Hemp Hampered no more with Research Showing Potential as Cash Crop

By Kaine Korzekwa

After decades of being relegated and regulated, research on industrial hemp as a valuable crop is far behind. That's because the United States banned the use of hemp in the 1930s. The result was all research about this crop stopped, too. Now that the Farm Bill allows for the growing and use of industrial hemp, researchers have a decades-long gap in knowledge.

At the forefront of those trying to enter back into the hemp market—seed companies and potential growers—is seed quality after harvest.

This is where Sabry Elias, professor of crop and soil science at Oregon State University, and his team come in. Elias recently presented his work at the 2021 ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meeting, held in Salt Lake City.

"One of the challenges in growing industrial hemp is that the plants have an indeterminate flowering pattern," Elias explains. "This results in seeds with different maturity levels and ages on the same plant at the time of harvest."

This poses a series of questions that Elias and his team investigate. What is the difference in quality between a seed higher on the plant versus one lower on the plant? How can they test for these quality differences? After harvest, do seeds go dormant? If they do go dormant, for how long and how can dormancy be broken?

There are two fundamentals that impact seed quality that the researchers investigated: viability and vigor. Viability is the capability of seeds to germinate and produce normal seedlings. Vigor is the ability of seeds to germinate and grow under a wide range of field conditions. Elias explains that these qualities are controlled by genetic and environmental factors.

"Improved varieties possess good traits such as high yield, seed quality, and disease resistance," he says. "Seeds that develop and mature under optimum conditions resulted in quality seeds. On the other hand, seeds developed under moisture stress, nutrient deficiency, extreme temperatures, etc. often result in light, shriveled seed or collectively called poor quality seeds."