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Industrial Hemp in Oregon

Time, heat, and light will do it just like decarbing but apparently you can also turn CBG into either THC or CBD. The chemistry is over my head.

FWIW, it's way easier to turn CBD into THC than CBG to THC. Plus, CBG is pretty rare relative to THC. I'm sure there are others working on this, but, at least publicly, there are only two groups with CBG-rich, high cannabinoid plants.

THC doesn't like to turn to CBN without a catalyst. Peroxide is great.

https://www.google.com/patents/WO2014159688A1?cl=en
 

oldchuck

Active member
Veteran
Then why was CBN the first cannabinoid discovered, back in the 1890s. Took another 75 years to discover THC and more for CBD? And, isn't CBG the precursor of both THC and CBD so seems to me an early harvest would net a lot of CBG before it changed to one or the other? I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
 
Then why was CBN the first cannabinoid discovered, back in the 1890s. Took another 75 years to discover THC and more for CBD? And, isn't CBG the precursor of both THC and CBD so seems to me an early harvest would net a lot of CBG before it changed to one or the other? I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

CBGa is immediately gobbled up by active THCa, CBDa, or CBCa synthases as soon as it is created. Significant CBGa accumulation only occurs when those other synthases are extremely weak or totally defective. The charts you will see in the small handful of publications detailing CBGa concentrations in plants indicate that peak CBGa levels occur at week 5 of flowering (on average). This is because it is the peak cannabinoid production time (in general)...plants with defective THCa and CBDa synthases will keep on accumulating CBGa until the plant dies, no different than THC or CBD rich plants in that regard.

The metaphor I use to describe cannabinoid accumulation is a pipeline, for both quantity and chemotype, as opposed to a reservoir.
 
CBGa is immediately gobbled up by active THCa, CBDa, or CBCa synthases as soon as it is created. Significant CBGa accumulation only occurs when those other synthases are extremely weak or totally defective.

The metaphor I use to describe cannabinoid accumulation is a pipeline, for both quantity and chemotype, as opposed to a reservoir.

SE:

So is it safe to safe that in selecting for plants high in CBG we are looking for a mutation that causes a defect in the synthases of THCa, CBDa, and CBCa? That being said the defect or mutation allows CBGa to accumulate to higher than normal levels rather than to be converted to THCa, CBDa, or CBCa...?
 
R

Robrites

Hemp bills would move crop into mainstream

Hemp bills would move crop into mainstream

SALEM — Hemp would be brought further into the mainstream of Oregon agriculture under two bills that create a commodity commission and seed certification process for the crop.

“Industrial hemp has a huge potential in Oregon, we just need a few tweaks to help move it forward,” said Matt Cyrus, who grows hemp in Deschutes County, during a March 28 legislative hearing.

Under House Bill 2372, Oregon’s hemp industry would join 23 other crop, livestock and seafood sectors to have a state commission aimed at promoting and researching a commodity through fees raised from producers.

Breeders of new hemp varieties could also get the purity of their seeds certified under House Bill 2371, similarly to other crop species, through a system overseen by Oregon State University.

“It’s truly about a certified seed, one we know Oregon can count on,” said Jerry Norton, a hemp grower.

To comply with federal provisions in the 2014 Farm Bill that allow hemp research, HB 2371 would also create a hemp pilot program at OSU, among other changes to Oregon hemp statutes.

Commercial hemp production is illegal under federal drug laws that lump hemp, a form of cannabis, in the same category as its psychoactive cousin, marijuana.

Aligning Oregon’s hemp laws with the 2014 Farm Bill provisions will likely ease financial transactions for hemp growers, since many banks are otherwise leery of dealing with the crop, Cyrus said.

“The banks are looking for specific language in statute,” he said.

If there’s ever a change in federal law regarding cannabis, Oregon’s seed certification process would let hemp breeders patent their varieties, said Jay Noller, head of OSU’s crop and soil science department.

Because cannabis is illegal under federal law hemp varieties can’t be protected, he said.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has authorized Noller to import high-quality hemp seeds from Canada and elsewhere.

At this point, though, foreign companies are reluctant to export hemp seed into Oregon due to a provision in state law allowing growers to save and plant it, he said.

Under HB 2371, that provision would be struck from Oregon law, hopefully opening the way for new hemp genetics to enter the state, Noller said.

Oregon’s hemp statutes are already setting an example for other states and the proposed changes will let growers “get off the airstrip and into the air,” said Norton.

“We feel that hemp in Oregon is going to be the new crop of the decade, if not the century,” he said.
http://www.wallowa.com/wcc/capital-bureau/20170328/hemp-bills-would-move-crop-into-mainstream
 
Thanks for sharing that Robrites. The seed certification program and hemp commission are our babies, been working towards getting these established for a couple years. Very thankful to our industry lobbyist, Courtney Moran, for bringing it to fruition this year. After reading the testimony from Jay Noller (OSU) re: their seed certification concept, I'm a little less stoked as it mirrors Canada's process and is useless for high cannabinoid growers.

As drafted, seed breeders register and work with OSU (awesome!) to develop new varieties. Those varieties are then released as "breeder seed" to other growers, who are supposed to reproduce it and sell it as "foundation" seed. Any subsequent recreation after that is called "registered seed". It is designed for highly inbred lines, which are not very useful for large scale field production compared to true F1s.

How in the hell is a farmer supposed to reproduce my feminized true F1 varieties that are meant for field production? If they did, foundation seed would = F2 and be 100% useless for production. Further, the "certified" seed (F3) is basically guaranteed to be a totally different variety.

