Uniform Genetics, F1 Hybrids, Better Yields: New Age Cannabis Cultivation ft. Ralph Risch

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Ralph Risch: We gathered the trait data, we gathered the DNA data, and then we paired that up, and we were able to find genetic markers for those traits — like which gene sequences determine those traits in the plant. And that's the secret sauce. Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellen Finney. This week we've got a very special guest, Ralph Risch, CEO of Phylos Bioscience. Ralph, thanks for taking the time — how are you doing today? Ralph Risch: I'm doing great, guys. Thank you very much for having me on. It's great to be here, excited to dive in. Bryan Fields: Kellen, how are you doing? Kellen Finney: I'm doing really well, really excited to talk to Ralph, really excited to dive into genetics and science, especially around the cannabis plant — and I'm even more excited to have the conversation with a fellow Coloradan. I know he's not in Colorado anymore, but still a lot of West Coast love, so I wanted to put that out there. How are you doing today, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm stoked. There's a lot of topics we're going to learn about today. And for the record, Ralph, I know we've got an East Coast/West Coast battle, and I don't think there's any loyalty challenges here, so if you had to put yourself on the map, East Coast or West Coast, where are you putting yourself? Ralph Risch: Yeah, I'm hard West Coast. A lot of appreciation for the East, but I just can't say I've got the East Coast blood. Bryan Fields: I appreciate the diplomatic answer. So for our listeners, tell us all about you — can you give a little background about yourself and how you found your way into the cannabis space? Ralph Risch: Yeah, so I'm an entrepreneur — probably call me a serial entrepreneur. I've started multiple companies and was fortunate enough to be part of them all the way through exit. The interesting thing is those were all emerging markets — one was the dot-com boom — and what I saw play out in those boom-and-bust cycles, I'm seeing play out in cannabis. In this case it's state by state — every state grows faster than you can keep up with until the harvest comes in and there's too much supply, and then there's a crash. But the good news is, after those crashes, that's where the real sustainable growth happens, and that's where I think we are with cannabis now. Bryan Fields: I love it. And before we get into Phylos, I just want to pick on the background — obviously you have an appetite for aggressive, challenging industries, but was there something specifically about cannabis that attracted you, given your background in startups and exits? Ralph Risch: Yeah, I was actually looking to join cannabis just as an investor, and I came to it with a personal stake — a doctor prescribed cannabis to me, and I thought, wow, you mean that thing I smoked in college? I should be using that for this condition I've got. It was a huge life-bulb moment for me. I started to dig in, get to know the players in the community — people who'd been doing this under threat of seizure and arrest their entire lives — and I wanted to contribute. When I started talking to Phylos, I realized they were the first company taking a scientific approach to breeding, which had never been done in cannabis. There was a clear opportunity to create better plants for consumers, and especially the plants growers were going to need for this to scale up like any other crop. I got hooked, joined full-time in 2016, became CEO in 2020, and we've been laser-focused since on making plants growers can succeed with. Bryan Fields: So let's continue — you're hooked on the science and the opportunity — is there a part of you that's a little skeptical of what is possible, or what's necessary from a scientific standpoint to get where they want to go? Ralph Risch: Yeah, I was skeptical for a long time. We have a world-class science team, but the scope of what we were trying to accomplish was daunting, and I had to see it proven step by step. But the potential gains in cannabis are so big — when we hired our breeder, he said this is a frontier: I can take a plant yielding a certain amount and raise it 20-30%. In a crop like corn, a half-percent yield improvement is a big deal. Once we saw those gains, it was clear this is real, it's going to happen. Kellen Finney: At what point were you aware that crop stability and this kind of science had been applied to other agricultural markets? When was the moment on the timeline where you thought, wait, we've been doing this for regular agriculture for decades and they haven't even applied it to cannabis yet? Ralph Risch: That was the first moment of disbelief — I thought that can't be possible, there's a ton of cannabis produced around the world. But literally what we've tried to do is take about 80 years of technology development from other crops and, in the past 10 years, do it all in cannabis. It's shocking how fast it's happening — it's been a ride, but a lot of fun. Bryan Fields: So maybe we should dive into that technology. Ralph Risch: Yeah, that would be good. We're a genomic-driven breeding company — we start with the DNA of the plant. We gathered tens of thousands of plants, grew them up, sequenced the DNA, and gathered data on all the traits we thought were important — consumer traits like potency, color, aroma, but