Our research activities will provide growers with the necessary tools to utilize hemp in their production systems to increase U.S. agricultural production with a reduction in environmental footprint. We aim to accomplish this by using genomics-enabled plant breeding, improving soil health, reducing reliance on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, improving water quality, and addressing climate change by producing domestically grown food and industrial feedstocks that can replace fossil fuel-based materials and simultaneously sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics
Access to adapted cultivars and high quality, certified seed is still a significant issue for producers. Supporting plant breeding initiatives and working with local seed businesses will help bring a reliable source of adapted hemp seed to U.S. farmers. An emphasis on genomics-enabled plant breeding will be critical to meet the ambitious goal of increased production and is readily justified by the lack of land-grant breeding programs in hemp since the 1940s. Participating labs have been among the first in the U.S. to evaluate hemp cultivar performance across multiple environments and to develop mapping populations of low-THC industrial hemp. S-1084 team members have developed high throughput molecular markers that are highly useful for selecting low THC production and have characterized phenotypic variation in CBD hemp. Members of our group are leading efforts in the Midwest to collect feral hemp populations (ditchweed) that are remnants of 1940s era fiber plantings. Since the Controlled Substance Act, there has been no public hemp germplasm resource in the U.S., which is critical to support long-term breeding programs. Very recently, the USDA-ARS National Hemp Germplasm Repository was established in the National Plant Germplasm System in the Plant Genetic Resource Unit (PGRU) at Cornell AgriTech. Our group is working closely with newly hired curator Dr. Zachary Stansell to best initiate this public resource, and we will contribute to and leverage the resources of the USDA ARS Hemp Germplasm Repository.
Our cooperative projects will evaluate new, THC compliant cultivars with improved traits and move them quickly through the research pipeline for agronomic testing, quality evaluation, and subsequent product development.
Agronomy and Sustainability
Research advances in hemp breeding and genetic improvement need to be coupled with cropping system development. Our goal is to develop sustainable cropping systems based on management practices that balance trade-offs in grower profitability, natural resource conservation, and ecological footprint. Innovative and collaborative approaches will be used to evaluate available cultivars and identify agronomic best management practices based on intended markets and regional adaptation. Despite the myth that hemp can produce numerous products with little to no inputs or impact on the environment, in reality it is an annual plant species with many of the same production needs and challenges inherent in other annual cropping systems.
Realizing our goal of economically viable and ecologically sustainable hemp cropping systems will require solutions to many problems facing hemp producers from production through marketing. Key agronomic factors necessary for sustainable hemp cropping systems include improvements in crop establishment, management, harvest, and post-harvest processing, specific to the products and markets of interest. Managing hemp for multiple products or ecosystem services is necessary, but also complicates the work ahead. Agronomic management and sustainability outcomes will certainly also vary across environments and agricultural systems. While the production of food, feed, and fiber is an obvious ecosystem service provided by hemp cropping systems, these agroecosystems can also provide a myriad of additional services through improvements to biodiversity, carbon sequestration, changes in soil health, water use efficiency and water quality. Each of these services must be evaluated at farm and landscape scales to determine the environmental impact of hemp cultivation and validate sustainability claims.
Our team will investigate production inputs (e.g., fertility) within different agroecological zones and possible biological substitutions (e.g., cover crops) where possible to develop regionally adapted best management practices for hemp cropping systems. Collaborative projects will commit to monitoring agronomic, environmental, and ecological features of hemp agroecosystems under investigation. Furthermore, we will evaluate the potential economic and environmental impact of the hemp cropping system and further consider the value of increasing diversity in the portfolio of crops grown in rotation across regions. In addition, the potential impact of harvesting, drying, and storage processes on the quality of various end products will be assessed.
Sustainable Pest Management
As acreage of hemp increases, there has also been an increase in disease, insect and weed pressure during crop production. While there are now some pesticides registered for use in hemp in both conventional and organic production, growers are still seeing significant losses and additional management tools are needed. As a first step to understand the issues growers are facing across the country, team members developed and conducted a survey of diagnosticians, researchers, and industry leaders to determine the distribution and occurrence of 76 insect and disease pests. The survey highlighted similarities and differences in disease and pest occurrence in different regions across the US.
In addition to understanding which pests to prioritize, trials to evaluate efficacy of available management strategies, as well as identification of host resistance is critical for sustainable pest management. Some efficacy trials have been conducted, and the group will continue such trials and also expand our knowledge of the most common weeds that hemp growers are battling, and control strategies for those weeds. A common repository for pest, weed and disease management information along with data on cultivar resistance/susceptibility will be developed. We will also develop a curated image database with representative images of common pests, weeds and diseases. Information will be disseminated to industry stakeholders and researchers via talks, webinars, fact sheets, extension, and research articles, as well as social media.
