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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research agency is creating the country’s only hemp seed bank with the help of Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, N.Y.
With the seed bank, researchers and plant breeders can identify and study hemp varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases. They’ll also be able to develop new types that can adapt to growing conditions specific to an area, like soil type and regional climate.
Larry Smart, a horticulture professor leading hemp research at Cornell, said the U.S. government used to have collections of hemp seeds available for research. In the 1980s, the government destroyed the last remaining collection after hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant, was declared illegal nationwide.
But when the 2018 Farm Bill legalized growing the high-value crop federally, support for hemp research grew. Last August, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer announced the hemp seed bank will receive $500,000 of federal funding.
“The challenge now is to rebuild a diverse collection of varieties that hopefully represents the full range of the genetic diversity of [hemp],” Smart said.
The USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) in Geneva will be in charge of building up, characterizing and maintaining the hemp seed collection, Smart said.
The USDA-ARS will keep the seeds in a temperature-controlled storage room inside one of their buildings in Geneva, which should keep the seeds viable for around 10 years, Smart said. And since it takes time to find and collect different varieties, it might take a couple of years before hemp growers can access the seed bank, he said.
Smart and his team already started sharing seeds they’ve collected with the USDA-ARS. For example, they’ve found “feral hemp”—hemp previously cultivated for fiber but started growing in the wild like weeds as its seeds naturally dispersed.
Yet some people may not be as willing to share hemp seed varieties they’ve collected, Smart said.
“People who own seeds are very protective of it because the industry is booming, and they have something they think is special. They want to keep it as their own and make as much money now as they can,” Smart said. “But what we hope with this [publicly-funded seed bank] is to accumulate varieties and share them to advance the progression of the [hemp] field overall, as has happened with every other crop.”
Just like seed banks the USDA-ARS and AgriTech already collaborate on, including their apple and grape seed collections, researchers and breeders across the country can look up different hemp varieties on a public online database that works like a catalog. They can also request seeds for use, which a USDA-ARS curator will mail out for free from Geneva, Smart said.
The USDA still needs to hire a curator who’ll be responsible for maintaining the hemp seed collection. Smart said the USDA also needs to develop policies for collecting and handling hemp—both from the U.S. and abroad.
“If you go out and find hemp growing in a ditch in Nebraska, you can’t tell just by looking at it if it’s hemp or marijuana. The only way to see the differences is to do chemical tests,” Smart said.
Although they look similar, hemp can’t get you high. It has less than 0.3% THC, the psychoactive compound that delivers the “high” sensation from marijuana.
And since the hemp seed bank will be located in Geneva, Smart said he hopes to develop new cultivars that are well-adapted for New York hemp growers.
Daniel Dolgin, co-owner of Eaton Hemp, a company that offers superfood snacks made with hemp seeds, said having a hemp seed catalog will open up new seed sources for growers. Dolgin said he gets his hemp seeds from two companies in Canada that bred them specifically for grain rather than fiber or CBD use.
Back in 2015, Dolgin and his partners had to get a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration to import the seeds because hemp was still considered a Schedule I substance like LSD or marijuana under federal law. They also had to hire an armed security guard to oversee the planting.
A lot has changed since. Hemp growers today no longer have to get a permit from the DEA to get seeds across the border, thanks to the recent Farm Bill, Dolgin said.
And with a hemp seed bank on the horizon, the U.S. can start developing its own seeds, which could help hemp growers and product manufacturers find varieties that fit their customers’ needs. For example, Dolgin said he’s interested in finding hemp varieties that have a higher amount of protein and taste better.
“I think starting to understand the full sector of possibilities with the hemp seed is a very important endeavor,” Dolgin said. “It’s a great thing they’re starting this because there’s a lot we don’t know and a lot we may have known at one point in our history, but don’t have the access to.”
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