Canada Locked Farm Gas Genetics Until 2046

Canada granted Aurora Cannabis a 20-year plant right on Farm Gas on February 6, 2026. The cut is a medical cannabis variety with a 20.3% mean THC reading in the official trial, and the right runs through 2046.

U.S. breeders still cannot get the same USDA certificate on high-THC flower. A Justice Department rule moved licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III on April 28, 2026, which is the opening those filings were built to catch.

Aurora Locked Farm Gas Until 2046

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency lists Farm Gas under the denomination SOT20R07-007, certificate 7639. Andrew Hand of Aurora Cannabis Enterprises Inc. in Comox, British Columbia, is named as the breeder. Application day was February 28, 2022, which is also when provisional protection began.

The file is blunt about origin. The variety came from an unknown mixed population. First propagation was April 2020 at Aurora Coast. Final cuts were taken in February 2021. Selectors chased THC, terpenes, yield, and aroma, then locked the line as a vegetative clone.

Comparative trials ran in a Comox greenhouse in summer 2024: two replicates of 12 plants, 24 plants per variety, THC by HPLC. Farm Gas stood 96.4 cm tall against Purple Kush at 50.7 cm and Driftwood Diesel at 90.8 cm. Mean total THC sat at 20.3% against 10.1% and 24.7%.

CFIA TRIAL NUMBERS FOR FARM GAS

The same certificate carries an exemption from compulsory licensing through February 6, 2028, so Aurora can multiply stock before anyone can force a license. Rights then run to February 6, 2046. The 20.3 percent mean THC in official trials is now a government number, not a menu claim.

Aurora already held EU Community Plant Variety Rights, granted January 20, 2026, on Farm Gas and Sourdough (ACB21T044) across 27 member states. On May 14, 2026, the company said the Canadian grant gives it exclusive rights to grow, propagate, and sell finished product from Farm Gas and Driftwood Diesel. Both are core medical products in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

THE 2026 RIGHTS CALENDAR

1. January 20, 2026: The EU Community Plant Variety Office grants Aurora rights on Farm Gas and Sourdough.
2. February 6, 2026: CFIA grants Plant Breeders’ Rights on Farm Gas, certificate 7639, ending February 6, 2046.
3. April 28, 2026: A U.S. final rule moves licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III.
4. May 14, 2026: Aurora announces the Canadian grant and points to outlicensing as a growth path.

Lana Culley, Aurora’s vice president of innovation and international operations, said the EU-protected cuts let the company grow about 40% more flower in the same space as other varieties. She also said the firm would keep outlicensing proprietary genetics to third parties.

These plant breeders’ rights recognize the depth of work behind our leading breeding, genetic development and testing program. They reflect a disciplined, science-driven approach to developing cultivars that deliver consistency, performance and reliability for medical cannabis patients around the world.

Lana Culley, Vice President, Innovation and International Operations, Aurora Cannabis Inc., May 14, 2026 news release

That is the rent layer in plain language. A medical variety becomes a licensed asset you can keep, sell, or police for two decades.

The USDA Still Caps Protection at 0.3% THC

The U.S. analog is the Plant Variety Protection Act, run by the USDA Plant Variety Protection Office. The office issues certificates that protect varieties for 20 years (25 years for vines and trees) if the applicant proves distinctness, uniformity, and stability.

Hemp is on the crop list. High-THC marijuana is not, in practice. In March 2026 a USDA spokesperson said, “We protect hemp varieties that meet the legal limit of no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC.” The office would not talk about what rescheduling might change.

That 0.3% line is the 2018 Farm Bill hemp definition, not a breeding preference. After hemp left Schedule I, USDA began taking seed-propagated hemp PVP filings in April 2019 because it could finally store the required seed deposit. Patent lawyers at Sterne Kessler counted 19 hemp PVP certificates by late 2024. High-THC varieties stayed out because the deposit is a controlled substance problem as much as a paperwork problem.

WHAT USDA PVP STILL REQUIRES

• The term: Protection lasts 20 years from the certificate, 25 for vines and trees.
• The THC cap: Filings that move are hemp at or below 0.3% delta-9 THC.
• The test: Breeders must show distinctness, uniformity, and stability across cycles.
• The deposit: Seed goes to USDA storage, which has refused controlled-substance deposits.