also agronomic traits growers care about, like plant height, flowering time, compound production, or stress tolerance. We paired the trait data with the DNA data and found genetic markers for those traits — which gene sequences determine them. That's the secret sauce. We use those markers to accelerate breeding. It's not GMO, no gene editing — every time we cross two plants, when the seedlings are seven days old we sequence their DNA and only move forward the ones with the traits we want. This has been done in other crops, but the foundational science work had to be done for cannabis. Bryan Fields: Has there been a time you crossed two plants expecting a tall purple plant that smelled like lemons, but the plant height was a trade-off? How did you solve that? Ralph Risch: Yeah, all the time. I'm not a breeder myself — I work with amazing breeders and learned through osmosis — but often you find one plant has the dominant trait and the other doesn't. It can be a lot of work, but over time our breeders build a mental map of the plant and have good insights going in. Kellen Finney: I imagine the relationship between your breeder and your geneticist has to be a close conversation on every project — the geneticist looking at traits from a data perspective, the breeder saying, "When I touch the plants, this is what's going on." Can you talk us through that relationship? Ralph Risch: One of my favorite things about Phylos is we have people from all different perspectives — breeders, a Gene Discovery specialist, and OG growers who've been growing since they were kids. Getting them on the same page is a lot of work because they don't speak the same language initially, but over time they've come to really trust each other. Our OG grower will smell a variety and say, "That fruit is in your face, this is going to be a winner," the breeder moves it forward, and the geneticist wonders if she can find the gene behind that aroma. It's a great collaboration — took time, but we're there now. Bryan Fields: It's probably an endless R&D process given the number of possible crosses. From a consumer standpoint, does someone come to you and say, "I love Ghost Train Haze, but it yields terribly — can you make it yield higher"? Ralph Risch: It does happen. A lot of cannabis breeding magicians create strains unlike anything out there, but the plant itself is terrible to grow — everybody loves Skittles, nobody wants to grow it. So we hear, "Can you do something like this in a high yielder," or a plant that doesn't need to be babied — that's what we do with seeds. Kellen Finney: What's the biggest transition or challenge when growers move from cutting clones to the F1 hybrid seed model? Ralph Risch: I should explain what F1 hybrid seeds are first. Traditionally, people buy what we call pheno-hunt seeds — produced from parents that aren't genetically stable, so every plant in the pack is different, and you try to find a winner. That's pheno-hunting — like winning the lottery, or opening a baseball card pack. It's fun, but our F1 hybrid seeds are designed so every seed is uniform — you grow them and they look like clones. So the first transition is growers have to stop trying to find one winning plant and instead pick from several proven varieties based on their environment and consumer. The second big challenge is hybrid vigor — growers don't expect how big the plants get, because their clone mothers likely carry viral loads and have been overfed to compensate, whereas a healthy seed-grown plant just grows big naturally. Bryan Fields: Is there a height or yield difference you can share for listeners unfamiliar with how drastic this is? Ralph Risch: We've seen a 20% yield increase — that might not sound like much, but when it's pushing up into your lights, that's a real problem. Bryan Fields: Can you give a definition of F1 for anyone unfamiliar with the term? Ralph Risch: Pheno-hunt seeds are what we call poly-hybrid seeds, produced by crossing two good but genetically unstable clones and seeing what you get — hence the diversity. F1 hybrid seeds come from inbreeding two parent lines until each is stable, then crossing them — the first-generation (F1) seeds carry the dominant traits of both parents but are completely uniform. Other crops — corn, soybeans, even tomatoes — are all grown from F1 hybrid seeds now because it's the most efficient, predictable way to grow. Bryan Fields: So manufacturing these seeds must be an art form? Ralph Risch: It is challenging. You need great partners — a quality team if outside partners handle seed production. Sometimes a great hybrid's parent doesn't make enough pollen, so you switch roles between the parents. Once you really know your parent lines, production becomes more efficient. Our seed production partners are impressive — timing pollen to hit the plant exactly when it's flowering is an art in itself. Kellen Finney: You mentioned stability across generations — what actually is stability, and how do you measure it, since that ensures the seed performs as promised for the grower? Ralph Risch: Technically it's called homozygosity — two copies of each gene being the same throughout the genome. It doesn't need to be perfectly homozygous everywhere, just for the important traits. If you have a genetic marker, you can check directly; otherwise you grow it out — we grow each seed line three times, with more replicates each time, until we see total