Strainly: a platform for preserving cannabis biodiversity

Strainly, a Montreal-based startup, is dedicated to giving growers and breeders the means to preserve genetics while maintaining a balanced relationship that benefits patients, breeders and growers alike.

The web platform offers cannabis collectors the chance to exchange ideas with their peers and improve access to propagation material.

How does Strainly work?

Exchanges available

In concrete terms, Strainly enables growers and breeders to exchange :

• Cannabis seeds
• Clones
• Tissue cultures
• Pollen

The application process

Users can browse, filter and find their cultivars, while benefiting from a rating/review mechanism that fosters trust within the community. Exchanges then take place outside the platform.

Strainly's Open Source vision

Preserving traditional varieties

For Alan, the founder of Strainly, the preservation of landrace varieties or hybrids is important, particularly in view of the’emerging influence of major seed companies in cannabis or the emergence of start-ups seeking to sequence and appropriate what nature has created.

Open Source breeding licenses

He also advocates the introduction of licenses for breeding Open Source licenses to protect new Cannabis cultivars. These licenses would make no difference to existing and future public-domain varieties. All OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookie and Purple Haze would remain in the public domain.

Like computer code, breeders could make their varieties available under an Open Source license, either free of charge or for sale. Customers would then be bound by the terms of the license.