April 19, 2021, was an important day for Canada’s hemp sector, when Health Canada released its 2021 list of approved hemp cultivars for commercial cultivation for licensed growers. For the first time, the list includes varieties suited to outdoor CBD production.
Several American varieties were added to the list, including three varieties from Colorado’s Charlotte’s Web, which are among the first hemp CBD cultivars on the list that are early flowering and early maturing for outdoor cultivation and harvesting within the shorter Canadian growing season.
“It’s a game changer. For years farmers have been able to grow hemp for food and cosmetics and fibre, but these other opportunities have been missing. It’s really the dawn of a new era for us,” says Jan Slaski, principal researcher at InnoTech Alberta.
That other opportunity, of course, is cannabidiol (CBD) production.
For nearly 20 years, Slaski has been leading research aimed at introduction and breeding of hemp varieties that suit the needs of the fibre and food industries on the Prairies. Now, his breeding program is able to work in a space that holds much promise for breeders, growers, seed companies, patients, recreational cannabis users and more.
The CBD market is exploding in Canada. A 2020 report conducted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa estimated the CBD market in Canada at $1.9 billion.
Hemp plants, which are a different strain of cannabis, can produce CBD without a high THC content. Cannabis containing 0.3 per cent or less of THC is considered hemp in Canada.
Now, the Canadian hemp industry has access to varieties that produce as much as 14% CBD, many times higher than the varieties they previously had to work with, which were in the 2% range. Read more at the link below!
—This story is the fourth instalment in our Top 10 Stories of 2021.
https://germination.ca/with-new-cultivars-industry-trailblazers-are-creating-cannabis-3-0/