Growers will not be required to use certified seed, which is good, but hopefully we can alter the certification process to mirror the reality of large scale production.
 
Our hemp bills are scheduled for public hearing and work session, but probably won't be voted on in committee until next week.

Had a nice profile story done on us by "Stoner Magazine" a couple weeks ago. Link here. Super nice people, awesome to have them out to the farm.

Planting time is just a couple weeks away and I can say with some certainty that Oregon will be growing an awful lot of CBD rich plants this year! We also found out that another large seed provider in state has been selling "feminized seed" to farmers that is actually male / female...not looking forward to the pollen fallout associated with that one.

So far the market has stayed pretty strong for flower sales across the country, and large international markets are being established as well.

We're busy little bees right now, prepping for a final seed harvest on some new experimental crosses, then we'll start filling greenhouses with seedlings and prepping our field for June 1 planting.
 

PDX Dopesmoker

Active member
socioecologist, what kind of gear do the pro hemp growers use to separate out all that seed? I know you've got to have something better than giant album covers to be separating out seed in the volume you're doing.
Thanks as always for keeping us updated on the hemp industry, is a fascinating and often overlooked segment of the cannabis world.
 

akmanak

New member
Just started the process of growing hemp.

Have someone who will supply the seeds and I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants
 
Seed separation...man, that needs a whole separate thread, been a very steep learning curve, that's for sure! I had no experience with large-scale seed sorting equipment before getting into adventure. My brother (Eric) was the brains behind that, and he pretty much MacGuyver'd it at first. We're getting more sophisticated now. The one steady refrain through it all is that seeds have to be separated from flower material one way or another; there are high yield / low damage approaches (rubbing buds in your hands to break seeds free) and average yield / high damage approaches (combines)--there are trade-offs with every decision.

He started with 30 gallon sterilite tote lids, using them like a big album cover, allowing the seeds to roll through the masticated flowers and collect on the lip below. Next he dropped the flower / seed mix in front of a box fan (it sat on a standard folding table) with 3 30 gallon sterilite containers positioned directly in front of the fan one after another (narrow edge towards fan), but below and on the ground. As he would drop the material in front of the fan, viable seeds would fall into the first bin, nonviable seed, stems, flower into the 2nd and 3rd bins. Scared me to death when I saw him do it for the first time. I would clean up the material from the first bin with a bird seed cleaner we got off Amazon for a couple hundred bucks.

We graduated to a bigger version (6' tall or so) of the design on this website:

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html

Eric and Chris, employee #1, took the design and scaled it up to be about 6' tall. Works great, Eric is like a level 65 wizard using that thing on our small seed lots. He was using it last week to further clean some of our "early" series seed lots.

For test plots in the field (like our auto lines), we use standard small-batch ag seed cleaning equipment (air, vibration, 4 screens, and gravity table for post-process sorting) that can handle about 500 pounds of finished seed sorting per hour. We basically just buy a day of access to the cleaner from the ag company we lease from and can crank out a whole year's worth of work on larger field projects in a day.

The newest facility we are leasing has a much larger cleaner in it--time permitting, I'll post some pictures next week of that puppy. It would really only be useful for grain seed destined for replanting to supply food markets. Lots of respect for grain when grown in the right place, but we're not headed in that direction right now.
 
Just started the process of growing hemp.

Have someone who will supply the seeds and I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants

Take a look here for some baseline information on soil type, it's a really cool tool (I use the .kml in Google Earth):

https://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/soilweb-apps/

We get about a ton per acre with 1815 plants (4'x6' spacing), but that's on really good farmland and what we consider to be good genetics. What are you working with that guarantees nothing over 4' tall? One thing I would caution though: if you can't afford to fail, farming is probably the wrong venture--we mess up way more than we succeed.
 

kelly1376

Member
I am planning on planting an acre. I am running across clay. When I do the mason jar test after the first 24 hours it read that I have 40% clay, 48 hours later it was only 27% roughly. What do I trust? Should I just get a sample done of the soil? I cant risk this venture failing at all.

Another thing is that if I have clay at 40% cant I just till in about 12 inches down in rows and simply add topsoil and mix it in my rows?

The seeds I am going to get are only suppose to grow 4 feet high. So how strong would the roots get?

The other thing is, off of an acre which will be roughly 1500 plants, how much CBD hypothetically could be extracted from 1500 plants

Definitely get a soil test. You can work with whatever you have via amendments. I'd spend the 25 bucks and send logan labs a sample. For an extra 25 they'll give you a list of amendments to add based on the results of your test.
 
Been a month, hope all is well for those of you who have been so kind as to follow this little adventure. Spring still hasn't arrived where we are, and it's just about planting time. Summer (a rumor at this point) is predicted to be colder, wetter, and shorter than normal, with equal chances of either a (1) mild fall or (2) another rain-apocalypse like last year. We're stoked to be running autos and very early flowering plants so we can get through the harvest in time to plant our cover crops for the following season. It looks to be a challenging year for those who don't have their harvest date predictably dialed in when planting.

The Oregon hemp scene is blowing up this year; we sold out of seed for the 2nd consecutive season and we're hoping to help those left out by providing starts from our leftover field seed. We have 2.5 20'x100' greenhouses fully planted (~150k starts) right now and are putting more out every day.

How would you all recommend drying 120k pounds of flowers? Anyone else have this problem? Ha ha :).


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Bradley_Danks

Active member
Veteran
Wow, how do you keep all those starts watered properly?

That's an ass ton of flower to dry. Is that wet weight? I can't wait to see how your crops do this year! Good luck :D
 

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