Ever wonder why your plants aren’t thriving—or why your post-harvest yields and terpene profiles just don’t stack up? I’ve been there, and this episode is your shortcut out of the guesswork.

This week, I’m joined by David Sandelman, CTO of Cannatrol, inventor, and expert in environmental controls with decades of pioneering innovation under his belt. From the origins of digital thermostats to revolutionizing post-harvest processing in cheese, charcuterie, and cannabis, David Sandelman brings deep scientific insight and a passion for precision.

We dive into the real science behind environmental control—why traditional approaches to humidity just don’t cut it, and how understanding vapor pressure is the key to stable, high-quality crops across cheese, cannabis, and even hops. David Sandelman explains, in plain terms, how “water activity” trumps “percent moisture” for true shelf stability and consistent results.

You’ll also hear about the future of indoor farming, from AI-optimized grow rooms to what legacy cultivators can learn from the world of cheese and charcuterie. Plus, we dig into practical applications—whether you’re a large-scale producer or a passionate home grower—along with candid insights from David Sandelman’s journey in the industry.

Ready to get clarity and control over your crops while boosting quality and yield? Hit play and discover the system that’s changing the game for post-harvest and indoor growers everywhere.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

CEA Summit East - https://indoor.ag/cea-summit-east-2025/

Indoor AgCon - https://indoor.ag/

Key Takeaways

00:00 From Vermont Restaurants to Post-Harvest Technology

00:06:10 The Science of Controls and Humidity Explained

00:12:01 Cannabis Flower, Water Activity, and Drying Innovation

00:18:00 Trichomes, Terpenes, and Preserving Quality

00:23:32 Consistency, Yield, and the Future of Quality Cannabis

00:29:32 Expanding Applications: Hops, Tea, and Industry Insights

00:34:35 Embracing Change and Applying Proven Science

Tweetable Quotes

"That's when we built a prototype and we purchased a wine cooler and stripped it out, just used the insulated box with the door and put a couple of thousand dollars worth of controls on it, gave it to a grower and said, put some flour in there and tell us what happens. Is it going to destroy it? Does nothing? And sure enough, two weeks later, he's like, I don't know what this box is, but this is some of the finest flower I've ever produced. He's, like, hanging on to it. I'm not going to give it back. And that's when we knew we were onto something."

"We are a process system that's designed for the process of getting your proper product to the right water activity for shelf stability versus applying conventional comfort cooling equipment to accomplish it."

"We like to say it's sous vide for weed."

Resources Mentioned

Website - https://cannatrols.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-sandelman-74323216/

Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@cannatrolsolutions

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cannatrol/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cannatrol/

Twitter - https://x.com/Cannatrols

Connect With Us

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Mentioned in this episode:

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

1

So, David Sandelman, CEO of Canachold, thank you so much for joining me on the

2

Berkeley Farming podcast. Thank you. Great being with you. Good to

3

see you again. Yeah, likewise. So, for the benefit of the the viewers and

4

the listener, where's home for you? We're here in Vermont, but we also

5

have an office in Denver. So thanks to

6

the outreach from your PR team, we got to connect at Indoor

7

adcon. So I'm wondering how the rest of the conference went for you

8

and if there was any insights or how much value you got from being there

9

on the ground. Indoor ag was great because what we are

10

exposed to other people that have different products

11

in post harvest, and so they're like, ah, we can use

12

this technology. And we've also been, you know, playing with the

13

idea of getting more involved using our technology to maintain

14

proper VPD vapor pressure deficit in grow.

15

But, you know, our main emphasis was on post harvest

16

of various different products. And every day we're learning that there's new

17

and exciting things. We just did a trial with someone trying

18

saffron. Okay. Someone's been doing testing, and we

19

even use it at home for our own herbs that we grow

20

for storage is great. We did a facility

21

in Hawaii that does seaweed. Yeah, we'll get into all of those

22

specifics because I remember you taking us through that. What I want to do

23

is wind the clock back a little bit because your story doesn't actually begin

24

in cannabis, it begins in a restaurant. So, yeah, take us back.

25

You know, what were you doing all those years ago and what was the problem

26

that you stumbled into? Yeah, so being here in Vermont

27

caught. My wife and I are corporate refugees, left the big city,

28

came up to Vermont, wound up in a inn and restaurant.

