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The Ultimate Experiment

Get a peek at what we’ve been up to the past year and how our Cultivar Discovery program led to new, never-before-seen cultivars.

Just under a year ago, we embarked on a project to discover more diverse genetics.
We wanted to take our collective knowledge of cultivation, plant science and clone library to a new level, combining it all in the most efficient (borderline obsessive-compulsive) experimental crop of what we imagined would be either super strong, super interesting or super CBD-dominant.  

But it turned into much, much more. This little gardening experiment transformed into a journey that brought the Prūf Cultivar team to the cutting edge of cultivation science, demonstrating just how subjective plant chemistry can be and how little we’ve seen of cannabis’ true potential thus far.

**1000 → 10**
We started with 1000 genotypes; 1000 seeds with promising genetic backgrounds. After a few weeks of low-intensity light and precisely watering by hand with syringes, leaves were established, which allows plant health scientists to glean quite a bit of genetic data right off the bat. Upon reviewing leaf-based observations, the sample group was cut down to half—about 464 plants.

Then we brought all of those 464 plants through flowering and harvest. As they developed, we sniffed, studied and sniffed some more, cutting that number down over time. Using an in-house gas chromatograph, we ran our own preliminary testing on site to better guide our instincts. After reviewing the developing terpene profiles, cola quality and plant health, we narrowed down the group to the 32 most interesting and promising cultivars.

**Third Time’s A Charm**
Then we sniffed some more. Conducted another round of testing. We noted which phenotypes were coming out more compact or lanky and took those characteristics into consideration as we further pared down the number. We considered everything—down to the sizes and placement of buds.

But in order to bring this experiment to a true conclusion, we couldn’t make a final selection based on a single example of the star cultivars. Not to mention these test harvests only amount to 1.5-2 lbs apiece—not enough to judge the lifelong potential of a strain. So we didn’t narrow it down to the final selection of winners until getting through **3 cycles** of these mini crops. That way, we weren’t only honing growing conditions and consistency— we were able to start predicting harvest dates.

And by our calculations, Oregonians are about to see the first extremely unique and truly original fruit of our labors hit the shelves.

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