Segra International Corp, a cannabis agriculture technology company, has entered into an agreement to supply a leading Canadian Licensed Producer with a curated selection of cultivars for the 2020 outdoor growing season.
Under the agreement, Segra will provide approximately 40,000 plantlets to the Licensed Producer for late spring planting. To Segra’s knowledge, this planting represents the first large scale outdoor deployment of cannabis plantlets derived directly from a plant tissue culture, anywhere in the world. Additionally, this agreement represents further validation of Segra’s go-to-market strategy where primary compensation is derived through production-based royalties, and a balanced risk-reward partnership is fostered between the parties.
Plant tissue culture, also known as micropropagation, is a modern agricultural technology developed primarily to help scale up clonally produced crops where young plants are cultured in aseptic laboratory conditions rather than from mother stock plants. The precision laboratory conditions allow for both enhanced control of plant diseases and the ability to manufacture millions of true-to-type plantlets in a compact, predictable, and scalable workflow. Most clonally produced crops in the world, from strawberries to orchids, have benefited immensely from plant tissue culture. Cannabis is the next crop to take advantage of this proven technology. The application of Segra’s proprietary tissue culture technology creates a level of quality and consistency that sets a new bar for the industry. Additionally, Segra’s quality assurance program ensures that every outgoing batch of plantlets is screened for common cannabis plant diseases, and DNA fingerprinting is conducted to verify cultivar accuracy.
“Our core objective at Segra is to become long-term trusted partners with our clients and engage in a reasonable exchange of value,” said Segra’s Director of Global Business Development, Ian Davidson. “Segra’s production-based royalty model makes this vision a reality by directly aligning the risk/reward profile of both companies, while also giving our team at Segra a strong incentive to help our customers achieve success at every stage through leveraging our knowledge base and cannabis network.”
Plant tissue culture will become the proven way to meet sustainable production metrics in large scale cannabis cultivation as it reduces the infrastructure and expense required while mitigating the pathogen risks of traditional vegetative propagation. Compounded by the current COVID-19 pandemic, cultivators are seeing the harsh realities of scaling these legacy propagation methods and are looking for solutions. The cannabis industry is ripe to embrace the big-ag-tech playbook and evolve towards nursery-to-grower model where specialization, collaboration, and trust create improved value and mutual long-term success.
“We are excited at the opportunity to collaborate with Canadian and International LP’s to demonstrate the importance of plant tissue culture to the cannabis industry,” said Jamie Blundell, CEO of Segra “Along with this large scale contract, we will be working together to test several new cultivars in Segra’s R&D pipeline that will identify additional proven winners for outdoor production offerings in 2021. As we continue to execute agreements like this, our disruptive plantlet technology will soon become the best practice for indoor, greenhouse and outdoor cannabis cultivation.”
Segra is an agriculture technology company offering plant tissue culture and DNA fingerprinting services to accelerate the advancement of the cannabis industry. The Company’s proprietary technologies empower its clients to drive financial performance and mitigate risk, while exploring the next frontier of optimized cultivation practices for the rapidly evolving cannabis consumer. Segra has developed industrial-scale laboratories to produce disease-free, robust, and DNA-fingerprinted cannabis plantlets for licensed producers globally. To support this vision, Segra has assembled a world-class team of specialists in the fields of agronomy, molecular genetics, plant tissue culture, and regulatory compliance. Learn more at www.segra-intl.com.
