HARVESTING INDUSTRIAL HEMP SCIENCE - CULTIVATING HEMP COMPLIANCE Your Louisiana Hemp Grower Need-To-Know matters and nitty-gritty regulatory compliance information with the down-and-dirty elements of powerful hemp science, seed to sale. By PhD cultivation and your compliance consultancy - Dr. Matthew O. Indest PhD and Pat Jack
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uccessful hemp industry production is critically dependent upon the precise understanding of the “total THC” (t-THC) compliance of your flowering hemp plants -- seed to sale. The hemp grower’s constant struggle for mastery to understand Louisiana’s USDA-regulated hemp program as it pertains to compliant “total THC” levels is the bar for entry into the rapidly developing Louisiana industrial hemp markets. Your compliance officer and your Chief of Cultivation must (or YOU must) maintain a level of masterful understanding of compliance enhancing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) throughout every step in the execution of your hemp business model. This must be done consistently in a rapidly-changing regulatory environment. The rules and regulations of the industrial hemp industry place extreme, and often changing, demands on your business’s extended SOP, from seed to sale, from state to state, and from nation to nation. Genetics (choosing the strain or strains of industrial hemp that you will grow) are the primary factor that will determine your industrial hemp crop’s t-THC compliance. The selection of the best strains for growing will also determine the richness of the CBD content in your finished crop, all while remaining legally compliant. The ratio of CBD to t-THC, [THC + (THCA * 87.7%) ≤ .3%], varies from one industrial hemp strain to the next. The distinction between “THC compliant” and “t-THC compliant” must be absolutely, precisely understood to safely conduct the interstate trade of your hemp and hemp derived products. The stability of your crop’s CBD to t-THC ratio within each seed lot is the biggest critical risk factor to a hemp grower. The genetic variance in commercialized hemp strains spells the difference between federally-compliant Industrial Hemp and a federally-illegal Schedule 1 drug. One “hot” flower in a field of 100 acres of hemp is ruinous. Using clones instead of “feminized” seed will hedge some of the risks because clones are genetic replicas of the source mother. Thus, the variability from clones match that of the mother plants. Clones, also marketed as Unrooted Cuttings (URC) or, Liners and come at higher expense than feminized seed, but can be worth it. Assuming, ofcourse, that your vendor has verified those mother plants were not males. We’ll talk more about clones and balancing costs in future articles; keep checking “LA Hemp Growers” magazine for new content. Our Louisiana hemp industry is in its infancy, and due diligence in strain selection for cultivation is critical and mandatory. Until true “certified variety” CBD rich and industrial hemp seed is available for sale in quantity, industrial hemp farmers and growers suffer great risk, civil and potentially criminal risk.
STRAINING TO PICK THE RIGHT HEMP STRAIN Especially when growing from seed, the variability of current hemp strains introduces great risk, both civil and potentially criminal liabilities, into your operational equation. Your entire team, at all times, is tasked with maintaining regulatory compliance.
press wildly differing phenotypes because “Certified Varieties” of hemp are largely not yet available, and certainly not available in great abundance. It only takes one hot flower sample (t-THC non-compliant) in the crop testing inspector’s bag and you are done for.
The propagules available for purchase (seeds, seedlings, and even cuttings) have the propensity to ex6
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