An Ottawa company has been given the green light from Health Canada to grow marijuana on a large scale from petri dishes, a development it says could revolutionize Canada's cannabis industry.

Apollogreen, based in in the rural community of Vars in the city's east end, received approval on July 12 to fill its new 5,000-square-foot facility with thousands of "starter plants."

This brings a good marriage of technology and traditional cultivation. - Seann Poli, apollpgreen

The company plans to sell the seedlings to licensed pot producers when the plants are just five centimetres tall. That will help apollogreen save space and boost revenues, according to chief strategic officer Seann Poli.

Poli said the company will be able to grow three million starter plants in its first year, and guarantee they'll be disease-free. He said other producers use low-quality cuttings to grow their plants.

"This brings a good marriage of technology and traditional cultivation, and provides a very much-needed solution to the cannabis industry," Poli told CBC Radio's All In A Day.

The company also plans to sell to customers who grow medicinal marijuana in their homes.

Technology difficult

The company has acquired 350 different strains of cannabis, and can grow different strains on demand, Poli said.

Apollogreen reached out to tissue-culture technology experts in the U.K. to help jump-start things here, he said.

"The technical component of tissue culture and the sensitivity of the plants, especially on a large scale, is not easy," Poli said.

"That was the whole purpose of this joint venture, was to meet up with the team that has that large-scale horticultural tissue-culture experience, but then we carry on."