29

And our mission was buying local. So 20 something years ago,

30

we were at the cutting edge of farm to table, and

31

we worked with a lot of local cheesemakers. And it was

32

there that we learned that the cheesemakers were struggling

33

with their aging rooms and digging into it and trying

34

to understand what the issues were. It was like, well,

35

yeah, cheese is very regional, its climate and

36

geology specific. The herds, what

37

they're feeding, all of that. And now people were here

38

in Vermont trying to make any kind of cheese any time of the

39

year. And it's like, wait, you know, you used to make cheddar and Cheddar

40

England, and you made Romano and Emilio Romano, and

41

you're trying to make this cheese in Vermont. And what was unique, it

42

was those cheese were made and then

43

stored in caves in the area, which was Cool. And that's where they

44

did the aging. You can't dig a cave in Vermont. I think it's

45

granite. It's solid. You go down a couple of feet, and that's it. You hit

46

rock. You hit rock bottom. And so then it was getting to you. What's

47

unique about a cave? Yeah. And then it became,

48

oh, it's all about consistent, very consistent

49

conditions. And, you know, people speak about

50

humidity, and it's like, well, humidity is really made up of

51

what's the temperature in the cave and what's the moisture content in the

52

cave. And those two are extremely stable.

53

So that became. Okay, how do we create an

54

environment with very stable temperature and very stable

55

vapor pressure. Dew point. And that's what led to the

56

development of vape patrol. And so we built a couple of

57

cheese facilities here, you know, retrofit their rooms. And

58

they had great success. And word spread. And we were working

59

with someone who was a consultant in the cheese industry. And then he took

60

the technology and. And deployed it in all over

61

US And Canada. And cheesemakers all over were

62

winning ribbons at the cheese competition that

63

had our technology. They also would come back to us and say, you know, I

64

can sleep at night. I don't have to go out there and check on my

65

cheese and make sure I don't have a problem. And so that's how it all

66

began. From there, I went to Charcuterie. I'm curious about

67

the cheese. What was it about your background that helped you understand

68

the specificity of these environments that maybe other people were missing? So my

69

background was and has been controls. I have many

70

patents, and the very first patent I got was late 70s, early

71

80s, during the first energy crisis. A digital clock

72

thermostat. It was the first digital clock thermostat.

73

It's the whole category today. You go into a Home Depot and there's a whole

74

section of digital clock thermostats. But we're

75

was developed was the first digital clock thermostat. And what was

76

unique at the time is most homes at that

77

time had what we call a hockey puck around thermostat on the wall.

78

You turned it up and down, and it only had two wires. And so

79

the challenge was, how do you run a clock and how do you have the

80

thermostat turn the heat on and off? Yeah. So we're able to

81

do both sending power to the thermostat and sending

82

the signal from the thermostat to the heat. That's what was unique. And it was

83

the first digital clock Thermostat. So my background's always been in

84

various types of controls. You talk a lot. And I want to make sure

85

if we get too in the technical weed, that we can bring it and simplify

86

it for folks, because there's a lot of things we're talking about here that are

87

important, and especially for indoor farming. You talk a lot about stability

88

versus just temperature. Can you explain that difference in simple

89

terms? Sure. So a lot of people are

90

trying to control the relative humidity in

91

a space, whether it's post harvest or

92

even in a grow room. And the challenge is

93

relative humidity is not a controllable

94

variable. It is made up of two components.

95

What's the temperature of the air? And what's the amount of

96

moisture in the air, which is measured in either

97

vapor pressure or dew point. If you know dew point, you

98

know vapor pressure. If you know vapor pressure, you know dewpoint. But those

99

are the two variables that make up what relative

100

humidity is. So if you change the temperature,

101

the relative humidity changes. If you change the amount of

102

moisture in the air, the relative humidity changes.

103

So controlling relative humidity directly

104

really doesn't exist as mathematical or science.

105

And best example I like to use is a bank loan.

106

All right? You get a monthly payment, and if you want to increase

107

or decrease your monthly payment, there's no dial

108

to turn up and down your monthly payment. You got to change the

109

terminal loan, the interested loan, or the principal of the

110

loan. Change any one of those three, and your monthly payment changes. But there's

111

no such thing as a dial to dial up and dial down your monthly

112

payment. Relative humidity is. Is the same thing. So

113

while people. Oh, I'm trying to control the relative

114

humidity. Well, it's nearly impossible

115

because one of two variables change. And then what happens is

116

they use equipment like air conditioners. And an air

117

conditioner, when you turn it on, does two things. It cools the

118

air and dries the air. And so

119

both of the components that make relative humidity are shifting

120

or they introduce dehumidifiers.

121

Well, a dehumidifier removes moisture from the air,

122

so it's lowering the vapor pressure, dew point, but at the same time, it's

123

raising the temperature of the air. So there's this conflict.

