Agriculture Production

Agriculture Production

Although Cannabis sativa has a long history of cultivation in the PNW, its broad illegality from the 1930s until very recently means that research on crop production techniques was not done or published in public. This consortium is involved in doing a wide array of practical agricultural research and disseminating useful information from any valid source to growers, processors, and consumers of hemp-based products. Hemp’s ability to produce nutritious grain, high-quality fibers, and useful medicinal compounds requires widely-ranging studies to develop plant materials, crop production methods, and post-harvesting techniques to allow growers and processors to achieve high-quality crops and optimum economic return depending on their goals, inputs, and market conditions. Potential hemp research includes:

• Understanding crop production methods that optimize desired crop harvest yield and quality end-points (e.g. grain, hurd fiber, bast fiber, cannabinoid flowers, residual animal nutrition) as a function of variety and climate.

• Optimize crop production methods that enhance post-harvest quality (or decrease post-harvest processing costs).

• Improved plant breeding and seed handling methods to better stabilize variety performance and improve seed storage / seed certification processes.

• Identify climate-sensitive factors such as optimal water use, potential carbon sequestration, potential insect/disease-related crop rotation benefits, etc. to provide better value estimations for including hemp in various types of crop rotations.  

• Provide quantitative economic values for crop production costs, yield outputs, and rotation-related benefits to economists and business developers to optimize processing and production facilities for the various types of hemp end-products and residual materials.

Current Research Projects

Improving Agronomic Methods for Hemp Crop Production

• Optimizing crop production factors (e.g. planting date, harvest date, water use, fertility response, planting method, planting density) as a function of market class, location, variety, and key end-products. 
• Evaluating efficacy and expense of disease, insect, and weed management methods, including developing new tools to quickly detect disease and insect pest outbreaks. 
• Evaluating interactions between nitrogen fertility, irrigation, crop growth, cannabinoid production, disease severity, and insect pest severity.

• Understanding management factors that affect seed quality and performance, including developing key parameters for seed certification to create a more dependable seed market. 

Developing databases of crop production methods and resulting crop yield and quality parameters

• Yield and quality data used to assist business and product development modelers in optimizing hemp processing facilities (i.e. size, location, output products). 
• Value analysis of post-harvest “residual” materials to determine the co-product value of remaining fibers, biomass for animal nutrition, secondary extractable metabolites, etc.

Evaluating commercial varieties and developing new germplasm for climate adaptation for various hemp market classes.

• Traditional breeding and genomic selection for improved quantity/quality of grain, fiber, or extractable compounds (cannabinoids, terpenes, etc.).
• Breeding of day-neutral and low-latitude cannabinoid varieties.
• Chemical control of hemp sex expression.

Developing educational materials to assist growers and regulators with hemp production.

• Review historical information (library and human sources) and collaborate with current researchers at multiple institutions to develop and review educational materials based on new information.
• Targeted outreach to growers, processors, community leaders, regulators, and the public using multiple communication methods.    

Collaborating with commercial growers to optimize real-world crop production and processing methods.

• Statewide disease and insect pest surveys to identify emerging problems and to evaluate current and potential management methods. 
• Regional and statewide stakeholder needs assessments.
• Valuing intentional collaboration with leading industry and Native American tribes to verify the equitable distribution of research knowledge and values gained from institutional cooperation.