THE ARCHIVE · SINCE 2016
Ten years of documented genetic lineage.
Founded in 2016 by Dr. Maria de Vries. Barcelona genetics lab opened 2020 under Dr. Joaquim Riera. The work is the archive.
Founded in 2016 by Dr. Maria de Vries. Barcelona genetics lab opened 2020 under Dr. Joaquim Riera. The work is the archive.
Lineage is operated by its two founders. Maria runs the business and the Amsterdam archive. Joaquim runs the Barcelona lab and hand-draws every family-tree diagram on every lineage card. No outside investors. No silent partners.
Maria’s 2016 founding came after eight years of cannabis genetics archival work that began as a personal project at Wageningen. Her doctoral research on heritage tomato landrace stabilization translates directly to the discipline Lineage applies to cannabis.
Maria runs the business, the catalog, the Amsterdam archive house, and every long-horizon genetic decision. She has never appeared in cannabis press; her name is not on the lineage card. The work is.
Reference: thinks cannabis genetics documentation is approximately forty years behind wine-grape clone documentation and operates Lineage as a remediation of that gap.
Joaquim joined Lineage in 2020 to open the Barcelona genetics lab under the Spanish cannabis research-license framework. He spent his postdoc at the Universitat de Barcelona cataloging wild tomato landraces in Catalan agricultural archives.
Joaquim runs every seed lot’s stability selection cycle, the genotyping protocol, the phenotype testing schedule, and hand-draws the family-tree diagram printed on each pack’s lineage card.
Published in Plant Reproduction (2017, 2021) and Theoretical and Applied Genetics (2019). His 2021 paper on phenotype-stability cycling in Cannabis sativa is the standard reference for the protocol Lineage uses internally.
The lab sits in the Eixample district of Barcelona, two blocks from the Universitat de Barcelona where Joaquim earned his plant-genetics PhD in 2015. Licensed under the Spanish cannabis research-license framework since 2020.
Every seed lot that ships from Lineage is selected and documented by Joaquim personally. Phenotype isolation, single-strain selection, F1 stability documentation, hand-drawn family-tree diagrams — all done at the bench.
Independent annual genetics audit by Bioenvision Madrid since 2024. Results published on the Lineage site for every active SKU.
The archive lives in a small canal-side townhouse in the Jordaan, two flights up. Floor-to-ceiling dark-oak built-in shelves hold approximately 1,200 small clear glass apothecary jars — one for every distinct phenotype Lineage has ever documented.
Each jar is labeled with a small cream-paper card and a brass tag, identified by lot number, year, parent strains, and the cultivar work that produced it. The archive is the source of every lineage card we print.
Maria built the archive jar-by-jar starting 2016. It is the moat. It is also the part nobody outside the company has ever seen.
An honest record of how a small documented seed bank grew from a Wageningen personal project to a licensed EU operation in ten years.
Personal project alongside her PhD work at Wageningen. First jar (a Northern Lights phenotype) shelved in her university office. The archival method that becomes Lineage starts here.
Doctoral research on heritage tomato landrace stabilization — the methodological foundation that translates directly to cannabis genetics work.
Maria formally establishes Lineage Genetics BV in Amsterdam. First catalog has four strains, each with a hand-drawn lineage card. The cream paper, the 6×9 cm card, the family-tree diagram — all settled at pack #1.
Joaquim relocates from the Universitat de Barcelona to head a dedicated genetics lab under the Spanish cannabis research-license framework. Production scales to 12 strains.
Bioenvision Madrid begins annual independent audit of every Lineage seed lot. Results published per SKU.
First US-licensed partnership signed for late Q4 2026 launch in California. Lineage cards stay printed in Barcelona; the provenance documentation does not get outsourced.
Lineage genetics will be available to US-licensed cannabis cultivators in late Q4 2026, beginning with one California partner. The partner is the US-licensed entity. Lineage supplies the documented genetics, prints lineage cards in Barcelona, and audits the partner annually.
The model preserves what matters: the lineage cards stay printed in Barcelona. The provenance documentation cannot be outsourced.
If you are a US-licensed cultivator or seed-bank operator and you believe you may be the right California partner for Lineage, write to Maria directly. We respond inside 21 days.
partners@lineage.seeds
Every Lineage pack is hand-counted, hand-sealed, and individually card-inserted at the Barcelona lab. Joaquim packs about 60 packs per week personally; the rest are packed by two long-tenured lab technicians under his protocol.
Annual catalog production: approximately 14,000 packs. Annual seed count: approximately 140,000 seeds. Phenotypes documented in the archive: 1,200+.
The work scales by hiring more documentarists, not by automating the documentation. The lineage card stays hand-drawn. That’s the system.