124

And very often if you've got a room that you have air conditioners

125

and dehumidifiers, the dehumidifier comes

126

on to remove moisture from the air. And while it's doing that,

127

yeah, it's removing moisture, but it's also warming the air.

128

So they're in competition with each other. Yeah. Now the air conditioner goes, hey, wait,

129

it's starting to get warm in here. I'm going to come on to cool the

130

air. But guess what? It's also removing moisture. And then the relative.

131

The dehumidifier is like, wait, the air is getting dry

132

or then I want it, I'm going to turn off. And so you wind

133

up in this crazy dance of the air conditioners,

134

the dehumidifiers. Now, what you might see is a

135

fairly stable relative humidity. And people are

136

claiming success. But what's really happening in the space is

137

the vapor pressure is going up and down as these pieces of equipment

138

are cycling on and off, because the temperature is doing things

139

simultaneously, which sort of caused a flat line

140

of relative humidity. But what we learned

141

is plants, they don't care about the relative

142

humidity. They're interested in the two components, what's the

143

temperature and what's the vapor pressure? Because in

144

growing, people talk about vpd, the

145

vapor pressure difference, and that is the difference of the

146

vapor pressure at the leaf surface and the vapor pressure

147

in the room when they're close, the water, the

148

vapor that's coming out of the stomata or the leaf is not

149

drawn away fast enough because the vapor difference is

150

too close. And so things can get moist under a

151

leaf. And that's where stock adding mold.

152

Yeah, Critters and things you don't want because it's a nice moist area

153

on the other side. And when you have all those systems clocking

154

on and off, it's obviously a lot of expenditure and energy as well, so.

155

Absolutely, because they're counteracting each other on the other side. If your

156

vapor pressure difference is too great. Now what happens is

157

the plant is losing moisture quickly, so it starts

158

bringing up moisture up through the roots at a faster rate. Well,

159

that means it's bringing up the nutrients at a faster rate. And now

160

you can wind up overfeeding, poisoning the plant with too

161

much nutrients. Yeah, that's a good point. And so if your vapor

162

pressure in the room is doing this, the poor plant is like,

163

whoa, which way do you want me to go? And they're looking at, oh, but

164

we're holding a flat relative humidity. That's a good explanation.

165

Thank you for that. So you solved it for cheese and you were about to

166

mention how that turned into charcuterie and dry aged steak. Yeah.

167

So, you know, what it came down to is holding a constant vapor

168

pressure in the space to remove the free available

169

water. And with shelf stable products, they're looking for a point,

170

0.6 water activity. At a 0.6 water activity,

171

molds and microbes can't grow. And it's a unit of measure that

172

expresses how much water is bound and

173

unbound in the product. Okay. And it is the

174

unbound water that things grow on

175

and feed on the mole, the microbes. And once you get to

176

a point six water activity, there no longer is

177

enough unbound water for them to survive. And that's how you, how

178

would you define unbound water? That. The concept of that, that is

179

water that's not bound up in cellular structure. Okay. It's

180

free, available. Okay. So it's just there for other things to

181

grab onto and feed. Once you get rid of that, yeah, it's still

182

in the product, but the microbes and mold

183

can't get to it to feed. And then you have a shelf stable product.

184

So take cheese or charcuterie, the same thing. You

185

know what they're after is they want, those are about shelf stable

186

products. And then you get usda, fda,

187

they want to know what the water activity of that product is so they know

188

when the consumer gets it, it's going to be shelf stable. And not

189

when you cut into that salami, it's rancid in the middle because there

190

was still unbound water for microbes to grow on. They use

191

other salts and other things to help the process for

192

shelf stability. But being involved in the food

193

industry and learning about water activity,

194

bound and unbound water, it was like, wait a second.

195

Cannabis flower? Yeah. Why are they trying the

196

cannabis flower? Well, you can't smoke it

197

when it's freshly picked. It's too wet, it won't burn. And if

198

you try and store it, it's going to go moldy. So

199

people dry it. But now we've learned

200

about the science of shelf stability and what's really

201

going on. So that's when we said, hey, let's apply

202

this technology, the vapor troll technology, which we

203

called it, to a cannabis flower and see what happens. Our first

204

challenge was no one was going to give us a giant room,

205

a flower to play with, you know, because we were. Everything we did was on

206

a large scale for sure. Cheese makers, charcuterie makers. It's

207

big, big rooms with thousands and thousands of pounds of

208

product in there that's drying. So we realized no

209

one's going to give us that much flour to play with, nor did we knew

210

what the outcome was. So that's when we built a prototype and we

211

purchased a wine cooler and stripped it out, just used the

212

insulated box with the door and put a couple of thousand dollars worth

213

of controls on it, Gave it to a grower and said, put some

214

flour in there and tell us what happens. Is it going to destroy?

