What's new
  • As of today ICMag has his own Discord server. In this Discord server you can chat, talk with eachother, listen to music, share stories and pictures...and much more. Join now and let's grow together! Join ICMag Discord here! More details in this thread here: here.

Phylos Bioscience sparks outrage after announcing their beginning their own breeding

Status
Not open for further replies.

mexweed

Well-known member
Veteran
who's to say greenhouse seeds hasn't been doing similar research and mapping with their strains

uc boulder is probably miles ahead of phylos on mapping the genome
 

vermontman

Well-known member
Veteran
I noticed the turn out was not high, and I also noticed a lot of people questioning Mowgli's motives, I have seen some people grow some amazing smoke, without any gadgetry. Sad how this all is turning out, it is disrespectful to the closet growers, old school growing, feeling your grow, knowing what plant mixes well with another is not genetics, it is the toker that knows, the person who smokes it, not the asshole that looks at it through a microscope to see it's genetics. It is a labor of love, no different than the passion of a home brewer or the common gardener. What phylos is trying to do has no soul, no heart.



His words are the equivalent of Saying Monet, Renoir, and Picasso paintings are crap because they are old, HAHA
because now we have the technology and printing programs that we will produce the perfect digital pictures and are perfectly printed from our perfect computers and that old shit is well obsolete. What scrawny turd!
 
I

izzypog

>since when are people lining up...
Well, since boomers with a little bit of extra cash, going through a midlife crisis, wanting to feel cool/relevant again. The same generation that sat around for 40+ years in their ivory towers with a reefer madness mentality shitting on the lazy stoners but now see the new ‘green rush’ and want to DickRide their way to the top
Can not blame a generation, I smoked weed since I was 13, there were a lot of us that stood up to the "man", the "suit", in entirety the rich. Between wealth and religion and the politics that comes from our debates about cannabis, one thing is clear, we were and still are being lied to, being manipulated. The current generation is dealing in the disposable idea/cause, the passing fad, and then move to the next one, my generation has been fighting this cause for a lifetime, the younger pups seem to only be visiting, trying to turn it militant, when it should never be so. Cannabis smokers are a community, a philosophy, yet with the utility of purpose, the goal peaceful outcome, yet, when it becomes about money, that is the catch, twisting perverting and polluting what was once just a social moment, a simple passing.
 

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Just maybe if Mowgli had not been peacocking around that stage in front of those investors!

Meanwhile throwing the whole community under that bus

And how hes going to "create amazing amazing weed" but you can't do that....No, not you.....

......Not in your basement or backyard you see...that cant happen

We at phylos can do 'real breeding' and you....well, you cannot

longpause>>>> I havent grown it yet..................but we will

And it will replace all known cannabis..................It just will


Oh, hell No....since when are people lining up to listen to this crap!!!



What a sickening display.....repugnant even....downright gruesome



:peacock:


This is the same damn mantra that we growers have been hearing for decades from the traditional cannabis breeders of the past.


"The more things change,
The more they stay the same..."
 

frostqueen

Active member

"And at the same time, everything I said in that investor presentation is true."

No. It isn't. And it's painfully clear that Mowgli still just doesn't get that.

He said a few things in particular that are pure bullshit: that you couldn't do effective breeding as a small farmer; bragging that he had a team of PhDs that would outperform current small breeders; that their creations would replace the strains that are currently popular; and that the galaxy is anything other than overglorified unicorn skittle crap. It is a nearly worthless representation of whatever data they have collected.

His 'presentation' was just a smug arrogant marketing pitch, and now he is trying to attempt damage control... by being smug and arrogant. He embellished to potential investors and all it really showed me is that Phylos is probably having serious cash flow issues and needed to make a course change FAST.

