"Revolutionizing Cannabis Cultivation: How Verne Bio Analytics is Leading the Way in Genetics and Pathogen Testing" Dr. Nathan Johnson, the CEO of Verne Bio, a company that provides cannabis genetics and pathogen testing and analysis, joins Dan Humiston to explains the importance of identifying plant genetics and pathogens for cultivators to avoid losing revenue. He also talks about Verne BioAnalytics' onsite testing products, such as the "I" Test, which allows companies to test their samples onsite within half an hour, and the "WE" Test, which tests plant material for 16 different pathogens that cause harm to the plant. He also discuss their research in finding cures / plant vaccines for pathogen. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Dr. Nathan Johnson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-t-johnson/ Verne Bio - https://vernebio.com/ Recorded on Squadcast - https://squadcast.fm/
"Revolutionizing Cannabis Cultivation: How Verne Bio Analytics is Leading the Way in Genetics and Pathogen Testing"
Dr. Nathan Johnson, the CEO of Verne Bio, a company that provides cannabis genetics and pathogen testing and analysis, joins Dan Humiston to explains the importance of identifying plant genetics and pathogens for cultivators to avoid losing revenue. He also talks about Verne BioAnalytics' onsite testing products, such as the "I" Test, which allows companies to test their samples onsite within half an hour, and the "WE" Test, which tests plant material for 16 different pathogens that cause harm to the plant. He also discuss their research in finding cures / plant vaccines for pathogen.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Dr. Nathan Johnson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-t-johnson/
Verne Bio - https://vernebio.com/
Recorded on Squadcast - https://squadcast.fm/
[00:00:00]
Today, I'm j Bulls raising cannabis capital.
We are joined by Nathan Johnson, the c e o of Vern Bio Analytics. Nathan, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for the
Well, it's great to have you here. It's great to have you, and I appreciate you taking time out today. Verne Bile is an innovator in cannabis genetics and pathogen testing and analysis. That's kind of a tongue twister. To get started, I thought we'd give our listeners some background and on why it's important for cultivators to easily identify plant genetics and pathogens like.
Yeah. So, the quick answer to that is just like people, there are viruses, there are things that like to chew on and cause harm to cannabis, and if you ignore that it can cause great harm in your ROI or your revenue. The worst one is people I could talk about is hops, thyroid, and when it gets going, it can [00:01:00] actually reduce your TC percent by half as well as the size of the bud and the plant.
So if you don't pay attention, you could actually lose half of your revenue, half of your output, and you may not have the money to be able to handle getting outta that hole. And , that is the pathogen side and the genetics side. Quality plants Start with genetics. If you don't have good plants, garbage in, garbage out.
So if you have good, you have good product, you can have the chance of making good output, but garbage, no way.
That is really cool that there're, I mean, cool in a, I guess not so cool in a way, but the, but there are that, there are pathogens that actually go after thc that's pretty crazy.
Oh yeah, yeah. So like hoplink, vibrate so in that case it doesn't go after thc, it goes after the trichomes. So if it's like a balloon, it actually attacks the stem so it's so weak that it actually pops, that actually falls over and breaks. And guess what? That's where your thc, all your cav oils, all the stuff that we care about is in those [00:02:00] trichomes.
So no trichomes or low tyrus. Good luck with, with your output.
Wow. That's interesting. Well, I saw on your website , that companies can send you their samples and you can do the testing in the, what you refer to as the we test. But what I found really interesting is you also have a, have. Products that companies can use onsite called the I test. Let's start with the I test.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, so the eye test came about the fact that people want to answer quick. We're, we're Americans, we're people, we, we don't like to wait. But it's also the fact that like for this virus case, it can double in 24 hours. So if you don't get a quick answer, it could cause harm really, really quickly. And so the idea with this is You can have the ability to do that test onsite, half an hour incubation.
It will change colors if it finds what it's looking for. And what it's doing is it's actually amplifying a region of that DNA n RNA that's uniquely correlated to that output. [00:03:00] And so it's actually basically a covid test that you would did. Except you get to do it yourself on the plant. And so, that's what we developed.
And it also can do gender testing. So you can do your sex testing right there. You can also look for the T A C CV genes. And so, what's known, or what you wanna find out is, is really what's all available is trying to identify from that perspective, what can the plant do and possibly what's causing harm that you can't see and catch it before it causes harm.
really neat and I saw it on your website. You can buy it right on your website too. Like people can order it
Oh, yeah, you could buy it right now. It's available now. It's been working for three years. A lot of the cultivators across the country use it. They don't talk about it because no one likes to talk about their pain, but it's, it's there.
Yeah.
So, yeah,
that's really cool. So for the we tests. , how do you manage that process.
So when, when we test it, it's all considered hemp because we don't want to touch the flower. We don't want to touch it in the flower stage because as we tell our, our [00:04:00] growers, if we're tested that stage and we find something, it's too little too late. Whereas if it's at the clone stage, the seed stage, the veg stage we can actually have a chance of saving your crop, that plant, or possibly the whole grow.