215

It does nothing. And sure enough, two weeks later, he's like,

216

I don't know what this box is, but this is some of the finest flour

217

I've ever produced. He's, like, hanging on to it. I'm not going to give it

218

back. And that's when we knew we were onto something. How long did

219

that process take for him to see that result? It was like a week or

220

two, because you get, you know, smokable flower in about eight days.

221

Okay, but interesting. You know, we've always said, oh, about eight days.

222

But as now there's more and more of this technology

223

out there, more and more people are using it. We're starting to learn a

224

lot of interesting things because now there's a reference standard.

225

You can. It's repeatable and consistent.

226

So now you can do experiments because at

227

least you know, the dry cure is always going to be the same.

228

Okay. And so what's come out of this is now

229

people are starting to see that different

230

cultivars need different amounts of time

231

until they're optimum and they're at their peak. So

232

early on, we said, yeah, four days will get you to your point. Six water

233

activity. And you like to see another four days before you got nice

234

smokeable product. But once we started getting to

235

a broad global audience, people, well, you

236

ruined my flower. I had it in the eight days. It's terrible.

237

And then we started learning, oh, that cultivar might need 30

238

days. Now all of a sudden, we're like, oh, you know what? We're not much

239

different than the wine industry. Then the cheese industry

240

and Bridget, you know. Yeah, this. You pay

241

a premium for longer age, Bridget. Yeah. Than young

242

prosciutto. Yeah. And a wine. The fine. You know, certain

243

wines age better over time. Not all.

244

Guess what? Cultivar specific. Now people are starting

245

to learn. The same thing applies to cannabis. It's an

246

agricultural product. And cultivar to cultivars. Different take

247

different time. You also mentioned trichomes. Can you explain what those are

248

and why preserving them is so critical? Well, you know, just

249

like you grow a vineyard and you have your

250

grapes and you squeeze, you know, you're going after the

251

juice in the grape. And a cannabis plant,

252

the trichome is where the THC and

253

CBDs and terpenes and all of those are

254

produced. They these little bulbous Glands,

255

they're on the ends of stalks. A lot of people have seen trichome

256

pictures. Pretty much all plants have trichomes.

257

Even a lemon zest, you know, you're breaking into the outer

258

trichomes. And the trichomes and plants are a

259

defense mechanism in multiple ways. Different fronts, different

260

plants. But part of it is the terpenes are good

261

because they smell. And certain predators, bugs,

262

whatever, might not like that smell. And so when the little

263

trichome heads burst, the little exploding bombs,

264

the predator who touches it goes, this is nasty. And leaves

265

also, it's sticky and they might get trapped there and

266

they're done. So they're also on. The cannabis plant

267

are known to protect the plant from UV light.

268

It's sort of like a whole forest of little sunscreen

269

things there. But what do we grow the plant for? We want to

270

harvest what's in the trichome heads, whether we smoke

271

it, whether we press it, whether we extract it.

272

But that's where it is now, what we're learning.

273

So it started with we did that first unit and it was like,

274

wow, this is some of the best flower I've ever produced. And then did another

275

and another and everyone kept coming back. This is amazing. The flower

276

smokes amazing. It's, it's not over dry, it's

277

consistent, it tastes great. So the first thing we did is

278

we went out and did some side by side analytics and

279

saw that at terpenes were much higher than

280

the way people were conventionally trying and curing using

281

air conditioners, dehumidifiers, hanging in a barn, hanging in the

282

basement, whatever. Yeah, we were consistently higher in terpenes, which is also

283

a bonus. Yeah, yeah. For cannabis. So then

284

we're like, why? And so then we started doing the research

285

on the whys and it took quite a bit of time.

286

But ultimately what we learned is when you try

287

with conventional methods, the little trichome heads,

288

which are called the cuticles, ruptured. And that was where

289

the loss of the terpenes and everything was going.

290

And we did it two different ways. The researchers one

291

first stumbled upon this by doing grid counts under a microscope

292

using vapor troll technology for drying flower

293

compared to conventional like 60, 60 method of drying. And

294

they like, wow, 25 to 30% of the trichome

295

heads are ruptured conventional. And only 1 to 2% of them

296

are ruptured using the vapor troll technology.