I could go on, but I'm only a few paragraphs into it so far.
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
https://phylos.bio/blog/a-message-f...tement&utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social

From the time we started Phylos, we allied ourselves with the small farmers that started the cannabis industry. For many of them, legalization has been a tidal wave that threatens to take away their life's work.
We made it clear that we see the environmental and economic dangers facing the community. We made it a priority to support small farms. We told them we were on their side.
Then we announced that we were starting our own plant breeding program, and a video circulated of me telling investors that all the cannabis around today would be gone soon, replaced by optimized new varieties that Phylos would develop, and that the testing business was a foundation for breeding.
The cannabis community was shocked. It suddenly seemed as if we'd spent all this time building trust just so that we could turn around and threaten to wipe them out. Many of them have told us that they felt betrayed.
I am sorrier for this than I can say. The people who feel angry and hurt have been our partners, our customers, our community, and our friends, and nothing is more important to us than their trust.
I wish it had not taken so long to write this. As a company, we stopped, and we took stock of everything that we're doing. We looked long and hard at our past work and our future plans. We listened carefully to the community, and we thought hard about our mission. We are building a science company that is driven by its values. The promises we made to small farmers are real, and we intend to keep them.
And at the same time, everything I said in that investor presentation is true. It is a huge failure of communication on my part that these things seem so contradictory, and I have a lot of hard work to do now. This statement is broken into several different sections; I hope you’ll read all of it and give me a chance to explain. We have made some very real mistakes, but they’re not the ones that many people think.
How our business has evolved
We began as a testing business, but for the last several years we were also building the science and data tools necessary to drive advanced plant breeding -- for other people. We’ve published on our website and frequently spoken about how we are bringing genetic markers to cannabis and partnering with other companies to accelerate their plant breeding programs. We didn’t touch the plant, and we believed we didn’t need to.
We have worked with a lot of amazing farms to advance their breeding programs and bring new plants into production. We are continuing to do that. However, we were not able to develop genetic markers at the pace we hoped, and we recognized that the advances we needed to make could only happen in an in-house facility that was fully dedicated to research.
My messaging seemed to indicate that we were starting a program that would harm our customers and the community, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We believe that advanced science can help cannabis reach its full potential as a plant that will transform medicine and agriculture and even society, and we knew that this was the way we could bring that science to bear. We want to be one positive contributor in a larger community pushing this forward. I am truly sorry that we did not do more to make sure that our customers understood this evolution as it was happening and the full picture of our intentions.
Our goals for the breeding program
Many people saw the presentation where I told investors that the cannabis around today would soon be replaced. Let me be clear that this was a discussion about the global cannabis market, which is driven by large cultivators of cannabis and hemp biomass meant for oil production.
Most projections show that the biomass market will soon make up 80% of the industry, and we see significant opportunity in developing plants for this market. In the biomass market, new varieties with better agronomic traits -- like improvements in yield -- will constantly replace older ones.
In the craft flower market there is opportunity for a thriving community of breeders in an industry catering to a demand for novelty, differing tastes, medicinal applications, local regions, and markets. No one company can dominate this market.
Protecting diversity in cannabis is core to our values. We make Galaxy data public because we believe that enlarging the public domain can help to preserve genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is tied to economic diversity because only small farms will have the diligence and care necessary to preserve heirloom genetics.
So, when we release clones into the broad flower market, we will distribute them under licenses that allow and encourage breeders to keep working with them, so that our work is a contribution to the overall evolution.
Further, when we develop markers in our breeding program, we’ll make that marker information available to our genotype customers when we find it in the data from their samples.
We are not using customer testing data to breed new plants
We tell investors that the testing business is a data collection tool that's given us a lead in our plant breeding work, and it's true. That's been interpreted to mean that we took data from our customers under false pretenses. That is one hundred percent not true.