Plant patents at the USPTO are a different door, and they already open for cloned marijuana. The gap that matters for seed-style rights, and for the farmer’s-exemption culture that PVP still carries, is the USDA window. Canada already ran that window for a 20.3% THC medical cut.

Who Pays When a Cultivar Carries a License

The how-to advice says independent breeders should file so corporations cannot. The cost of that advice does not land on the filer. It lands on the licensed medical channel that has to grow, buy, or avoid the protected cut.

Farm Gas is not a boutique hobby strain in Aurora’s telling. It is already in patient channels in five countries. Culley has described outlicensing as a business path. A 20-year exclusive on propagation is a price list waiting for a U.S. certificate that looks like Canada’s.

On April 28, 2026, the Justice Department and DEA placed state medical marijuana into Schedule III, along with FDA-approved marijuana drugs. Adult-use and unlicensed product stayed on Schedule I. An evidentiary hearing on moving the rest ran from June 29 through a July 15, 2026 record close. As of September 24, 2026, the administrative law judge had not posted a recommended decision, and the DEA administrator had not issued a final rule on the broader plant.

Schedule III does not make USDA take a high-THC seed deposit tomorrow. It does remove the cleanest reason the department had for treating medical flower as untouchable. Sterne Kessler’s 2024 note already flagged that shift as the event that could open PVP to high-THC varieties. The April rule put a large share of state medical canopy on the less-restricted schedule while breeders were still arguing about wait-and-see.

WHO INHERITS THE GENETICS BILL

• Licensed patients: Menus skew toward varieties a company can defend, and the license fee sits inside the flower price.
• Small licensed growers: A hot cut that leaks from a partner room is no longer a free clone; it is a plant you may not legally multiply.
• Garage-era selectors: They rarely have DUS packets, seed deposits, or $35,000 per utility filing for a whole library.
• Public companies: They already run multi-year trials and treat outlicensing as a line of business.

Jamie Pearson, president of Montana consultancy New Holland Group, put the geographic version of that squeeze in one sentence. “I worry that America’s legacy breeders will never enjoy the financial benefits of their work because European companies will protect those genetics before we can do it in the U.S.,” he said. The Canadian grant on February 6, 2026, made the same point without waiting on Brussels.

Dan Michaels, vice president of product at Jaunty, compared the coming stack to supermarket apples and branded hops: years of science wrapped in legal process. He also asked whether legacy breeders can challenge a publicly traded company when a “new” variety is a phenotype of an older, undocumented cut. That is the prior-art trap the medical market now walks into.

Farmers Paid to Sequence Genetics They Later Feared Losing

U.S. growers have seen this movie. In 2019 Phylos Bioscience held what it called the Galaxy, a genomic map built from grower samples. Phylos and allied write-ups put the set at about 3,000 samples from 80 countries. The pitch to farmers was prior art: publish DNA so a later patent could not pretend the plant was new.

In April 2019 Phylos said it would run its own breeding program. Farmers who had paid to sequence life’s work heard a supplier turning into a competitor with a private map of their cuts. Mowgli Holmes, then leading Phylos, had told an investor audience the company had a “really huge lead” from years of collecting data, and that it would be “releasing outrageous new cannabis varieties every few months” before big agriculture arrived.

The Open Cannabis Project, a nonprofit spun out of that world to fight overbroad patents, voted to dissolve. Beth Schechter, its executive director, announced the shutdown on May 6, 2019.

We sincerely believe in protecting small growers and breeders during this crucial transition to a legal market. We also feel we have been deceived.

Beth Schechter, Executive Director, Open Cannabis Project, May 2019 statement

The lesson was not that databases are useless. Public sequence can still knock down a sloppy patent. The lesson was that the party that can store, try, and file is the party that converts a shared library into a breeding lead. Canada’s 2026 certificates are that conversion with a government seal, aimed at medical flower rather than a slide deck.

A Leaked Clone Walks Past Any Contract

James Loud, founder and CEO of California’s James Loud Genetics, has more than 25 years in the sector and a library of more than 1,000 cultivars, including Italian Apple, Dark Sunset, and Chocolate Runtz. He uses tissue culture and advanced breeding. He is also planning years of work on plants built for pre-rolls and joints, which is a product problem as much as a flavor problem: shelf life, grind, and burn have to hold in a tube.