297

Then they re approached it using chroma photography,

298

knowing that ruptured trichomes change in color. And

299

that backed up what the grid counts were. Okay, so now we

300

knew we have higher terpene retention because

301

of the non rupturing of the trichome heads.

302

Now that raises the next question,

303

the next why? Yeah. Okay. And

304

what we don't know yet is whether the trichome

305

heads are rupturing because in conventional

306

systems the vapor pressure is fluctuating

307

up and down. And is that causing the trichome head

308

to flex? Every time the vapor pressure goes down around

309

it, it expands the vapor pressure around that goes up, it

310

contracts. And is that fluctuating vapor

311

pressure causing stress fractures? Because it's

312

only two cell walls thick to break, or

313

we're maintaining a constant stable vapor pressure.

314

Is it allowing the cuticle, those two cell walls to

315

either harden or ripen? We really don't know. Or a

316

combination of both. And you're able to do the measurement

317

of tracking or maybe not yet of the vapor pressure as it

318

fluctuates? Oh, yeah. At the same time, while you're, you're

319

looking at the, at the cell walls that we haven't gotten to. Okay, all

320

right. Okay. We haven't. This is only the results.

321

Yeah. That it's subject to fluctuation or

322

constant over a period of days. So you're still doing. So further

323

testing is every day we're gutting

324

further and further into us. In the past in Legacy,

325

there was dry was a step

326

then cure and. Well, why? Well, because

327

if you put it in a barn, if you put it in a room

328

with air conditioning or dehumidifiers, it's constantly

329

going to dry. The water is going to keep leaving it and

330

you're going to wind up with overdrive dust. So

331

at some point you got to make the call and say

332

it's dry enough and move it into

333

some sealed containers to arrest the drying process.

334

And up until now that has been a touchy

335

feely, you know, snap the stems.

336

When do I. Because if you don't go by instinct. Yeah. You're

337

gonna over dry it. So you gotta then put it in jars or

338

totes or bags. Yeah, turkey bags. So the curing

339

is essentially halting the drying process. You're

340

removing it from the drying area to stop the drying process. Yeah.

341

But then what's happening there? Well, people would move

342

out of the drying space and if they took it out too soon

343

or if the big Kohlers still had

344

unbound water in it where the smaller didn't and they

345

put it in a sealed vessel, well, they might get mold

346

because they haven't dried it sufficiently. So what do they. Do

347

they burp? They open the jar to let out that

348

extra moisture. But I ask them, yeah, but in

349

Florida, in August, you open the jar, which way is

350

the water going? Added a jar into the jar, versus

351

Minnesota in January, where the air is

352

so bone dry, that flower might be perfectly dried. You're going to open the jar

353

and whatever moisture you have left in there, you're going to let out and then

354

seal it and the flower is going to further dry. I'm in Minnesota, so I

355

can vouch for that. Exactly. But what we're doing by

356

holding the vapor pressure constant, there's no

357

ending the drying process. The flour comes to

358

equilibrium with the vapor pressure in the space and just stays

359

there. So you no longer have to move it. Okay. You don't have to.

360

And so now drying is a

361

continuum. Right. Into cure and

362

store. Yeah. You eliminate that labor, you

363

eliminate the guesswork. We like to say it's sous vide

364

for weed. Oh, anyone in the restaurant industry would

365

know about the sous vide. Right. Because it doesn't matter if you got a little

366

steak or a big steak, you put them into the tank of water at your

367

finished temperature, they both get there and are in equilibrium.

368

And you can leave them there. They don't get overcooked. We're doing the same thing

369

with vapor pressure with a flour. That's great.

370

So what was interesting is that I imagine this results in higher

371

yield, better quality, longer shelf life. Like all of the above. All of the

372

above. A reduction in labor, and then that all turns

373

into, well, okay, higher yield. That interests people.

374

Because we'll go into a facility and measure their current flower that they're

375

shipping and seeing they're drying it to maybe a 0.5 water

376

activity instead of 0.6, and they're walking away

377

5 to 7% of their top line revenue by

378

overdrying. And a lot of them are doing that because they're

379

concerned about mold. So they're willing to sacrifice

380

all that revenue knowingly or unknowingly?

381

Yeah. So when you're having these conversations and you're heading into

382

these meeting with these, these farmers and these growers, is

383

it like a light bulb moment for them? What's the real world impact that it's

384

having? What's interesting is to see the nodding heads

385

as you explain the challenges of pulling it out of the

386

dryer room and someone goes in there on Friday and goes,

387

wow, you know, if we leave it till Monday, it's going to be overdrive.

