On the heels of America’s largest Cannabis business conference, I witness Halle Pennington place a joint for storage within a manila envelope, a reminder of how organized and business-minded she is.
As the products executive for Humboldt Seed Company, Pennington is embedded in data management. This becomes most clear on the company’s annual traveling pheno hunt adventure quests, which have taken place since 2018. Through the pheno hunts and the extensive process Humboldt Seed Company undergoes to release new strains, the Northern California-based company makes calculated moves that go on to define the taste profiles in Cannabis worldwide.
“As much as the whole operation kind of feels like my baby, the pheno hunt has always kind of been my special project,” Pennington said. “The first year that we really got to enjoy the benefits of legal Cannabis was 2018, and we were able to go out and take 10,000 plant cuttings — which I actually took two of each, so I individually that year took 20,000 — and we’ve progressed to do large-scale pheno hunts since then.”
When grown from seed, Cannabis plants with the same genetic lineage can express different physical characteristics or phenotypes. During the pheno hunts, members of the Humboldt Seed Company team are joined by invited guests to gather data point information on individual plants in the field. The process involves traveling to a number of farms across different growing locations and assessing which plants best represent the characteristics Humboldt Seed Company is looking for as a Cannabis breeder.
The 2025 pheno hunt took on a new challenge in searching for strains that will produce well for Cannabis concentrates, aka “washers.” This addition to the pheno hunt meant adding a second spreadsheet for data collection, with inputs specifically for Cannabis concentrates, like the greasiness of the trichome texture on the flowers and whether the trichome necks were strong — which isn’t great for hash making — or weak.
“We’re evolving that process, looking for new cultivars that meet market demand and learning about things that, quite frankly, I don’t even know a ton about, which keeps the job interesting,” Pennington said.
Pennington’s dad, Humboldt Seed Company’s co-founder and CEO, Nat Pennington, is a fisheries biologist, and Halle Pennington said a background in fisheries genomics was a huge part of her childhood. Most of her Cannabis breeding knowledge comes from hands-on experience with the plants, coupled with a basic education in business and a passion for the work.
“The reality is that the Cannabis plant and the industry itself are so quickly evolving, and to be a part of the industry as it’s at this peak point of evolution, we’re able to now apply serious numbers, lab work and massive amounts of data we weren’t looking at before,” she said. “It’s showing us new things about the plant, which is what’s always kept me super interested.”
Looking toward the future of Cannabis culture, Halle Pennington predicts that consumers will continue to show more involvement in which types of strains they want to consume.
“There are so many new consumers and so many people who are feeling the freedom of being able to just actually be open about Cannabis consumption and using it medicinally for the first time in so long,” she said. “There was a gap in that and consumer education for a while, and so you were seeing a lot of people driven to go by what just had the highest THC numbers on the shelf.”
Halle Pennington said she’s now seeing more consumers asking educated questions and getting to know how their Cannabis is sourced.
“Consumption is obviously what drives any production industry,” she said. “At the end of the day, we can all say we only produce what we want to produce and what we know is good. But if consumers aren’t consuming it, that’s only going to last so long. So, for me, making sure people are getting educated and seeing people come in and ask bigger questions, it really gives me hope.”