His working tool is not a USDA certificate. It is a material transfer agreement with licensed partners. Loud said those partners “cannot propagate or replicate, only cultivate,” and that the paper “prevents them from replicating without paying you.”

Dale Hunt, founder of Hunt IP Law in San Diego, said an attorney-drafted MTA is cheaper than a patent and weaker for the same reason clones move.

The biggest weakness is that it assumes your material is never going to leak out to someone who didn’t sign a contract with you. If I didn’t sign an MTA, and someone obtained a variety and sells it to me, and I don’t know it’s stolen, he can’t sue me for violating the MTA.

Dale Hunt, Founder and Senior Attorney, Hunt IP Law

That is the clone-market fact the patent brochure skips. Medical rooms still trade cuts. A contract binds the signer. It does not bind the third grower who bought a tray from someone who never signed. Hunt’s other warning is money: a utility patent can run up to $35,000, and a prolific breeder will not file dozens. The companies that will file dozens are the ones already running DUS trials in Comox and Brussels.

The unpaid-original-breeder complaint that keeps surfacing around these grants is pointing at the same hole. A strain can sit on medical shelves for years, get renamed, and still leave the first selector with no certificate and no defendant. Filing does not fix that for people who cannot fund the trial. It fixes it for the applicant who can.

Plant Patents and Variety Certificates Do Different Jobs

U.S. breeders are not empty-handed. They are holding three federal tools plus private paper, and only one of those federal tools is closed to high-THC flower.

The USPTO grants plant patents for asexually reproduced plants that are distinct and new. A cloned marijuana variety can qualify. A utility patent can cover a method, a trait, a composition, or a variety if the applicant can make any required biological deposit. Aurora already holds U.S. plant patents on named cannabis cultivars and, in June 2024, received U.S. Patent 12,002,546 on methods for spotting photoperiod sensitivity, the autoflower problem in breeding language.

PVP is the seed-and-variety certificate with a farmer’s-exemption flavor the patent system does not copy. MTAs are private. Trade secret only works if the cut never leaves the room, which is a fantasy in this crop.

FOUR TOOLS BREEDERS ACTUALLY USE

Jabari Shaw, an intellectual property attorney at Vorys in Cincinnati, has watched the split. Some operators want to wait on federal policy. Others want to copy Aurora. Federal illegality and hemp-product fights feed the pause. The Canadian file on Farm Gas feeds the sprint. Both camps are betting on the same USDA decision: whether a Schedule III medical variety can finally enter Fort Collins as a seed lot.

Pearson’s line still holds either way. “The most important genetics in the world have been developed without IP protection,” he said. “Aurora’s move to protect two strains in the EU demonstrates cannabis genetics are moving into that IP system.” Canada’s February grant put a North American seal on that move while U.S. medical canopy was being written into Schedule III.

Pre-Roll Breeding Still Runs on Private Contracts

Loud is not filing a Comox-style DUS packet on every dessert hybrid in a 1,000-plus library. He is writing cultivation-only contracts and breeding for a joint that still tastes like itself after it sits in a package. That is a rational read of Hunt’s fee schedule and of USDA’s 0.3% wall.

It is also a thin shield the day a licensed medical buyer in another state, or another country, wants a cut that already carries a 20-year right. Farm Gas does. Driftwood Diesel does. Sourdough does in the EU. Aurora has said it will keep pushing genetics that it can license. Patients in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia already meet those plants as medicine, not as a debate about prior art.

If USDA opens PVP to high-THC medical varieties after Schedule III, the winners will be the programs that already have trial data, deposits, and lawyers. The bill will show up in the licensed medical room as fewer free clones and more names that require a signature. Farm Gas is locked in Canada through February 6, 2046. The U.S. certificate window for a plant like it is still marked hemp.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of plant-rights filings, USDA rules, and federal scheduling actions. It is informational only and is not legal advice, patent counsel, or medical advice, and it is not a recommendation to file, license, grow, or use any protected variety. Readers who need to protect genetics or change a cultivation contract should consult a qualified intellectual property attorney licensed in the relevant jurisdiction, and patients should consult a clinician authorized to advise on medical cannabis. Figures, certificate dates, and scheduling status reflect the government and company records cited here and can change if USDA, CFIA, the USPTO, or DEA issue new orders.