Israel and Switzerland promise to produce best marijuana for patients

Israel and Switzerland have united with the promise of attaining the best cannabis for people who need to use the plant for medical treatments. Two companies from these countries announced in a statement this week that they will work together to get better marijuana strains for patients and users. NRGene is an leading Israeli provider of complete genome sequencing and analysis and Pure Cannabis Research AG, a subsidiary of Pure Holding Cannabis Group, is a Swiss firm focused on the creation of new cannabis strains. This non-exclusive association between the two firms „will facilitate a more rapid development of cannabis varieties than the current standard of the industry,“ according to their statement.

The idea of ​​the Swiss cannabis company and the Israeli genome analysis company is to find a variety that produces healthier and more resistant plants, perfect for commercial production. With the joint work they intend to improve and develop plants that adapt to the needs of their clients. NRGene and Pure Cannabis Research AG want to enhance personalized profiles of cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids, so that they can be applied to specific medicinal uses, such as ending nausea, quenching pain or ending insomnia issues.

The CEO of Pure Holding Group, Stevens Senn, declared that they will work ito offer safe, non-addictive products, based on CBD, to be used in alternative formats to smoking: foodstuffs, cosmetics etcetera … Some strains will have unique flavours for energy drinks and other products will be an alternative to tobacco. The role of the Swiss company will be to identify the desirable genetic characteristics in cannabis, and then create these new strains maximizing these traits.

While Pure Holding Group specializes in cannabis with high CBD content and has extensive indoor and outdoor growing areas, NRGene is a leader in identifying the key genetic traits of plants. The Israeli company will map genomes of various varieties of cannabis with desirable genetic characteristics. From the collected data, and with NRGene’s PanMagic ™ technology, they will be able to develop the world’s first cannabis pangenome, which will represent a complete set of genes of all varieties of a species and provide unique and essential knowledge about the natural genetic diversity of cannabis.

They will use NRGene’s DeNovoMAGIC ™ technology for the assembly of multiple cannabis genomes. This platform was successfully used to assemble the first whole wheat genome, followed by potato, strawberry, barley, rye and oats. All have larger and more complex genomes than humans.

In the statement we read that „NRGene’s GenoMAGIC will be used to identify markers of key traits. GenoMAGIC ™, NRGene’s cloud-based multipurpose platform, will combine the genetic diversity of cannabis with Pure Cannabis Research’s breeding program. GenoMAGIC has already been adopted by some of the world’s leading seed companies, including Monsanto and Syngenta. „

And this last part is what we find most worrisome, that multinational companies of this type have reached the cannabis industry with the promise of working for patients and users. Although the reality is that they seek to take advantage of a sector that is booming throughout the world. We have already heard on several occasions that companies like Monsanto and Bayer intend to enter the cannabis sector through genetic engineering, as they have already done with the soy or corn industry. We hope it is not at the expense of creating transgenic and potentially carcinogenic cannabis.