Jennifer Michaels, Co-Founder and CEO of NorCal Seeds & Genetics – Interview Series

Almost any cannabis cultivator will stress the importance of cannabis genetics—a fascinating corner of botanical science. Just like any fruit or vegetable with a rich diversity of species and phenotypes, consumers have their own preferences regarding the strains and genetics they enjoy most. However, as the cannabis industry evolves, iconic strains that have become classics in their own right—as well as pure landrace strains—are at constant risk of disappearing. As complex hybrids and once-unthinkable cross-strains multiply, these original landraces face an even greater threat. Fortunately, an ongoing project is dedicated to conserving these genetics and deepening research into these foundational strains.

To better understand the vital importance of landraces and legacy genetics cultivated long before the legal market existed, MyCannabis.com spoke with Jennifer Michaels, Co-Founder and CEO of NorCal Seeds & Genetics.

What were some of the most worthwhile courses you took in your MBA program at North Park University? How has that degree helped with the business side of running NorCal Seeds & Genetics?

I earned my MBA at North Park University, along with additional certificates in Organizational Development Studies and Entrepreneurship. Some of my most valuable courses included Building High Performance Teams, Change Management, Ethical Leadership and Strategic Management, and Conflict Management and Negotiation.

That education has been invaluable throughout my career. Running a business requires much more than understanding your product. It’s about leadership, building relationships, managing change, making strategic decisions, and knowing how to bring the right people together. Those skills have been especially important as we’ve expanded our work into scientific research, preservation, and genetic validation.

When did your advocacy for cannabis and eventual interest in cannabis genetics and cultivars first begin? How has cannabis helped you and your loved ones?

When I met my husband, Jay, in Chicago in 1997, I really didn’t know much about cannabis. I wasn’t even a consumer at the time, aside from occasionally trying it during college. Jay, on the other hand, had an incredible knowledge of the plant’s history, cultivars, culture, and community. He was deeply involved in the early hemp advocacy movement, including the Coalition for Hemp Awareness (CHA), alongside pioneers such as Christie Bohling, Patrick Lange and Jack Herer.

I’ve always been naturally curious. As a photographer, I tend to look at life through different lenses, and I’ve always enjoyed exploring things I don’t fully understand. Through Jay, I was introduced to a passionate community of advocates, cultivators and breeders dedicated to protecting the plant, preserving its culture and fighting for access and legalization.

We began attending the High Times Cannabis Cup together that same year, lived in Amsterdam in 2001 and eventually made our way to California a few years later. For nearly 30 years, we’ve followed this plant and the movement together, witnessing its evolution from an underground culture and advocacy movement into a global industry.

Along the way, I began to appreciate the plant on a much more personal level. I’ve experienced its benefits firsthand and witnessed how it improved the quality of life of loved ones who relied on it as medicine.

What began as curiosity and an introduction to an unfamiliar world eventually grew into a passion for cultivation, breeding and preserving the remarkable genetic diversity of this plant.

Although it’s obviously far more known for vineyards and wineries, why is Sonoma County a great location to grow and harvest cannabis plants as well? Why is the climate so ideal, and what other environmental factors greatly benefit cannabis cultivation?

Sonoma County has an extraordinary agricultural environment, with varying elevations, temperatures, coastal influences, and microclimates. Those differences create opportunities to observe how individual cultivars respond to different growing conditions.

Much like wine grapes, cannabis cultivars can express themselves differently depending on their environment. Temperature, sunlight, soil conditions, and cultivation practices can all influence plant development, terpene expression, and overall performance.

Working with the same genetics across different environments gave us a much better understanding of which cultivars were adaptable and which performed best under specific conditions. It’s one of the things that made cultivating and breeding in Sonoma County so interesting.

How did your work with Crystal Garden Farms further strengthen your interest and experience in understanding the many scientific aspects of cannabis genetics and cultivars?

When we moved to Sonoma Valley, I became fascinated by the region’s agricultural diversity and the relationship between wine, terroir, and cannabis. At Crystal Garden Farms, our Proposition 215 cultivation operation, I managed cultivation, propagation and breeding activities while observing how our genetics performed across different elevations and microclimates.

Because we were breeders, we wanted to create something that genuinely reflected the character of Northern California wine country. We worked hard to develop and stabilize a series of proprietary cultivars with distinctive aromas, flavors, colors, and characteristics inspired by wine varietals. It wasn’t simply about branding or giving cultivars wine-inspired names. We were intentionally selecting and refining genetics to achieve those characteristics.

That became one of the things that differentiated us. Through Wine Country Cannabis Company and our Sonoma Appellation Soirées, we brought together intentional breeding, sensory appreciation, hospitality and the region’s agricultural culture.

Those years taught me how much patience, observation and consistency go into developing distinctive genetics. They also reinforced my appreciation for the relationship between a cultivar’s genetic potential, its environment and its unique expression.

When did you see the need to start NorCal Seeds & Genetics and a cannabis genetics repository? How are some cannabis genetics at risk of becoming either extinct or almost nonexistent as the cannabis industry expands?

For us, it has always been about the seeds and genetics. After decades of collecting, cultivating and breeding, we understood how easily valuable genetics could disappear. But the 2017 Tubbs Fire changed everything.

We lost our home and cultivation operations, but fortunately, our house didn’t burn until about a week after the fire began, giving us time to rescue our seed bank. We weren’t as fortunate with our pollen collection, which we had to rebuild. Today, that pollen bank is stronger than ever.

That experience shifted our focus toward preserving what we had saved, continuing to build our collection and bringing science into the process. Within a couple of months of the fire, we began collaborating with Steep Hill Labs’ research and development team under the direction of Chief Science Officer Dr. Reggie Gaudino.