Because the genotype test only looked at 2,000 out of 800 million sites in the genome and didn't include any data on plant traits, we were not able to use it to develop markers. However, we made the genotype data public, so that everyone (even our competitors) could use it, and we are now collaborating with other groups that believe they've found markers in that data by correlating it with other publicly available data. If we are able to validate those markers, we will let our customers know whether their samples contain them.
The testing business absolutely did enable us to develop some of the infrastructure for plant breeding: we hired an incredible team of scientists, built the necessary data pipeline and analysis tools, and did our own DNA sequencing projects that did not use Phylos Genotype test data. The Galaxy helped us indirectly because it allowed us to better understand the population structure of cannabis and intelligently target those sequencing projects. From all of that work we developed a high-density genotyping array that looks at 50,000 sites across the genome.
Who we are
In the video that many people have seen, I'm speaking to an audience of investors, in their language, about the large-scale global cannabis market. At one point I had slides in that same presentation about protecting diversity and small farmers, but over time I allowed the message to get pared down to only the information the audience cares about most. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.
These events have made us face squarely the tensions that are inherent in being a company at the intersection of cannabis and science and agriculture. We should be translating between these worlds, and speaking in one voice all the time. We haven’t done a good job of that. This experience, which has been painful and humbling, has driven that point home.
We are focused on doing valuable work, helping our customers thrive, and building an amazing place to work. We realize that the work we are doing here at Phylos will make us an attractive acquisition target for established agriculture companies. But there are many other potential paths for this company, and we will not choose one that doesn't fit with our values.
In keeping with those, we’re developing tools, programs, and fair licensing structures that promote a sustainable and ethical evolution of the cannabis industry. By making this inherent to our business, we intend to drive long-term positive change that cannot be turned back if there is a change in ownership in the future.
Our commitment to the future
Our team at Phylos is here to change the world for the better, and we believe in the power of this amazing plant. We are also a company, and we need to do a better job of being straightforward about how we’re balancing our business goals with our higher aspirations. We can start right here with answers to some hard questions that we face as a science company in the cannabis industry. Every one of these answers represents a balance between forces that are in tension. They won’t please everyone. But this is who we are.
• We believe in diversity: in environmental, social, genetic, and economic diversity. We believe advanced plant breeding is necessary and valuable and, when balanced by programs to preserve the rich diversity we've inherited (for every crop, and for cannabis in particular), can contribute to that diversity rather than destroy it.
• We have to develop crops for the cultivation methods that are in use, but we understand the positive impact that sustainable and regenerative agriculture can have, both for farmers and for the environment, and we’re committed to fighting for that kind of cultivation, even (and especially) in large-scale agriculture.
• We believe in democratizing science by making data and scientific tools widely available whenever possible. As we’ve said above, we will share marker insights and release clonal cultivars into the flower market with the right to breed freely. In order to do this, we’ll have to be committed to balancing the desire to be open with the need to protect our intellectual property.
• We don’t support broad utility patents that cover categories of plants, because they're a threat to both innovation and diversity. At the same time, cannabis breeders, including us, need to have ways to protect what we’re making and find avenues to be compensated for our work. We believe in using appropriate intellectual property protections and in crediting and compensating breeders through royalties and licensing agreements.
• As the cannabis industry and the cannabis plant continue to evolve, we are determined to learn lessons from the history of agriculture. We want to bring the best plant breeding science to this community, which will include hiring people from mainstream agriculture. We also are committed to helping the cannabis industry avoid the mistakes that have been made in other crops, including stifling genetic diversity, marginalization of small growers, and consolidation of crop control into the hands of a few large corporations.
We know that many of you have known and trusted us for a long time, and you hold us to a high standard. We have appreciated that trust and confidence in the past, and we know that no letter, no public statement, is enough to repair this breach with many of you. But we're doing those things anyway to give some context to what we've done and what we're doing in the future. The only way to gain back trust is through the work that we do, through being a good partner, and through bringing this industry advanced science with a heart and a conscience. We'd like to know more about what you need, what you're concerned about, and what you'd like to see more of in a cannabis science company. We are here and listening. Please come talk with us.


