieve.

When it comes to stressing plants, cannabis historically stresses with water management to produce higher quality, more terpenes, and a more flavorful product. The process is based on what happens in nature.

A plant sucks water. It exerts tension to pull water from soil. This tension is measured in units – kilopascals. Tension is usually between 1-1500 kilopascals, which is a very wide range. Keep in mind, most plants die at 1500 kilopascals. The force required to pull water from soil depends on the pore size in the growing media. That’s why plants in heavy clay soil can wilt even if there is water in the soil. The plants have to exert too much tension to pull the water from the soil.

Most horticulture growing media, such as peat and Rockwool, require that growers provide water to the media when the plant is exerting between 0-5 kilopascals of tension. That’s a very small range. The porosity profile of these media simply doesn’t provide an opportunity to stress plants because it doesn’t allow the release of water across a range of tensions. You have to keep watering, and the water and oxygen drain out because they have nowhere else to go. There is simply no space for anything else in the media’s porosity profile. All of the space is already filled.

In other words, the growing media you use has a huge effect on how you can stress your plants through watering – if you can stress them at all.

So what’s the solution? Porosity!

At bio365, we do it through biological activation. We manipulate porosity so water is released across a range of tensions just like it is in the natural environment. This doesn’t exist with any other media. Through proprietary processes (and an amazing team of soil science experts) we developed a porosity profile in our growing media that allows growers to stress plants through watering and push chemotype expression.

Biomimicry and Water Management Stress in the Real World

As mentioned above, nature is our guide. At bio365, we developed a clean, soilless, engineered media so growers can stress plants just like they’re stressed in nature. This is biomimicry. Our growing media has the same characteristics as nature. Once we created the potentiality, we had the opportunity to look at factors like the timing of stress and the amount of stress to see how it influences chemotype expression.

For example, we worked with a large multi-state operator that uses bio365 growing media in its cultivation facilities to help them test watering stress and learn how to push the profiles of their plants around to get desired genetic outcomes.

The MSO switched from Rockwool to bio365’s BIOCOCO growing media because the cultivation manager wasn’t happy with the cannabinoid, THC, and terpene levels of the plants. After conducting a side-by-side cultivar test between both media, the cultivation manager measured the effects. The difference was significant. Total cannabinoids increased by 35%, THC by 36%, and terpenes by 48% for the MSO’s heaviest producer.

Bottom-line, with the right growing media and an understanding of how stress, porosity, biological activation, and biomimicry work together, you can develop genetic profiles that are unique to your business and products that consumers demand.

Key Takeaways about Influencing the Genetic Profile of Cannabis

Stressing plants to manipulate genetic profiles isn’t unique to the cannabis industry. It’s common in many industries. For example, it’s common for consumed foods to be nutritionally enhanced by water stress, which can make them the healthiest. In fact, many scientific studies have been done that prove stress changes plant gene expression.

Now is the time for cannabis cultivators to prioritize tests and trials, so they can develop the types of genetic profiles for their cannabis plants that consumers of the future will be looking for. It’s one of the only guaranteed ways to stay competitive in the cannabis industry for years to come.

But remember, if your growing media doesn’t allow you to effectively push your plants to achieve the desired genetic profile, you won’t see the results you need. It all starts with the growing media, the right porosity profile, biological activation, and biomimicry.

If you’re ready to launch your own tests and trials, contact us to talk to a soil expert who can help you get started, or request a free trial right now.