Genetics can disappear surprisingly easily. Seed viability declines, breeding lines are discontinued, mother plants are lost, and commercially popular cultivars often replace older, irreplaceable genetics. Once that diversity is gone, it may never be recovered.

NorCal Seeds & Genetics grew from our commitment to protecting that diversity. Today, our repository contains thousands of rare, legacy and proprietary cultivars representing decades of collecting, breeding and preservation.

The fire reinforced something I’ve never forgotten: you can’t preserve what you’ve already lost.

From your experience, why are cannabis genetics and cultivar selection so crucial for cultivators? How do genetics and growing conditions influence desirable traits and terpene profiles?

Genetics establishes the potential of a plant, but the environment plays an important role in how that potential is expressed.

When you’ve worked with certain cultivars for years, you begin to understand their individual characteristics and what they need to perform at their best. Some respond differently to temperature, light, nutrition, or environmental stress.

Understanding those relationships helps us optimize plant health, terpene expression and overall quality. It’s also why evaluating genetics across multiple growing conditions is so valuable. Genetics and cultivation practices work together, but the environment cannot create genetic potential that isn’t there.

Throughout NorCal Seeds & Genetics’ operations and research, what characteristics have you found in the most reliable and adaptable cultivars? Why are those characteristics important for long-term breeding success?

One of our priorities has always been developing and maintaining strong, adaptable breeding populations and parental lines.

We look for genetic stability, vigor, resilience, and the ability to perform across a range of environmental conditions. Many of our breeding lines have demonstrated adaptability through years of cultivation and observation.

Rather than focusing on one particular commercial strain, we’re interested in the underlying genetics and the traits they can contribute to future breeding programs. A cultivar that performs exceptionally well in one environment may not perform the same way somewhere else. That’s why understanding adaptability and consistency is so important.

What have been some of the most fascinating observations you and your scientific partners have made while studying the genetics in your collection, including this year’s 580-cultivar and accession-line project?

This year, Jay and I witnessed something neither of us had ever encountered in our decades of cultivating and breeding cannabis. Among the genetics we’re evaluating is a Thai accession exhibiting an extraordinary variation in flower morphology. A single branch has developed characteristics remarkably similar to an OG-type cultivar, while the rest of the plant retains its distinctive Thai expression. The contrast is so striking that the branch almost appears to have been grafted onto the plant, although no grafting occurred.

It’s a fascinating observation that raises questions about somatic variation, genetic mosaicism and the mechanisms influencing phenotypic expression. We don’t yet know what’s responsible, but it’s precisely the kind of unexpected discovery that makes this work so exciting.

Over the years, our scientific collaborations have revealed other fascinating characteristics within our collection. Dr. Reggie Gaudino, formerly Chief Science Officer at Steep Hill Labs, was particularly impressed by the remarkable diversity of unusual terpene profiles in our genetics. He told us that we were ahead of the curve in developing these unique profiles and believed that chemical diversity represented one of the greatest strengths of our germplasm.

Our collaboration with the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) in Barcelona provided another important perspective. Their genetic analysis identified distinct genetic groupings among the samples we submitted, including several highly uniform lines with potential value as breeding parents.

For me, what’s especially rewarding is seeing decades of hands-on breeding and observation supported by independent scientific research. It reinforces the importance of preserving this diversity. And just when you think you’ve seen it all, a single plant reminds you how much more there is to discover.

From your experience, why is preserving rare landraces and other plant genetics so important for the future of cannabis cultivation and consumption?

Every time we lose a unique genetic line, we potentially lose traits that could be valuable for future breeding, scientific research or medicinal applications.

Landraces and legacy genetics can carry characteristics that aren’t necessarily found in today’s commercially popular cultivars, including unique chemical profiles, environmental adaptations, and potentially valuable resistance traits.

As the industry continues to commercialize, there’s a real risk of narrowing the genetic diversity available to future generations.

We don’t yet know the full potential of this plant and that’s precisely why preservation is so important.

How do you think the research conducted at your Yolo County R&D space will influence future cannabis cultivators, particularly those interested in landraces and cultivar development? What do you hope this research will reveal about these genetics over time?

Our current research involves 580 cultivars and genetic accession lines, including landraces, legacy genetics and proprietary breeding lines. It’s one of the most extensive preservation and validation efforts we’ve undertaken. We’re working to better characterize genetic diversity within and among populations, genetic uniformity, seed quality and the inheritance of important agronomic and phenotypic traits.

Landraces are particularly valuable because they represent populations shaped by generations of adaptation to specific environments. They may contain unique alleles and adaptive traits that could contribute to future breeding programs. Understanding and preserving that diversity is essential to maintaining a broad genetic foundation for the species.

We’re also expanding our chemical characterization through extended cannabinoid and terpene profiling, alongside comprehensive, untargeted metabolomic analysis. This approach allows us to investigate a much broader spectrum of specialized metabolites and chemical features beyond those routinely measured in conventional testing. Our goal is to characterize the chemical diversity within our collection, identify potentially distinctive chemotypes and metabolic signatures and explore relationships between genetic variation and metabolite expression.

This year, we also collaborated with the Canndor Herbarium to prepare pressed botanical specimens, creating permanent physical reference material that complements our genetic and chemical characterization.

Ultimately, our goal is to connect genetic identity, population diversity, phenotypic observations, chemical composition and documented provenance to better understand and preserve the germplasm in our collection.

The more thoroughly we characterize and preserve this diversity today, the greater its potential value for future breeding, scientific discovery and conservation.

Thank you for joining us, Jennifer! For more information on NorCal Seeds & Genetics, please visit its website.