R&D#7 Investigation of Cannabis Tissue Culture media formulations and Transformation

process to generate cannabis plants

Project Description

This three years project aims to develop the optimal media formulations and transformation process to generate the highest value cannabis plants in the market. We have examined the response of different cannabis genotypes to tissue culture media formations to develop tissue culture media formulations tailored for cannabis genotypes. We will be evaluating upon flowering of the rooted clones of the selected tissue culture plants, flowers should have equal to or better yield and potency than traditional clone production and cultivation of cannabis plants. Another goal of this project is to develop a genetic transformation procedure for cannabis from callus and/or protoplast regeneration optimization. This protocol will be used to

increase pathogen resistance and improve quality traits like yield in cannabis plants.

Project Purpose and Resources

Intellectual Property, Societal, Economic and Industrial Relevance:

The purpose is to build and maintain a catalog of exclusive cannabis strains to support producers by providing genetically stronger, virus free, sterile plants through tissue culture propagation programs. Our focus is on increasing our clients’ crop yields and reducing their production costs. Our research will support this mission through creating IP that we can bring to the market through our research initiatives and partnerships.

Project Manager and Lead Scientist

Dr. Surender Khatodia

Partners

Scientist: Dr. Pankaj Bhowmik

Institute

National Research Council Canada, Saskatoon

Funding

NRC-IRAP

R&D Partner Bios

Klonetics Science Team

Dr. Surender Khatodia

Chief Tissue Culture Scientist, Klonetics

Faculty Position

Assistant Professor, Biotechnology, Amity University Haryana, India (2014-2017)

Academic Credentials

• B.Sc. Biotechnology - KUK, India (2007)
• M.Sc. Hons. Biotechnology - Panjab University, India (2009)
• Ph.D. Biotechnology & Molecular Biology - CCS HAU, India (2014)
• Postdoctoral fellowship - University of Saskatchewan, Canada (2017)

Background

Surender Khatodia, Ph.D. leads the scientific and technical operations of the commercial scale cannabis micropropagation at Klonetics for cannabis tissue culture gen zero clones production. He brings over 15 years of extensive experience in plant tissue culture and genomics work on various crops. During the last five years, he has made progressive developments in optimizing the methods of pathogen eradication for clean cannabis clone production, genetic testing and germ-plasm conservation of the popular cannabis cultivars. He has coordinated cannabis genomics R&D project with NRC-IRAP and has established a cannabis analytical testing laboratory for cannabinoids, microbial and genetic analysis. His deep passion for plant sciences escalated while working on hairy root cultures of medicinally important plants for enhancing secondary metabolites production. Surender obtained his Ph.D. in Biotechnology and Molecular Biology, for the development of transgenic Bt chickpea plants and went on to teach Biotechnology at University. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Plant Sciences at University of Saskatchewan before starting as a consulting specialist for the cannabis tissue culture and regulatory compliance. His academic background is centred around genetic improvement of plants for sustainable crop production by using biotechnological tools like tissue culture, molecular biology, and genome editing as evident with various scientific publications, co-edited books.

Scientific Publications

https://jcannabisresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42238-020-00036-y