Mowgli

Here's is the whole message for those who want to read it.



dank.Frank
 

herbgreen

Active member
Veteran
"I am sorrier for this than I can say. The people who feel angry and hurt have been our partners, our customers, our community, and our friends, and nothing is more important to us than their trust."

I mean, how are we suppose to screw you over without your trust??? Come on give us your Trust ...we need it

Im not sure 'sorrier' is an actual word I could check the dictionary but I'm pretty sure still find it somewhere between shit and syphilis

Toatally not sorry in the first place #1 And 100% standing behind everything he said...His own statement on the soil king Interview

He can do all the damage control and put whatever spin on this he wants

Its called showing your true colors...He has been doing that the whole time but that last presentation...wow, I get it now

Not so much about breeding but the whole whacked out wrong attitude and insane ego for no reason....You have Not Grown One Plant you F'n Retard!

Its just stupid....breed, dont breed, genomically split the goddamn atom for all I care

Fuck you Mowgli.


~
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
i've been following this at a distance, and whilst i myself have some caution about trusting big businesses, they do have to act as a business in order to survive.


It seems to me that, currently, phylos is being demonized NOT for the things they have done, but for the things they might possibly do in the future.


So perhaps all this hate is a little premature?
What promises have they broken? seems to me they promised to make their database of DNA knowledge that they gained from people's variety donations public, and they have done just that.


If i am being misguided, please can someone tell me what they have actually done wrong so far, rather than what you think they might do wrongly in the future?


thanks,

VG
 
I

izzypog

i've been following this at a distance, and whilst i myself have some caution about trusting big businesses, they do have to act as a business in order to survive.


It seems to me that, currently, phylos is being demonized NOT for the things they have done, but for the things they might possibly do in the future.


So perhaps all this hate is a little premature?
What promises have they broken? seems to me they promised to make their database of DNA knowledge that they gained from people's variety donations public, and they have done just that.


If i am being misguided, please can someone tell me what they have actually done wrong so far, rather than what you think they might do wrongly in the future?


thanks,

VG
Yet, they(Phylos) circumvent any financial restitution to those that "donate" their genetic stock......sounds like a shell game to me, legal word salad. In other words, they can cut everyone who was generous enough to give freely their genetic stock, leaving Phylos to no financial obligation. If you can not see it........
 

Rico Swazi

Active member
its happened before

while the cannabis community is fixated on one particular company, another comes out of the shadows, acquires that company, in this case phylos, then changes the name to stave off lawsuits. (think bayer-monsanto merger)

Syngenta and Biotech Institute LLC are two that come to mind


I fear this will not be the last time cannabis growers will be outraged
The call for big business to partake of the green rush is deafening and will drown out any collective voice for individual rights and fairness.
Can't see it going any other way as too much money is on the table for the company with the best lawyers.
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Yet, they(Phylos) circumvent any financial restitution to those that "donate" their genetic stock......sounds like a shell game to me, legal word salad. In other words, they can cut everyone who was generous enough to give freely their genetic stock, leaving Phylos to no financial obligation. If you can not see it........


If you donate genetic material for their public DNA database, why would you expect financial restitution?


It seems to me that a lot of folks are expecting them to build a wonder strain from dna like you might build something out of lego or meccano, and afaik that isn't possible.


plus i asked what they had actually done wrong already, and you are talking about something they might do in the future.


dont get me wrong i don;t blame people for being cynical, they may well do something unsavory i don't know, but to hate on them for something they haven't done yet seems to be reflecting the prejudice of the suspicious growers as much as anything else.


the science around cannabis growing and genetics has certainly been hampered by its legal status, and companies with the resources to take it further may have benefits for the plant as well as possible downsides.


I live in the UK so we are way behind the legal cannabis game still, so i may be missing something, but reading most of these posts, it is hard for me to understand what they have actually done wrong so far except talk to possible big investor in their own language - which will be different from the way they talk to other groups.



VG
 

docchilie

New member
P

P

He embellished to potential investors and all it really showed me is that Phylos is probably having serious cash flow issues and needed to make a course change FAST.

This is exactly correct. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this. Did anyone really think a $400 genotype test and $10 sex tests would keep a company afloat with that many employees and many PhDs at that? Even if every single one of everyone’s work we’re genotyped and every breeder ran sex tests religiously, that’s still not enough to keep them operational. They had to do this or die. (I’m not defending them, just pointing out their business model was set to fail unless they did something ‘bigger’)
 
I

izzypog

Well VG, they did state their intent, and have said that is their plan. It is what it is, people were suckered, and now their work is someone else' profit margin, they did so through misleading people, and manipulating others to do the work for them, and they stated this. Again, it is what it is, I for one will not do business with anyone that will not be upfront with me, they lie to you, they lie about what they have, maybe they lie about other things.
 

Rocky Mtn Squid

EL CID SQUID
Veteran
The State Of Affairs in The Great White North

The State Of Affairs in The Great White North

Northern Lights. Pineapple Express. Blue Dream. For those who aren’t aware, each of these names refers to a popular strain of cannabis. It used to be taboo to say them out loud. But now that cannabis is rounding the home stretch and racing toward full legalization in Canada for recreational use, these strains and a whole host of others will soon be very widely known and used by consumers.

For any company that is scrambling to become part of this budding industry, the burning question is: what can be done to prevent others from stealing their intellectual property?

It’s true that Canada’s existing intellectual property laws were put in place long before the decision to legalize cannabis was approved. And, the Canadian government has no current plans to update or pass any new intellectual property laws. But this doesn’t mean the existing IP laws can’t be used effectively to protect cannabis strains in development. As with many other industries, when it comes to cannabis, what is really required is a creative legal approach.