388

But we can't pull it now. Do we bring people in over the weekend? Do

389

we leave it? You know, and then all of a sudden it's like, that's no

390

longer a discussion, it's no longer an issue. Just leave it there till Thursday,

391

Friday, whenever. If you follow the sous vide example,

392

higher yield. Yeah. That drops right to the bottom line. You

393

spent the money on energy, labor, your genetics,

394

your nutrient, every. All your overheads are paid, and now you have

395

an opportunity to pick up another 5 to 7%, depending on how

396

much you're overdrying the flower. And then more important

397

is the quality of the flower. You know, the industry has been going

398

through a race to the bottom. And yeah, look at

399

the beer world 40, 50 years ago when

400

you had the Budweisers and the Pabst Blue Ribbons and,

401

you know, just the major beers. And then came about

402

craft beer. And quickly, guess what? A consumer

403

today will pay more for four cans of beer that they will for a

404

whole suitcase of Budweiser. Of course. Yeah. All right. And

405

so, yes, the consumer is willing to pay a premium price

406

for quality product, but you need to deliver a

407

quality product. You just can't say it's a quality product. And when you deliver

408

it, when they come back for more, it's got to be the same quality product.

409

And with conventional systems, there's too many variabilities

410

because of what time of year is. It has a great impact

411

on their dry rooms where we give them

412

consistent product year round, no matter what the climate is. So all of

413

a sudden now you can start seeing the Coca Cola

414

model for the msos. So someone who's growing

415

and using our tech for dry cure in Florida will

416

be able to deliver exactly the same product in Denver, Colorado, which

417

is known for Colorado crunch. That's huge. It seems like

418

obviously, like a lot of agriculture is still operating on a tradition

419

of approximation and using traditional tactics.

420

And we're moving to a world where everything is becoming

421

controlled and predictable. Yes. And that's key, is getting

422

proper control over it. A lot of people think they

423

have control. Yeah. But really when you dig into

424

it, it's a false sense of having control.

425

When you really start digging into the numbers and graphing what's

426

going on with the vapor pressure in the space, what's going on with the temperature

427

in the space, a lot of it is dependent. If you think about the wine

428

industry and teas industry, you know, people who probably have

429

tons of experience or just knows an olfactory

430

sense that is like way above, you know, normal, or the people that work in

431

perfume industry, like, they have this sense of smell, so they can operate on instinct

432

because their. Their. Their. Their senses are so heightened. But that's not

433

the case. And you can't really replicate that because it's dependent on one person.

434

That's an amazing point. And, you know, you talk about the person at

435

facilities, the turnout, really good flour, and

436

they're the person that says, okay, it's dry enough.

437

Let's arrest the drying process and move it to cure. And I equate

438

that to someone who's on the line cooking steaks at a

439

steakhouse, and he's been there for years. And every steak goes out

440

exactly the way the customer wants it. Medium, well, medium rare,

441

rare, you name it, he never misses. And then he gets sick one

442

day, and they get grabbed the guy on the dish line

443

and say, stand here. Put the steaks on the grill.

444

And then there's if, you know, in the restaurant world, it's like you point to

445

your hand, and if the steak feels like this, it's medium. If it points

446

like this as well. The thumb test. Right. Well, guess what?

447

Probably more than half the steaks are going to come back. Oh, yeah. Because they're

448

not cooked right. So, yeah, it can be done, but then you're depending

449

on the. This one person. Yeah. Versus point of failure. Yeah. Back

450

to sous vide. You put them in, they can be cooked Exactly. To the right

451

temperature. Not that sous vide is a substitute for what you can

452

do on a grill, but you get the concept there.

453

So at indoor Icon, you know, obviously, as you were moving and

454

explaining the benefits for the cannabis space, were you able to have

455

conversations with other growers? Do you see applications, or are people

456

interested in doing this? Are there other crops that are coming up? I'm curious

457

what your insights were, what those conversations were like at the conference. Yeah. One that

458

we'd love to find someone to work with is hops.

459

Okay. Turns out hops and the cannabis plant are very

460

closely related. You know, when you start understanding

461

terpene profiles, there's many beers. If you take a good

462

smell, you're like, oh, that's got a lot of cannabis terpene

463

notes and stuff like that. And the hops has a lot of terpenes in

464

it. But what is the industry doing now to dry

465

hops? They're heating it, and terpenes boil

466

off at fairly low temperature. So they're probably

467

boiling off a good chunk of the terpenes in hops.