uniformity, then test them all. Bryan Fields: What's the biggest pushback you get? Ralph Risch: Other than people assuming we're selling pheno-hunt seeds, growers sometimes distrust the science and want the plain truth. I have tremendous respect for growers — they have the hardest job in the industry and are artists too. The biggest challenge is they haven't grown seeds this way before, so they assume seeds are only for outdoor use or have long cycle times, which isn't true. We tell them to treat seeds like clones — just give them plenty of light right away for the first two weeks, then treat them the same after that, and they're on board. Kellen Finney: Does environment or location make a difference for these crosses? Ralph Risch: Definitely. I break environments into controlled (indoor) and natural-light (outdoor). One tough lesson: flipping the lights to induce flowering is very stressful for a young seed-grown plant compared to a mature clone cutting, and too much stress can cause hermaphroditism. That's how we discovered the stress-tolerance trait and bred it into all our lines so they perform well indoors. Outdoors, plants need to flower and mature uniformly, or a farmer can't manage them — so we trial our seeds across all environments. Kellen Finney: Is this similar to why certain crops are grown in specific regions — like tobacco in North Carolina versus Kentucky? Early hemp farmers struggled bringing genetics bred in humid Oregon down south. Is that a similar dynamic? Ralph Risch: Definitely. Different regions have unique climates and pathogens — Michigan has its own widespread pathogens, Florida's heat and humidity rule out many varieties. Some hemp varieties adapted over thousands of years to specific regions, while modern drug cultivars were bred strictly indoors and fail outdoors. Part of the work is finding landrace varieties with valuable traits and incorporating them. Kellen Finney: Do you guys provide hemp seeds to the hemp industry, or is that a touchy subject? Ralph Risch: These days you never know how a question will land! I hope the Farm Bill brings clarity for everyone, including hemp farmers, who currently risk their fields going "hot" and face cannabinoid testing even when not trying to grow cannabinoids at all. Genetically, hemp and cannabis are the same plant with different traits bred for. Kellen Finney: I was just wondering if you provide F1 seeds specifically to the hemp industry. Ralph Risch: We'd call them CBD seeds — CBD hemp. We don't do industrial hemp, but we're working on rare cannabinoids as a longer-term project; they each have unique, sometimes non-intoxicating effects. We might expand that CBD line over time, but there's so much chaos in the hemp space right now around clarity — whether hemp farmers should grow flower sold as THCA (undermining state-legal markets) versus growing CBD outdoors, much of which gets converted into intoxicating cannabinoids. As long as there's regulatory clarity, people can navigate it. Bryan Fields: Has anyone asked you to breed plants specifically for extraction — certain terpene or cannabinoid profiles? Ralph Risch: Yes, and we stumbled into this. We started with photosensitive varieties bred for flower and aroma, then developed autoflower lines for fast turns and worked to raise their potency. One high-potency variety had almost no aroma — we thought about scrapping it, but it turned out to be perfect for distillate producers and infused pre-roll makers, who treat the biomass like a substrate and spray or infuse their own oils and terpenes onto it. Bryan Fields: The more we discuss this, the more it seems cultivators historically believed plants had inherent variable capabilities, and without uniformity it was hard to forecast — something once seen as a pain point could become a competitive advantage once stabilized. Ralph Risch: That's true. We may see more specificity over time in what people grow for — rather than growing a beautiful flower plant and using the trim for oil, there may be a more efficient dedicated oil-production plant. We're seeing more of these requests as the industry matures. Kellen Finney: Have you gotten more granular requests — like specific bud structure for water extraction versus distillate? Can you control trichome structure that precisely? Ralph Risch: Great question — we got a lot of requests from hash washers, so we built an in-house extraction protocol to quantify "washability," rated all our varieties on that scale, and our Gene Discovery lead found a likely washability genetic marker in the data. Breeders are now using that to create targeted lines — we have one debuting this spring that smells like orange juice and is our highest-washing variety ever. Kellen Finney: So it's a specific trichome type that falls off easily without breaking apart? Ralph Risch: Exactly — there's an art to it. Kellen Finney: How does that initial conversation with a grower go — is it a list of ten requests, or three critical ones? How long is that wishlist, given how critical genetics are to a grower's business and brand? Ralph Risch: It's ever-growing — stress tolerance, washability, color, smell, growers have very specific needs. Five years ago we were just trying to make F1 hybrid seeds work; now, every time we think we've hit all the marks, growers ask for more. So every breeding cycle — we run three a year — we invite growers and customers into our facility to walk with our breeders