b'can already see cannabis production from seed at some scale and producersespecially those harvesting cannabis varieties for their CBD as opposed to THCare struggling to stay cost competitive. Theyre harvesting plants with a chainsaw and throwing them through a wood chipper and dragging them to a corn silo to dry. In Canada, for high-end flower, youre trimming with a pair of scissors and inspecting each one by hand and hand packaging it. For a combine-scale operation, you need seed.One of the pioneers of high-CBD cannabis varieties in the United States is John McKay of New West Genetics (NWG), which has created the first certified American hemp seed. McKay is director of genetics for New West and a professor in the Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management department atAn artists rendering of the Cannabis Innovation Centre.Colorado State University.The company was founded fivesays New Wests products are uniquelyand maintained open pollinated grain years ago when the United StatesAmerican. and fibre varieties over time. Were first legalized hemp research, and isIt was useful to understand theactually learning more from other focused on creating high-yielding,agronomy angle and see how to breed todomesticated species where serious combine harvestable hemp varietiesmaximize yield under those productiontechnology has been applied and then that are adapted to U.S. and newly- systems, but there simply hasnt beenwere applying that to hemp.legal production environments. NWGenough dollars put into hemp breedingFor McKay and New West Genetics, announced in March of this year thatin Canada or Europe for us to gain a greatone of the best places to look to learn its proprietary hemp varieties, NWG- deal of breeding knowledge from them,how to breed hemp actually has nothing ELITE and NWG-RELY, placed in the topMcKay says.to do with plant breeding at all.of dual-purpose (fibre and grain) trialsIn the U.S., big seed companies spendYou basically have to look to cattle to conducted last summer at the Universitybillions a year on cutting-edge breedingfind how to run an intensive breeding of Kentucky.approaches but only invest heavily inprogram for a species like cannabis that McKay and the NWG team madecrops that are planted on at least 30has both male and female plants, he pilgrimages to Europe and Canada tomillion acres. In Europe, its largelyadds. There are some fruit trees that are see what other countries were doingfederal legacy breeding programs thatdioecious, but they generally dont have to breed new varieties of hemp, but hearent well funded that have developedhigh-tech breeding programs attached to Fall 2019 19'