Business View Magazine | September 2020

103 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2020 “It started with the introduction of our tissue culture lab in 2015 and has continued with our plant pathology work, which focused on the identification and, now, eradication of Hop Latent Viroid (HpLVd) and has expanded into other pathogens and continues to expand with new breeding and genomics services. That’s the core of what we do.” BVM: What do your operations encompass? Grace: “We have two core production operations in northern California: our 20,000-sq.-ft. indoor production facility in Oakland we’ve been producing at for 10 years; and a new 80,000-sq.- ft. production and research greenhouse facility in Half Moon Bay. We also have a tissue culture lab in Oakland. And we are in renovation on a new tissue culture diagnostics and genomics lab in Davis, adjacent to the University of California Davis – one of the world’s ag/bio science meccas. While we don’t partner, as such, with the university, we work a lot with their alumni and faculty. The leader of our plant sciences division, Dr. Jeremy Warren, is a PhD out of Davis; our head breeder, Kay Watt, is a Davis PhD; a number of our staff scientists are Davis graduates, as well, so we interact pretty tight with that community. “Our customers are an interesting mix. We serve two primary channels. One is retail – which is plants available at a dispensary for anyone to purchase. Growers across California have stories about waiting in line in the springtime to buy Dark Heart clones, especially when a new strain is launched. There’s a rock concert type atmosphere that used to prevail around these things. The name had a kind of mystique back in the early days, which is fun. And we’ve developed a really strong brand identity, especially among cultivators across California, for more than a decade. It’s quite a powerful thing. That market is much more consumer-based now - hobbyists, consumers, home growers, whereas it used to be small-scale commercial growers. But we’re still passionate about it and it brings in good DARK HEART NURSERY