And so what they do is they'll send us plant material through the mail and we can test for 16 different pathogens that cause harm on that plant. That ranges from molds, mildews, fungus, viruses, thyroid, that just covers the full blanket to find out what's there. And then we help them with consulting to figure out what to do next.
Cause we don't wanna just tell them we have a problem without any solution. And so we will help them with that process on what's next. And then, In terms of testing, we also develop products to actually cure some of these things that's in the works because we don't wanna just again, tell 'em here, good luck.
, we wanna really, truly be a good partner and solve that problem with them. If they do well, we do well and vice versa. So,
I So wait a minute that you're, you're developing products [00:05:00] that can actually cure, cure some of these pathogen.
It's a long process, so it's not a, just a flip of a switch, but we've been operating for about three years now. When we do testing for these pathogens, we biobank them, we culture them, we study them. And so for like the case of hops, that oid, we've been growing it for three years and trying to understand what it is because in this case, no one really knows how well this stuff works.
And so we just said, well, we're scientists. We know how to do these things, so let's figure it out, and we're figuring it out. So,
oh man, that is, that's great. That, so you'll have something , if I like a, a vaccine for some of these pathogens, which will be, that's a game changer. That is a, a true game changer. , I'm gonna kind of go back to the risk of overlooking this.
But if a pathogen were to make it all the way out to somebody that's a medical patient, there could be some pretty dire consequences to that. , just explain how, how dangerous that would be.
Yeah. . So just in [00:06:00] terms of the complexity that is biology, there are millions of different things out there. So there's, there's lots of bacteria, there's lots of moles, there's lots of different things that do, do different things. And so like if you think about like e coli or salmonella or aspergillus that people will talk about in the news, guess what?
They can also be on your cannabis. Cannabis plant, so on and so forth. And while those kind of topics get talked about a lot, there are thousands more that are out there that can cause harm. And so one of the goals of regulatory testing is to help clear out what's gonna be causing harm and , try to remove or identify if there's anything that's possibly problematic at that flower or et cetera.
And so while we don't do regulatory testing, we primarily focused on the cannabis pathogens that cause harm to that particular pathogen. There's a lot of cross overlap between plants. For example, yl Mosaic virus is one of the ones that we test for. It actually infects over 700 different plant species.
So soybeans, corn, your name in terms of big Ag. [00:07:00] Or they actually overlap with cannabis. , while cannabis is a very, very unique plant, there are also all traits that overlap between plant species. So, pathogens jump unfortunately. And so,
Well, it's scary. It's scary, especially a lot of the patients have their immunities are compromised because of some illness that they're dealing with, and they can't fend off some of these pathogens. So it's great that there's, that there's, well, let's jump ahead you, you're. I mean, you've mentioned you've been, you've been doing this for a while.
You have your products in place. The key right now is probably getting the word out and expanding some of these testing and some of this stuff. Are you raising money to help with that, to fund some of that growth?
Oh, absolutely. We're raising money to go to what I would call the expansions phase of the company. We're getting a second location in California to help with just receiving samples. We have more product lines that we can develop. There's actually 90 plus pathogens that have been identified than in fact, cannabis.
, we can only identify 16. And we're the leaders in the market on how [00:08:00] many things you can test for. So that tells you the gap on what needs to be done. On top of that there is lots and lots of innovation that needs to be done to figure, figure out how to cure these problems. Cuz guess what?
Viruses and thyroids don't really have a cure in the plant space. Space. So even if we tell you. Here it is. We have actually tested every single product on the market to see if it does or does not affect these viruses and viruses. And what I can tell you is there's only two that work and
they, they're not very helpful to humans. And so you're, you're kind of screwed in the sense of trying to get rid of this once you find it, which is why the mantra is you prevent it to, from getting into that field before it actually causes harm. But once it gets in there, Is a uphill battle , trying to get it back to normal.
And so we're raising funds to expand that breadth of testing, but also get through all of our products through approval and to the, to, in the hands of the actual grower. So yeah, we're doing both. We're scientists. We have a deep [00:09:00] experience. We, we love this stuff. We love to innovate, make it faster, make it cheaper, so on and so forth.
I mean, you're, I would say you're an investor stream, you have ip, you have products to sell. You're kind of in the biotech space because that's, you're, you're, that's, it's a, that's a really interesting story, and we're gonna have, all of Nathan's information and verne's information in our show notes.
If somebody's out there right now listening and. A wants to , find out where to get in one of the handheld genetic testers. Click the link. Or, if maybe you wanna talk to them about possibly participating in their growth, I'm sure somebody from Nathan's team would be happy to talk to you.
Nathan. Good work. I'm glad you're doing this like another small sliver niche that we really need. Super important for this industry. So thanks for being on the show and thanks for doing this.
My absolute pleasure. Always happy to talk.