CleanPheno

Lose a mother plant. Keep the cultivar.

CleanPheno is tissue culture for licensed cannabis cultivators. We clean up your genetics in sterile culture, test them at every transfer, and keep a living backup of every line.

Email the labSee how it works
Shelves of sealed, labeled culture vessels in the lab

From a cutting to clean, tested stock

Five stages, with a test between each one.

  1. Intake

    You send cuttings from the plants you want to protect. Each one is logged against its strain record the day it arrives.

  2. Isolation

    We start many isolates from every strain. Most will not make the cut, and that is the point: we only need a few clean ones.

  3. Testing

    Every isolate is screened by qPCR in Verne Bio's diagnostics lab on a 16 target panel that includes hop latent viroid. Only isolates with nothing detected move forward.

  4. Banking

    Clean lines stay in culture under our care. Each time a line moves to fresh media, the old material is tested again.

  5. Return

    When you ask for a strain, we prepare material from the banked line and return it to you as clean stock.

Why a first cleanup takes about five months

The chart shows how much plant material we hold for one strain, from the day it arrives to the day clean stock is returned. The shape is typical. Timing and amounts vary by strain.

Plant material held for one strain over a first cleanupThe amount starts with many isolates, falls over the first two to three months as isolates that test positive or stall are dropped, then rises in steps through two rounds of multiplying, and holds level through about four weeks of preparing stock for return, about five months in all.Many isolates startedOnly the clean ones are keptEnough clean stock to returnA transfer to fresh media, and a testCleaning and recoveryMultiplyingPreparing for returntwo to three monthsfour to six weeks a roundabout four weeksIntake1 month2345 months
  1. The cleanest starting piece is the smallest one. A tiny piece of growing tissue needs weeks to become a shoot we can transfer, and we drop every isolate that tests positive or stalls. The amount of material goes down before it goes up.
  2. Plants in culture grow in rounds. Each round of multiplying takes four to six weeks, and every transfer is another test. A clean result has to hold more than once.
  3. Clean stock needs time to get ready. The last month prepares material from culture to leave the lab and go back to you.

Some strains are faster and some are slower. You can follow each one in the PhytoIntel portal the whole way through.

What a clean result means, and what it does not

We do not promise a plant is free of everything. We report what we tested for, when we tested, and what we found.

"Not detected" means the organisms on our panel were not found in that sample on that date. It is a strong result. It is also a snapshot, which is why we keep testing for as long as we hold your line.

If something does turn up, you hear it from us, with the result in front of you and a plan for the line.

What you get back

Clean stock with a test history
Material from lines that have been screened at every stage.
A record for every strain
Status and test results, in the PhytoIntel portal.
A backup outside your facility
Your cultivars held in culture in our lab, so a problem in one room does not cost you the line.
A sealed culture vessel with a printed tracking label showing its cup number, shelf position and a daily check
Every vessel carries a label that ties it to its strain record.
Small green plantlets seen from above inside a culture vessel
Plantlets inside a culture vessel.

Built for many strains, small batches

Most of our customers run a long list of cultivars and cannot afford to lose any of them. The lab is set up for that: a lot of strains, a few vessels of each, every one tracked.

Run by Verne Bio

CleanPheno is run by the team at Verne Bio, a plant health lab that also does root cause analysis and molecular diagnostics. The culture work and the testing happen under one roof.

Also from the lab

  • Verne Bio diagnostics

    Only need testing? Verne Bio runs the same 16 target panel as a standalone service.

    vernebio.com

  • Customer portal

    Customers follow every strain and test result in the PhytoIntel portal.

    Customer login

Start with a conversation

Tell us how many strains you have and what you are worried about. We will reply with what a program would look like for you.

Email the labCustomer login (PhytoIntel portal)

Terms for each strain are set out in a written agreement before any material moves.