Pubdate: Thu, 06 Feb 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

WILL CU BECOME THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE FOR CANNABIS?

Professor Launches Plan To Map Cannabis Genus

How ironic would it be if the University of Colorado Boulder became
the world's leading university to study cannabis?

The school's history with the plant has been checkered at best.
Anybody who's lived here awhile knows about the longstanding 4/20
event, an annual tradition until the school went on the offensive,
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and, one year, even pouring
fish guts on campus grass to keep celebrants away.

Still, the school is often mentioned in those idiotic Top 10 Stoner
Schools lists, and CU is prominent in the Wikipedia entry for 4/20.
And though CU administrators insist that an increase in enrollment
applications had nothing to do with legalization in the state, we all
know that it had at least something to do with it.

So how cool would it be if CU becomes the major center for research
into the cannabis plant? A CU team under the leadership of Professor
Nolan Kane of the ecology and evolutionary biology department has
begun a project to develop a genetic map of the Cannabis genus. This
study will follow in the vein of Kane's groundbreaking work on other
genuses, including the sunflower.

"It has to happen here," says Ben Holmes. "Boulder is this big
innovation soup - beer, restaurants and software. It's a culture.
Boulder lends itself to that."

Holmes is the owner of Centennial Seeds in Lafayette, which will be
providing seed for the project. Holmes is registered with the Colorado
Department of Agriculture as a farmer seed labeler.

"It gives me the ability to farm seed and then certify it and make
sure it performs to certain standards," he says. "I try to go
seed-to-seed. That's the way all major crops are reproduced."

The implications of having a full genetic map of cannabis are
staggering. This kind of information will become the starting point
for all other research into and the manufacture of industrial hemp, as
well as development of the sativa and indica varieties favored for
pleasure and medicine and now legal in Colorado.

"It's a plan to develop a genomic map of the genus Cannabis," Holmes
says, "so we can place individual genes on chromosomes and then
develop assays for important genes so that you can screen plants at
the seedling level."

"We'll be able to figure out how these traits work with each other and
how they can be harnessed and exploited," he says. "To have the
abilities that this will provide - to screen plants at a young age -
is like having super powers." Holmes is especially interested in hemp,
which is basically cannabis grown for fiber, not resin. It was legal
for more than 150 years to grow hemp in the U.S., and hemp farming
here dates to the founding fathers. It is used in building materials,
fibers, textiles, oils, food and thousands of other products here in
the U.S. The irony is that all hemp used here must be imported.

Except for a short period during World War II, there has been no hemp
legally grown in the United States since the 1930s, when it was lumped
into the war against marijuana, and it is still classified as a
controlled substance on a federal level.

Amendment 64 allows the production of hemp in Colorado, and the Farm
Bill, which just passed the U.S. House and Senate, includes a
provision championed by Rep. Jared Polis that allows universities to
study hemp. Holmes' interest is in trying to bring back a crop that
has been discouraged, deliberately neglected and nearly forgotten.

The Kane study's genetic maps will help expedite the process of
building that seed stock again. "It's a seed-propagated industry,"
says Holmes. "We've had 75 to 76 years where there's been no
maintenance of crop, no seed stocks. That exists for most crops that
are kept in a seed system - the USDA keeps 30-plus varieties of
sunflowers. That doesn't exist for hemp, and we've lost those seed
stocks."

Holmes has been buying and collecting cannabis seeds since
2004.

"I purchased some complete collections," he says. "I lean toward the
heirloom stuff that hasn't been hybridized. It can be reproduced in a
geographically isolated manner so it doesn't get contaminated."

The Kane Lab maps will also help farmers develop better cultivation
and development practices.

"That partnership with agriculture schools is an old tradition that
covers every crop we grow," Holmes says. "Land-grant colleges were put
together by an act of Congress that granted support to teach farming."

Holmes notes that Colorado State University developed a farm community
around its ag school. And if a recent meeting for potential hemp
farmers that drew a huge, overflow crowd to the Reynolds Library
branch on a recent Saturday is any indication, interest in hemp's
potential for local farmers is high.

"It's just a first mapping of this genus that will be the basis for
the bioscience industry and all work on the plant going forward,"
Holmes says. "I'll bet you'll see ag schools start teaching a
curriculum based on hemp. It's a big idea."  
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