and cultivators and talk through the plants. Some requests are niche and get set aside; others, widely requested, become our focus. Bryan Fields: I imagine those conversations often stem from growers saying, "We've had this exact problem before — it'd help to have a genetic marker to avoid it," like the stress-tolerance trait. Ralph Risch: Exactly, and sometimes we get lucky — we notice something unusual happen across plants and save the data to investigate later. Some discoveries are targeted, some are good fortune. Bryan Fields: Roughly how many genetic markers are you using right now? Ralph Risch: About 15 active markers, though we don't use them all on every project. Bryan Fields: Do you see that growing to, say, 40 in five years? Ralph Risch: Good question — I can see maybe 10 more traits we'd like markers for, but we also need to refine the ones we have, since some are only directional rather than absolute. There's a lot of work still to do. Kellen Finney: How do you balance resources internally, since everyone probably wants 80% R&D and 20% commercial output? Ralph Risch: It's a real challenge. R&D is exciting and where long-term value is built, but we also need to expand our seed line — some competitors offer 50 varieties. Every cycle we decide what goes in each room; it's a healthy but hard exercise, since you can't do everything well, so we focus. Bryan Fields: As CEO, how do you balance chasing a scientific "unicorn" that could cost a fortune against what the market can actually bear in seed pricing? Ralph Risch: My board asks the same thing — why not just focus on one thing? But there's so much opportunity that we keep investing in some longer-term bets smartly. For example, we developed a THCV-dominant variety by design, since THCV acts like a cup of coffee in plant form. Most plants max out around 4-7% THCV; ours reached 20%, with great flower quality too. We couldn't afford full FDA clinical trials, so we partnered with a group to run a reasonable-budget observational study proving THCV is energizing and doesn't cause the munchies. That validation let us build a real market for the cannabinoid with our partners. We want to do this with other cannabinoids too, staying thoughtful and opportunistic. Bryan Fields: With that funding partner, do they get exclusivity? That's where the science-versus-business tension gets tricky. Ralph Risch: Nothing is exclusive in general. Organigram invested in our company as a minority shareholder with no control, and as part of that investment they wanted certain development projects that aligned with our roadmap — we agreed to milestones giving them Canadian rights to the THCV genetics for a set period, while we still sell THCV seeds worldwide. That funding partnership made sense for both sides. Bryan Fields: From a consumer standpoint, is there any noticeable difference between F1 and traditional cannabis — can people tell? Ralph Risch: No, consumers shouldn't notice any difference in the flower itself. The real benefit is predictable uniformity — like a favorite beer or wine tasting the same every time — consumers want that consistency, they just can't identify it from the packaging. Bryan Fields: That's a great point. Ralph Risch: Right — if I buy my favorite beer from Fort Collins, Colorado while I'm in Oregon, it tastes exactly the same. Cannabis doesn't have that yet, and the only way to get it is uniform genetics underlying the supply chain. For MSOs or multinational companies, uniformity also matters for efficiency and brand consistency across markets. Kellen Finney: That variability is underappreciated — without a uniform genetic starting point, all the SOPs and environmental differences across expanding states create chaos. Limiting those variables is key to consistency. Ralph Risch: That's an untold secret with a lot of MSOs — some do a great job with consistency, others don't even know if they have the same genetics across states after acquisitions, and just let cultivators run their own way. That works to a point, but consumers will eventually demand real consistency. Bryan Fields: Maybe that's just where the industry is today, since federal restrictions force cultivation into a dozen separate state markets instead of one central facility distributing everywhere. Ralph Risch: Right now that centralized model seems like a pipe dream, but it shouldn't be forever. In the meantime, cultivators can prepare by using the same SOPs and genetics across all their facilities. Bryan Fields: What other minor cannabinoids are you excited about? Ralph Risch: We have a fantastic CBG plant — CBG seems to enhance the effects of other cannabinoids. CBC is also interesting; people use certain thinning agents when vapes have viscosity issues, and CBC can serve a similar purpose, while also acting as an uplifting, mood-lifting cannabinoid based on what we've seen. We still need studies to validate these claims, but that's what consumers report, and these are all in our pipeline. Bryan Fields: Are there diseases your team is specifically breeding resistance for? Ralph Risch: Powdery mildew is a problem that can be mitigated through breeding. Botrytis is tougher — in humid climates you often can't grow cannabis outdoors, or sometimes even indoors, without botrytis resistance. Those are top priorities. Bryan Fields: What about hop latent viroid — that's a big buzzword lately? Ralph Risch: Right, seeds don't carry HLVd. We were