468

And so what we're trying to do is find someone that we can work with

469

that's willing to take a batch of hops, dry it with

470

our technology and make some beer with it. Now, what might

471

turn out is people go, this beer is disgusting.

472

Because they never had beer with that many terpenes

473

retained in the hops. Or the other side

474

might be, oh my, I've never had a beer this good. This is

475

amazing. Because they never had a beer that was able to express

476

all the terpenes that were originally in the hops. We don't know

477

which way it's going to go, but it's definitely worth a try.

478

What was your take on the indoor farming, the broader indoor

479

farming industry, from seeing all the vendors there and you know, all

480

the challenges people are having. And obviously there's been a lot of

481

news about failures in the space. And I think because people were coming at it

482

from a technology play as opposed to realizing, hey, it's actually, you're a farmer, you

483

need to grow. Yeah. And you need to have a crop that's profitable. So I'm

484

curious what your take on the overall industry was. Wait, you know, I

485

was walking around because, you know, we're doing all this work on vapor

486

pressure VPD on the grow side and quickly

487

learned the space is pretty crowded with people bringing

488

in controls into the space. And I think

489

there is a gap between, as you said,

490

the farmer growing it and the people who are doing

491

controls. And very often that control

492

thought process backgrounds comes out

493

of the comfort cooling and heating

494

side of the world. You know, if you look at the industry, the

495

bulk of equipment sold air conditioners,

496

dehumidifiers, they've always been built and designed for

497

comfort cooling. And then now people are modifying them

498

for indoor ag, greenhouse, that type of

499

thing instead of taking a whole new approach as,

500

okay, what is the process requirements? And that's what

501

makes us unique is we are a process

502

system that's designed for the process of

503

getting your proper product to the right water activity

504

for shelf stability versus applying conventional

505

comfort cooling equipment to accomplish it. Because, well,

506

we had the discussion with air conditioning all over the place and fire

507

no where, you know, what our technology was developed and

508

does, is gives and our patents are about

509

is independent control of what's called latent and

510

sensible heat. Sensible heat is the temperature of the air.

511

Latent heat is the amount of moisture in the air. Conventional air

512

conditioners and dehumidifiers have a fixed sensible

513

latent ratio or can be moved slightly. We give

514

independent control of the two. So you create really zero in on

515

what the plants need or what the product that you're

516

doing post harvest needs. You also hinted at something bigger,

517

layering AI on top of this environmental control. What would that

518

unlock? It's going to. And what we're looking at is the

519

AI to analyze what the plants are doing

520

as a feedback for the control system. Okay.

521

Yeah, but it's still a little early because

522

first we have to get the controls in

523

place and working and then you use AI to

524

tune it. In the end, do you see a future where these environments are essentially

525

self optimized based on the crop? Yes, it will get there,

526

but like anything else over the years,

527

it's going to have to do with sensor placement and

528

how the sensors are reading. Because as we all

529

know, garbage in, garbage out. Yeah. And if

530

you have sensors that are not getting the right readings or the readings

531

are skewed or off for whatever reason,

532

well, your result is not going to be optimal. Yeah, it seems

533

like the future looks really interesting when you combine

534

precise environmental control with machine learning over

535

time. Yep, that's going to be good. But it still needs some

536

tweaking. What I learned early on when we were playing with

537

VPD in grow rooms, asked about, well, how

538

does the plant express itself if your VPD is

539

too high or too low? And then it came back to,

540

well, those are the same symptoms as too

541

much or too little nutrient in the plant. Yes.

542

Well, then it was like, well, wait, if your VPD

543

is too high, the plant's going to take up more

544

nutrients, so you're overfeeding the plant.

545

So now is it the result of your

546

ratio of nutrients to water or do you fix your

547

VPD to get it in place and then fix.

548

But both of those the plant expresses in

549

its tips of the leaf and color and stuff similarly. So

550

an AI, you know, is it going to adjust the nutrient level

551

or is it going to adjust the VPD level? Because either one

552

of them can cause a similar result if you're not.