Product Quality and Market Development
There is growing evidence that hemp grain offers significant nutritional benefits to humans as a food ingredient and animals in different feeding regimes. Hemp grain is considered a functional food, with relatively high (>20%) levels of protein, oil (between 27 and 38%), vitamin E, insoluble fiber, and an array of minerals. Hemp’s fatty acid profile is of particular interest given its 3:1 omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio – considered optimal for human health – and its relatively high concentrations of anti-inflammatory fatty acids, including gamma-linolenic acid, which is not found in other major food grains. Research from animal models suggests that feeding hempseed diets can prevent cholesterol-induced platelet aggregation. In a small study in human subjects, those who consumed hemp oil had better serum high density lipoprotein HDL:total cholesterol ratios relative to those who consumed flaxseed oil. Significant opportunities exist to create value-added products by feeding hemp and hemp by-products to livestock. Meat from cattle fed hemp seed has increased concentrations of conjugated linoleic acid (an important dietary anti-carcinogen), laying hens fed hemp seed or hemp seed oil laid larger eggs with proportional increases in omega-3 and -6 fatty acids, and press cake (the residual meal from hemp oil extraction) can be an important source of supplemental protein in animal rations. These and other reports of change in animal products indicate that feeding hemp seeds, oils, and meals to livestock may have positive consequences for the human end consumer. The Hemp Feed Coalition has been driving research that will form a basis for AAFCO approval and GRAS status of feeds.
Hemp fiber has the potential for diverse applications as a renewable resource for textiles, construction, and manufacturing. Hemp fiber has fundamental properties that exceed most other plant fibers and approaches that of glass fiber. Hemp fiber’s specific or mass (density)-normalized properties greatly exceed most other fibers giving it greater strength-to-weight ratio. This makes hemp fiber an excellent component for fiber reinforced plastic composites, particularly because it is much lighter than glass fiber and much cheaper than carbon fiber. Economic fiber reinforced plastic composites are one of the major drivers for enabling advanced electric vehicle (E.V.) and modern automobile technology because they allow for “lightweighting” of the vehicle without adding to cost. Thus, the plastic composites increase the E.V.’s range and the fuel efficiency of traditional internal combustion engine powered cars. Hemp fiber can also be converted to cellulose nanocrystals or nanofibers, an emerging component for the same composites. Decortication of hemp straw yields mostly hurd (~75-80% of dry matter), so any fiber-based product development strategy must also identify a profitable use for the hurd. These can include absorbents, such as animal bedding, cat litter, or diapers based on the high capillarity of hemp hurd.
Our group will work in an integrated fashion with researchers focused on breeding and genetics, cultivar evaluation, and sustainable crop management to advance our understanding of the downstream implications for product quality and value. In addition, our research tasks will evaluate the hemp grain, fiber, and hurd produced in regional trials for food, feed, and fiber product development.
Economic Viability
While many unknowns surround the economics of hemp, two definitive statements can be made about the continually evolving hemp industry. First, hemp can be used as an input for thousands of products. When hemp was first reintroduced in 2014 the expectation was that hemp fiber and grain production would be the primary focus of farm level production. However, the acreage of floral hemp grew rapidly with the rise of the CBD market. The enthusiasm around the CBD market resulted in the development of a CBD bubble that burst in 2019. Since 2019 floral hemp acres are decreasing as rapidly as they increased. This has allowed the industry an opportunity a chance to reset along with grain and fiber observing gradual acreage expansions. Thus, the research focus has shifted to explore the economic viability of products produced from grain and fiber. Second, sales of hemp products in the United States and worldwide currently represent a relatively small market share of overall food, textile, personal care products, and sales from other sectors but have been growing relatively briskly in recent years. According to the Hemp Industries Association (HIA), hemp being grown in 2022 is primarily destined for the fiber and grain market. One of the key hurdles hemp will have to overcome is providing expected returns equivalent to or exceeding expected returns for competing for crops in order to buy away acres from alternative crops.
Different production, harvesting, processing, and products must be explored to identify profitable hemp supply chains. In addition, there are trade-offs between the over 25,000 different products that can be produced from floral, grain, and fiber hemp. Systematically, members of this group have been working together to develop enterprise budgets for evaluating production systems, identifying processors and processing methods, assessing the current regulatory framework, and determining the implications of legislative proposals. This group will also coordinate with the new NE2105 Multistate that is focused on the demand for hemp products.