13 out of the 54 licensed producers in Canada are in BC- that’s just under a quarter of what will soon be a billion dollar industry once medicinal and recreational cannabis are legal.
But with over 100 cannabinoids identified so far, standardization and testing in the industry is becoming increasingly relevant, especially in medicinal cannabis.
That’s why Dr. Jonathan Page, the founder and CEO of Anandia Labs, is collaborating with Dr. Jorg Bohlmann, a genomics expert at UBC, in a $250,000 project to find and classify the genes of particular cannabis strains. They hope they can develop and maximize the medicinal benefits of certain cannabis strains for certain medical issues.
If that sounds to you like the genetic engineering of cannabis, it shouldn’t surprise you that this project is being funded by Genome BC’s Sector Innovation Program.
But could you imagine if you had certain strains tailor-made for certain medical conditions? And once the recreational market opens up, will the public be able to pair their cannabis strains perfectly with their mood?
That standardization would be a huge improvement over the varying THC and CBD levels you can sometimes find amongst the producers and even amongst the same strains themselves.
But then again, do you think this standardization would help legitimize cannabis, or could this potentially lead to another GMO-style backlash? I also wonder how the community of cannabis craft growers in the province feel about this.
But regardless, there is a lot of potential here- medically, recreationally, and of course, economically.
Source: Nasdaq