What Can and Can’t be Patented in Cannabis Development?

Plants and other “higher life forms” by definition cannot be patented in Canada. To put it bluntly, any company trying to patent a new strain of cannabis won’t get very far, no matter how much time or money has been spent to make their case to the patent office. Despite this, there is good news regarding patenting cannabis. Most other innovations that either go into or come out of the development of a new cannabis strain can, at least theoretically, be patented. For example, this might include new:

Molecules that have been extracted from the cannabis plant
Substances that combine cannabis extracts with other ingredients
Uses of cannabis extracts in the treatment of diseases or other conditions
Methods of extracting active ingredients from cannabis plants
Devices used to consume cannabis products
So while it may not be possible to patent a new cannabis strain directly, in some cases it might be possible to achieve the same effect indirectly by focusing on a different aspect of the enterprise. These might include novel formulations for cannabis delivery which might be more efficient or efficacious.

Plant Breeder’s Rights

This is not the end of the story. Part of the reason why plants are not patentable in Canada is that they are already subject to a separate and relatively obscure regime known as Plant Breeders Rights (PBR). Before your eyes light up, significant hurdles still remain. The PBR regime provides what are considered less robust rights than patent rights, focusing instead on restricting the buying and selling of protected varieties, seeds, or any other type of propagating material of a protected variety, without the permission of the breeder. A breeder must still be able to provide sufficient evidence of infringement to such rights. In addition, PBR protection, much like the patent regime, imposes a number of conditions on plant varieties that must be satisfied before any rights are granted. Most importantly, a plant variety must be new, distinct, uniform, and stable. It remains to be seen how these requirements will play out for cannabis strains trying to qualify for protection. Currently the Canadian Food Inspection Agency lists one pending application for PBR protection. But some early indications are that, at least for existing strains, the bar may be set quite high.

Consider Trademarking Your Product Name

Whether your company is growing plants, selling products or developing new medical indications, the value of a strong brand shouldn’t be lost in the weeds. The three strains mentioned at the outset of this post are arguably great examples of product branding. Each brand name is highly evocative and distinctive in its own way – in other words, ideal for registration as a trademark. It doesn’t matter that the brand names might have been in use for years because, unlike patents and PBRs, there is no requirement that a trademark be “new.” So long as a trademark is sufficiently distinctive, it should qualify for protection.

Having advised clients in intellectual property protection across multiple industries, it’s clear they all share one common trait: claimants must be proactive when it comes to understanding, acquiring, and ultimately enforcing their rights. It is no different for new entrants to the cannabis industry. Some efforts may result in essential IP protection; while other efforts may prove to be vain. My advice is to be proactive about protecting your IP and brand trademarks in this fast-growing industry. Because one thing is for sure. Any company that just sits back and does nothing will at some point see their intellectual property go, well, up in smoke.

Source: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=03704fbe-716a-4f55-b1f0-a63eccb321a7


RMS

:smoweed:
 

Big Nasty

Active member
i still don't understand why a plant can be patented,i mean once you sold me seeds or cuts then i bought the right to do whatever i want with said seeds but selling them.

monsanto says you can't use your harvest for next year crop?fuck'em unless i signed a paper that says otherwise and i wouldn't buy those corn seeds anyway.
farmers here share new cherry cultivars for free,needless to say these new cultivars are totally tasteless and to people that know best worthless compared to old varieties.
We all know the vast majority of the modern strains share common origins despite of being renamed.And some sort of copyright issue means shit while most of us still risk jail for a plant.
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
You are referring to their intention to do some cannabis breeding?
I think the rights and the wrongs of that depend on what they use in their breeding program, its results, and how/if they profit from or exploit those results.
Most breeders start a breeding program using strains that they didn't breed themselves.


i'm kind of playing devil's advocate here, but i do think that so far the anger is somewhat premature.


VG



Well VG, they did state their intent, and have said that is their plan. It is what it is, people were suckered, and now their work is someone else' profit margin, they did so through misleading people, and manipulating others to do the work for them, and they stated this. Again, it is what it is, I for one will not do business with anyone that will not be upfront with me, they lie to you, they lie about what they have, maybe they lie about other things.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top