A new zero-THC hemp variety hitting the market this spring is thought to be the first commercially available cannabis variety that uses biotechnology to “silence” a cannabinoid.
The Pandora variety was created by a team of Texas A&M and private cannabis scientists over the past two years using RNA interface (RNAi) technology, which acts to silence the genetic pathway that produces THC in a hemp plant.
Developers say the cultivar produces 17% to 22% CBD but no THC.
It is the product of a research collaboration between Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Research and Growing Together Research Inc., an Indiana biotechnology firm focused on computational genomics and bioengineering of hemp.
Trilogene Seeds, based in Boulder, Colorado, will sell the variety as clones this spring in the United States. Seeds for the U.S. and international markets will be ready in the fall.
Matt Haddad
Solving hot hemp
Developing a THC-null cultivar can help farmers comply with federal laws without the fear of destroying their crops and losing their investment, the company’s CEO Matt Haddad told Hemp Industry Daily.
In 2020, nearly one-tenth of the 70,530 hemp acres planted in the U.S. surpassed the 0.3% THC federal threshold and had to be destroyed, according to the 2021 Hemp & CBD Industry Factbook.
In addition to causing farmers to lose money and time on their crops and putting them in danger of being criminally negligent, the risk of hemp crops going hot has impacted farmers’ ability to secure services such as lending, banking, and insurance.
Producing a THC null trait also makes cannabinoid production in hemp more efficient, as the plant can focus on producing CBD instead of THC. Haddad said this would allow hemp growers and processors to need less hemp biomass to produce the same amount of CBD.
Applying agricultural biotechnology to cannabis
Haddad told Hemp Industry Daily that Trilogene provided its hemp genetics to GTR for the project.
The research collaboration was experimental because it hasn’t been done in cannabis, though the technology has been used widely in other crops, Haddad said.
But using RNAi technology doesn’t mean it’s the same as genetically modified plants, in which genetic material has been manipulated by combining plant, animal, bacteria, and virus genes to change a plant’s physiological structure.
The zero-THC cultivar is not physiologically different from other hemp varieties; it simply cannot express or produce THC, Haddad said.
“This naturally occurs, whether breeding work is done or not; you simply have to find those plants, find those phenotypes, and test them, but this is a naturally occurring thing that happens with cannabis genetics,” he said.
“We just silenced a certain trait that we simply don’t want without affecting the physiology of the plant itself.”
Further, farmers producing other varieties won’t need to worry about rogue bioengineered pollen drifting to other crops, including hemp and marijuana, because the variety is cloned and all seed produced is fully feminized, Haddad said.
“This is also a variety we plan to triploid in seed form, so even if there were some sort of hermaphrodites in an outdoor crop … it would produce immature seed, but not usable seed that would make any contamination, very similar to seedless watermelon or seedless grapes.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service requires companies like Trilogene Seed to report and label products that are bioengineered through the SECURE Rule (Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient), which is the first comprehensive revision to biotechnology regulations since they were established in 1987.
The rule enables USDA-APHIS to regulate organisms developed using genetic engineering and offers transparency about how crops are developed and produced.
“It’s certainly not something we want to hide from. We want people to understand it,” Haddad said.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to labeling laws, which are what USDA, APHIS, and even the FDA want us to do. We’ve gone through pretty much all of those hurdles.”
More to come
In addition to Pandora, Trilogene Seed, and its research partners are working on other THC null varieties that can produce cannabinoids, Haddad told Hemp Industry Daily.
“Our genetics are the starting stock of some of those projects, and so this is the tip of the iceberg of what we can do with this technology,” he said.
“Any attributes in cannabis, whether that’s other minor cannabinoids, like CBD-V THC-V, while still keeping it THC compliant or THC null, will be possible.”
Beyond that, Trilogene has provided more than 60 different varieties to Texas A&M and research partners to study hemp’s carbon sequestration capabilities. The research team is working to identify the genes within the plant that allow it to sequester more carbon and produce more fiber, lignin, and best content to improve supply chain efficiencies, Haddad said.
“This can be applied to any attribute in cannabis, so this is the start of it.”
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