553

And that requires to some degree a good

554

farmer who talks to his plants and is going to walk in there and goes,

555

hey girls, you're happy or you don't look happy today,

556

what's your problem? And they know, they'll know. All right, this

557

is what we need to tweak. And so they can tweak it and then teach

558

the AI a lesson. Yeah, because it's hard to

559

replace that industry knowledge, that crop knowledge, that decades and

560

decades of experience being in a grower, you know, it's. That's

561

not something you can easily translate. You know, it's a Lot of it is instinctual,

562

but over time you have a gut call like, and they are living things and

563

you're engaging with them as living things. And I think that's important to

564

remember. Yeah. Just this past weekend, being a

565

bit of a science and food nerd, went to an Alton Brown

566

show, who was the celebrity, and he

567

spoke about AI can't cook. And it

568

was great. He, you know, took a hundred index cards of various

569

ingredients, mixed them up, pulled out 10 and said to AI, okay, give

570

me a recipe. Yeah. Using these 10 ingredients. It was

571

hysterical, you know. Yeah. I can't imagine what turned out.

572

So where is an industry or application where you think this technology will show up

573

next that people wouldn't expect? Oh, and

574

you know, in post harvest, we're looking at tea. Oh, yeah.

575

It's fascinating, you know, starting to look at

576

tea as, you know, white tea, green tea, black tea.

577

And then we learn it's all the same plant. And what differentiates

578

them is the steps during post harvest. Yeah. And a lot

579

of these steps that have been going on for hundreds,

580

thousands of years. And we're watching and it's going, oh, we thrash

581

it. Oh, no, you're not, you're breaking the trichome heads.

582

So that could be a very interesting world for us to really start to

583

explore next. But for us, the most

584

exciting part is watching the cannabis

585

industry start to realize that, yes, there's

586

been so much work done growing the plant and yet

587

nothing done on post harvest. Yeah. So

588

I'm curious about your kind of day to day. You probably wear a lot of

589

hats in your role as CEO. And there's always challenges, as

590

there are with any exciting project like the one you're working on now. What's a

591

tough question you've had to ask yourself recently? Well, first, thank you for

592

the promotion, CEO, coo. The

593

tough question is how do we

594

get the legacy folks to embrace

595

change? And what we see is so many people who

596

are doing really well with their legacy methods,

597

who can do much better, are afraid of change to a

598

degree because they're not 100% sure

599

why what they're doing is working. Because it might not all be

600

backed in science. It's back to that touchy

601

feely, the farmer feeling. But here we've got

602

more science going for you to get you more repeatable

603

and consistent results. Yeah. So for someone listening

604

who's a grower, an operator or a producer, what's the one

605

thing you'd want them to rethink about their current process,

606

to see what current Science is available

607

and their science and other industries that have been

608

around for a really long time are proven and work. For

609

example, water activity, the food industry

610

for decades, the pharmaceutical industry for decades,

611

even museums look at water activity to make sure their

612

rare documents aren't devoured by mold. Yet

613

in the cannabis world, people are still talking about percent moisture.

614

And it really is not a good unit of measure to

615

know you have shelf stable products.

616

So it's shifting away from those legacy

617

methods and going into the more solid science of this.

618

That makes a lot of sense. Well, I really appreciate your team. Again, like I

619

said, reaching out and this deep dive into understanding, you know, a lot of things

620

about this growing process is there. You know, obviously you've got your hands full

621

with cannot troll. But as a tinkerer and as a scientist and as someone

622

who likes to learn new technologies, are there other things that

623

you're kind of working on in the background should. Why are you

624

thinking new ideas all the time? I imagine right now it's here. This is all

625

consuming, but it's different platforms.

626

Okay. And different configurations of the technology

627

to fit different market segments, you know. So

628

we have our cool cure home grow unit, which is good

629

for the home grower. It'll take a plant of about a little over two

630

pounds, two and a half pounds. And then we got our first

631

kits, but those start at about 160,

632

180 pounds. So we're coming out with

633

products to fill that gap, which is going to be more

634

targeted to, let's say the social clubs in Germany, to people

635

who have larger home grow. So that's where a lot of our

636

time is right now, to get all of these new products out the door.

637

So you do have a unit for a home grower or a solo home grower?

638

Yes, that's our cool cure unit. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And we've shipped those all

639

over the world. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure the people who might want to try their

640

hand at the tech, that'd probably be a good place to start. Yeah, absolutely.

641

Well, David, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. Where's

642

the best place for folks to learn more and to connect with you? If they

643

go to our website cannot trolls.com with an S.

644

We have lots of white papers and scientific information.

645

So when we say it's better, we won't say it's better unless we

646

have technical documents that

647

prove and explain what the outcome is and why we can say it's better. That's

648

all on our website. We're also on all the social media

649

platforms, LinkedIn and

650

the whole round of them. We're there. Well make sure all those links are in

651

the show Notes. Thanks again for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation and for

652

sharing your insights with our audience. It's great and I look forward to meeting again.

653

Likewise. Thanks.