Do you know of any groups that particularly represent genetic breeders in the industry? Closest thing I can think of is when the whole "Phylos Galaxy" thing was trying to gain steam (and look how that crashed and burned.)
There are none! As I noted, "Cannabis breeding (strain dev./seed manufacturing) lacks any meaningful trade and professional associations that typically get involved in organizing conferences, competitions, setting standards, etc."
Basic problems cannabis breeding has in becoming an actual industry, such as having real professional and trade associations, include:
a) Chaotic intellectual property situation, at least in the U.S., with patents essentially not given to plant strains. Anybody can use anyone else's seeds in breeding or can even just grow others' seeds and call resulting seeds their own. [Related to this, there is definite lack of real genetics and biotech R&D filtering into or being adopted by cannabis breeders. Breeders are still using centuries old and non-lab. testing-based methods. For ex., why isn't AFN talking about such things as CRISPR or
Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation (now years off-patent) improved strains, IPOs for new seed companies, home cannabis genetic engineering kits, etc.?]
b) Cups, competitions, conferences, festivals, etc. are inherently geographically limited, such as to within a state. Cannabis for judging can't legally be shipped or personally carried internationally or interstate.
