b'The study found that you didnt see an effect of the environment on the THC, McKay says. Its not too surprisingits highly genetically controlled. In the U.S., THC content of many crops has been highly varied because many people sell-ing seed didnt bother getting rid of the genes that make THC.Another problem popping up in the U.S., McKay notes, is that some femin-ized seeds arent compliant with the U.S. THC regulations.Weve purchased various feminized seed in Colorado, because everyone and their brother was selling hemp seed at one point, McKay says. I would say a lot of it is not actually feminized, and a lot of it isnt actually hemp. Id definitely recom-mend not getting those.Another difficulty McKay mentions isNew West Genetics has a patent pending in the U.S on a cannabis variety which produces the price per pound of feminized hempmore than 50% female plants.seed. When buying feminized hemp seed, it can get relatively pricey. Theres usually an extremely high price for what people are calling femin-ized hemp seed in comparison to any other crop seed, McKay says. People were selling it for tens of thousands of dollars per pound, especially during the CBD Gold Rush era.McKay says most of these populations are grown horticultural style. Feminized seed induction requires quite a bit more labor, McKay says. Therefore, the seed costs are higher than other ways of making seed. For large scale production and a stable supplyMike Scheffel. John McKay.chain, such seed costs are not economi-cally viable. If you are producing a hemp crop for fiber, you would need to be paying dollars a pound for seed, not tensCSGA, in particular, created a newseem to be a potential opportunity for of thousands of dollars per pound. standard for feminized hemp seed certi- segments of the hemp sector to produce fication.the specialized hemp varieties.Varieties to Match the Standard We looked at the landscape ofCSGA recognized that the preferred While problems with feminized hempdemand, and while the traditional hempmechanism for creating hemp focused seed production are just emerging in thevarieties in Canada had some level ofon CBD production is through feminized U.S., Canada has been working on strictCBD in them, they had not been bred byhemp seed. regulations to maintain a proper hempplant breeders for CBD, Scheffel says.CSGA is mandated by the federal production of CBD.This rapidly growing interest in CBDgovernment by legislation and regula-OCTOBER 2021SEEDWORLD.COM /45'