The Role of Agriculture in Supplying Nutritional, Medicinal, and Recreational Cannabis Products

In past centuries, the cannabis plant was one of the world's most admired crops, furnishing a range of indispensable goods. For most of the last century, however, fear of its abuse potential suppressed almost all legal cultivation. Recently, the constraints limiting cannabis commercialization have been loosened, a tidal wave of research and development has been unleashed, and cannabis is becoming a trillion dollar industry. In the last two decades, Canada has become the world leader in production of hempseed food preparations and nutritional oilseed extracts based on non-euphoric (“industrial”) varieties, and there is enormous potential to breed improved cultivars that can be employed to produce a range of functional foods and nutraceuticals. Euphoric strains currently cultivated for marijuana are far less well developed than industrial varieties, and require modern breeding for efficient harvest of the cannabinoids. The best known cannabinoid is the euphoric THC, but the non-euphoric cannabinoids, particularly CBD, have considerable medicinal potential, and their agricultural production also requires development. Marijuana production in Canada is currently based on indoor cultivation, which provides security but is very expensive and wasteful of energy. The most pressing short-term need is breeding of improved varieties, particularly short-stature (so-called “dwarf”) cultivars, in the manner that most other crops have been altered in recent decades, to greatly increase efficient production. The most pressing long-term need is assembly of a public permanent germplasm (seed) collection which will preserve vanishing genetic resources of cannabis plants and provide the essential basis for breeding both industrial and medicinal cannabis.