actually one of the first groups to identify hop latent viroid as the virus affecting cannabis, and we published a paper on it in 2019. The only real way to stop its spread is not sharing plants between facilities, since infected mother plants pass it to clones which then spread it further. Seeds let you start clean every cycle — even if a facility has HLVd, once you harvest and restart from clean seed, you're not carrying the infection forward. We don't breed for HLVd resistance per se, since seeds are inherently more vigorous and resilient, but we make sure our parent plants and all our seeds are HLVd-free. Kellen Finney: That sounds like good agricultural practice, almost cGMP-level control over starting material. The only parallel I can think of is GW Pharmaceuticals growing cannabis for Epidiolex — do you know if they're required to use fresh seed each cycle? Ralph Risch: You're not required to use seed, but there's a clear advantage. Beyond yield, seeds can cut IPM costs significantly. Kellen Finney: What's IPM? Ralph Risch: Sorry — integrated pest management. Growers spend a lot of labor scouting for infections and money spraying approved pesticides; our partners have cut that by 50% by switching to seed. For GMP-certified facilities, growing from seed reduces documented, repeatable process steps, which matters a lot. Bryan Fields: What's the biggest pushback or limitation with F1 hybrids today? Ralph Risch: Once growers actually grow them, they love them — the real barrier is just that change is hard. About 90% of controlled-environment cannabis is still grown from clones, even though the majority arguably should be seed-grown — that's a coming sea change. But a grower has to hit their numbers every cycle, so trying new technology feels risky. We lean in with best practices and support to make sure their first trials succeed so they see quick, low-risk benefits. Kellen Finney: What do you do to hand-hold skeptical growers through that early process and show them a quick win? Ralph Risch: We send practice seeds first if someone hasn't grown production seed before, since almost everyone makes a mistake the first time. We schedule cultivation calls connecting our growers directly with theirs to walk through each step — especially the first two weeks, when people are often afraid to give seedlings enough light, which causes stretching. We also visit their facilities to see how genetics perform in their specific environment. Staying close with growers, and even their sales and marketing teams, helps us support their success and, in turn, our own. Bryan Fields: Quick pivot — what's the most expensive lesson you've ever learned? Ralph Risch: Hire the right people. Bryan Fields: Tell me something true that nobody agrees with you on. Ralph Risch: I don't think dark matter is actually a thing — I think gravitational force calculations are just slightly off, and fixing that will solve a lot of cosmology's problems. Wait, is that not what you were asking? Bryan Fields: That was perfect — no right or wrong answer, but that was the right answer. Ralph Risch: Yeah, that is the right answer. Bryan Fields: What question do you wish more people asked you? Ralph Risch: I wish more people asked, "What can you do to help me?" I don't like to sell people — I like to have a conversation and understand their needs first, which saves everyone time. Bryan Fields: I feel the same way — that's the first question I ask people trying to sell me something. Bryan Fields: All right, prediction time — do you see a future where cannabis is tailored for personalized medicine, customized to someone's unique biochemistry? Ralph Risch: I think that's already happening in a sense — cannabis involves constant personal experimentation to find what works for you. I don't think we'll get an app that tells you the exact right strain; it's more of an evolving journey. Bryan Fields: Kellen, want to take a swing? Kellen Finney: I don't see a single customized strain happening, because true personalization would require a plant producing exact chemical ratios matching your biochemistry at any given moment — which changes constantly. Since growing has to be commercially viable, I think personalized cannabis medicine will look more like custom-formulated ingredient blends you consume, rather than one bespoke living plant strain — though I could be wrong. Bryan Fields: It'd be cool if a robot could grow perfectly personalized cannabis for you, but realistically it's more about guess-test-and-revise — finding which products help with relaxation or sleep versus ones that make you productive. Maybe full personalization isn't for everyone, but some people could get more targeted options over time. It's exciting that we're still early in that journey. Ralph Risch: I think you're both right on — great question, I'm going to think about that more. Personally, every time I walk into the greenhouse I find a new favorite. Bryan Fields: What's today's favorite? Ralph Risch: Cheddar Cheese — open the jar and it smells like a bag of Cheetos. It's physically relaxing, like the end of a long week — that's my go-to. Bryan Fields: I love it. Ralph, for our listeners who want to get in touch and learn more, where can they find you? Ralph Risch: Phylos.bio. Bryan Fields: Perfect, thank you — this was a lot of fun. Ralph Risch: Bryan, Kellen, you guys are awesome, really appreciate the good conversation. Bryan Fields: Thank you.