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Cutting cultivation costs was one of the loudest themes at this year’s MJBizCon. Michigan cultivator Kevin Kuethe, Chief Cultivation Officer at Lume, shared his strategy for combating price compression through genetics during a panel discussion titled “Mastering Genetics.” “The easiest way to do that is through more yield,” he told the crowd. “If you have two plants in a room, it’s going to cost you the same amount of land to grow both, but if one yields twice as much, guess what? That flower costs you half as much.”
Seeds used to get a bad rap for being inconsistent, but modern breeding has leveled up in a big way, according to Kuethe, who still runs a clone program but has eased into using seeds more, which now account for 30 to 40 percent of Lume’s production and power almost all of the company’s large outdoor grows. Today’s breeders are using genomics tools borrowed from big agriculture, such as SNPs, QTLs, and AI-generated breeding values that help predict a plant’s outcome.
Breeders can now screen thousands of plants, identify the markers that matter, and use that information to produce seed lines that grow more uniformly, resist pests and mold, and push yields higher. Kuethe says we are still in the early innings, but it’s a game-changer for cultivators.
Speeding The Process Up
Tools that have been standard in agriculture for years, like genomic markers, early-stage screening, and AI-assisted selection, are finally making their way into cannabis. And for growers, this means a much shorter breeding timeline. Native Roots’ Lacey Sears says breeders no longer need to grow huge plants or run massive pheno hunts to find a winner. Thanks to early genetic screening, breeders can identify promising plants at the cotyledon stage when they have just popped. “We don’t have to grow out mothers and huge plants anymore. That is the biggest thing reshaping this,” she says.
This new technology allows breeders to lock in traits like yield, vigor, pest resistance, and structure much faster and with far fewer plants. What once took years and thousands of test plants can now be done in a fraction of the time. As Kuethe puts it, “It is a drastic difference. This technology has been used in big agriculture for decades. We are finally catching up.”
Better still, breeders can now collaborate directly with cultivators to create genetics tailored to specific grow environments or business goals. Want a fast-finishing, short-stature plant that performs well indoors? Or a mold-resistant, high-yielding line for your outdoor farm? Breeders can now design for that.
Busting Seed Myths
One of the biggest hurdles to wider seed adoption in cannabis is the myths around seeds: they aren’t uniform, they are slower, they cannot hit high potency, yields are unpredictable, and “herms” make them too risky. Much of that was once true, but only because cannabis missed out on decades of modern plant science while the rest of agriculture raced ahead.
Damon Hess from Phylos compares it to buying a packet of tomato seeds. You don’t get 20 different tomato shapes and colors. You get the same tomato every time. Uniformity works in every major crop. Cannabis was the outlier because prohibition kept universities and major agricultural companies from doing the genomic work that other crops benefited from. Since the 2018 Farm Bill, that bottleneck has finally broken, and universities like Cornell, Oregon State, Kentucky, Colorado State, and Georgia are now generating data, breeding insights, and collaborating with seed companies.
Myth 1: Seeds grow slower than clones
Clones take roughly two weeks to root and another three to four weeks to veg before the flip, for a total of five to six weeks. With modern seeds, growers can go from sowing to flowering in about four weeks with the same eight-week flowering window. Seed-grown plants finish earlier, and the time they save continues to compound with every cycle.
Myth 2: Seeds are not uniform
This was historically true, but not anymore. Over the past several years, breeders have finally been able to stabilize cannabis lines the way other crops have been doing for decades.
Myth 3: Seeds herm more than clones
Herms are a stress problem, not a seed problem. Feminized seeds and female clones both herm when pushed beyond their stress limits. Phylos explained that their early seeds were sold only for outdoor use because stress-induced herms were too common indoors. That changed once they identified genetic markers tied to stress tolerance. By selecting for plants that do not buckle under stress, they drastically reduced hermaphroditic expression.
Myth 4: Seeds cannot match clone potency
Once a seed line hits a potency benchmark, it stays there. Phylos gave the example of its Cheddar Cheese line, which consistently produces THC levels over 30 percent. Mother plants age, decline, mutate, and accumulate pathogens, which often leads to potency loss. Stabilized seed lines do not have that problem.
Clones can certainly hit high potency, sometimes even higher than a seed line, but that peak is not stable. Once locked in, seeds maintain it.
The Challenge of Switching Your Grow To Seeds
Running a grow entirely from seed eliminates the need for mother rooms and the labor, space, and mechanical systems required to maintain them. That alone can recover weeks in the production cycle and free up valuable square footage for additional flowering rooms.
The real challenge, as Lacey explains, is that facilities have been designed around a clone-to-flower model for years. Seeds introduce new variables, such as lighting adjustments, environmental tweaks, and different early-stage care practices. Staff often need retraining. SOPs must be rewritten, veg rooms reconfigured, and teams taught to manage seedlings rather than clones. The transition takes time and money, but seeds offer advantages once dialed in, including minimal storage needs and faster veg times.
Because of this complexity, Damon recommends a phased approach. Most cultivators start with a small trial room to see how seed-grown plants perform in their facility. If the results are promising, the next step is a pilot production room that is run like any other production cycle to prove that seeds can deliver yield and uniformity.
What Are the Risks of Switching to Seeds?
While stable seeds are becoming easier to use and more reliable, shifting a commercial facility from clones introduces operational challenges. Cultivators have built operations around a clone-based workflow, so teams must learn germination and seedling development and avoid pitfalls such as improper sowing orientation.
Seeds also grow more vigorously than clones, which changes how plants respond to nutrition. If cultivators feed seedlings the same formula they use for clones, they may get excessive vegetative growth. Many growers need to rework nutrient recipes, especially by reducing nitrogen early in the cycle, and recalibrate fertigation equipment.
Another risk is environmental compatibility. Cultivators usually select strains that fit their facility’s existing environment. Dialing in seeds takes testing, and facilities with fixed lighting heights or rigid environmental controls may need incremental upgrades before seeds perform at their best.
Supply reliability is another concern. A winning seed line has to stay in stock. Operators worry about what happens if they build a room around a specific strain and the breeder runs out of that strain. Companies like Phylos are addressing this through guaranteed supply programs, but it remains a concern with growers.
Finally, seeds may introduce operational risk but also provide insurance. If a clone room crashes due to contamination or equipment failure, an entire cycle can be lost. With seeds, growers can pop new plants immediately and recover lost time because the propagation cycle is shorter. Seeds become a fallback that allows cultivators to get a room back on schedule instead of losing revenue.
Overall, the risks are not about seed performance. They are about change management. Facilities that invest the time to retrain staff, rewrite SOPs, run trials, and partner with stable seed suppliers are the ones that will optimize production and trim costs.
The post Move Over Clones, Seeds Are Making A Comeback appeared first on Cannabis Industry Journal.
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