University of Nebraska Edible Industrial Hemp Breeding Program

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Author

08/13/2020 Added

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[00:00:00.031](upbeat music)
[00:00:04.720]Hi. Good morning. My name is Ismail Dweikat.
[00:00:07.060]I'm a professor of Agronomy and Horticulture.
[00:00:10.186]I'm the sorghum and millet breeder,
[00:00:12.690]and recently I started working with hemp.
[00:00:15.270]Hemp breeding program at the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:18.750]First what is hemp?
[00:00:20.830]Hemp is Cannabis species.
[00:00:25.380]There are Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica,
[00:00:28.914]and Cannabis ruderalis.
[00:00:31.175]The cannabis sativa and indica came from the Himalayan.
[00:00:36.360]Okay. The ruderalis came from Columbia and the tropics.
[00:00:42.880]The difference between them is that
[00:00:44.670]indica has a wider leaf, shorter plants.
[00:00:49.040]Sativa has thinner leaves and taller plants,
[00:00:51.690]and the ruderalis is a short plant,
[00:00:54.690]and it has the auto flowering gene in it.
[00:00:59.074]Sativa and indica respond to the day length
[00:01:02.760]when the day is short, they flower.
[00:01:05.130]So hemp is a dioecious plant.
[00:01:08.360]What I mean by dioecious is like us,
[00:01:11.330]the male here is separate from the female.
[00:01:17.550]That's a dioecious species.
[00:01:20.400]So to be able to get seed on the female,
[00:01:23.540]you have to pollinate it by the male.
[00:01:27.820]And as you see in here, male start flowering
[00:01:30.310]about two weeks before the female
[00:01:33.270]to ensure that there is enough pollen
[00:01:35.790]for the female. And it continue about six weeks
[00:01:40.030]or up to even 10 weeks, if the condition is right.
[00:01:43.820]So the male stay flowering for a long, long time.
[00:01:50.485]Why hemp? Hemp is used, it's the seed is very rich in oil,
[00:01:55.000]oil and protein. It has about 30% oil, 25% protein
[00:01:59.890]with all the essential amino acid.
[00:02:02.200]So it's an excellent food, sober food.
[00:02:04.970]So it has so many uses.
[00:02:06.280]You could use it for feed, for food,
[00:02:09.690]for bio-fuel production, for bio-diesel.
[00:02:12.480]You could use it to produce paint.
[00:02:15.420]The stalk has so much fiber in it,
[00:02:19.050]so we could use it for fiber production, clothes, ropes.
[00:02:24.210]And then in the middle of the stalk,
[00:02:26.350]what we call a hempcrete.
[00:02:28.340]So you could take it, mix it with Deep Sheen and water
[00:02:31.030]and make building blocks.
[00:02:33.010]So you could build houses with the hemp stalk.
[00:02:37.050]So there are so many uses for it.
[00:02:40.530]The breeding program here at the University of Nebraska
[00:02:43.070]started back in 2016. After the pass of the Farm Bill 2014,
[00:02:51.860]the government said that the universities
[00:02:53.800]and the USD offices could start pilot project
[00:02:58.959]on hemp production.
[00:03:01.340]So, but that time they said that
[00:03:03.660]we only can import seed from overseas.
[00:03:08.900]So we're restricted to buy seed from overseas,
[00:03:11.740]so we bought seed from Canada.
[00:03:14.150]And when you buy Canadian seed,
[00:03:16.330]put them in the United States or Nebraska,
[00:03:18.870]they flower too soon.
[00:03:21.240]Because in Canada, they have longer days
[00:03:24.220]and in Nebraska and other states in the United States
[00:03:29.110]have a shorter day. So that's what I said,
[00:03:31.550]Cannabis respond to photoperiod very well.
[00:03:37.930]So when we planted that Canadian hemp
[00:03:39.890]in the greenhouse and the field,
[00:03:42.520]it flowered when it's two feet tall.
[00:03:45.160]So it's not good.
[00:03:46.890]So we decided that if we are going to do any breeding,
[00:03:50.240]we have to use different plants, different sources.
[00:03:54.000]But as you know, that most of the hemp seed and varieties
[00:03:57.710]are owned by companies,
[00:04:00.620]and since we don't have any jobless collection,
[00:04:04.010]we have no choice but to come in here
[00:04:07.580]and collect seed from the wild type.
[00:04:11.430]As Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Indiana
[00:04:16.660]have a lot of wild hemp that's being grown here
[00:04:20.010]for the best 150 years for fiber.
[00:04:23.270]And this hemp because it's growing all over the place
[00:04:26.530]for the best 150 years got acclimated, adapted.
[00:04:31.010]So you could find hemp in Scottsbluff, in the Sand Hill
[00:04:35.060]and you find it in here.
[00:04:36.550]There are two different types of plants.
[00:04:38.170]Some are drought resistant, some are salt resistant,
[00:04:41.810]some are insect resistant.
[00:04:43.480]So these plants, since they have been growing here
[00:04:46.530]for the best 150 years, 200 got adapted to insect,
[00:04:51.720]to drought, to flooding.
[00:04:53.390]So they're to me, they represent the best starting material
[00:04:57.930]to start plant breeding program.
[00:05:00.530]So what I did for the best two years,
[00:05:03.430]I drove throughout the state of Nebraska, 88 counties,
[00:05:08.150]and I collected seed from about,
[00:05:10.930]I would say about 1,000 plants.
[00:05:13.420]And I selected the plants that are unique,
[00:05:17.390]that there is a variation for flowering,
[00:05:20.060]for plant type, for plant height.
[00:05:22.440]You could see even here within this small batch,
[00:05:27.200]there are two different types you could see,
[00:05:29.490]male that has red stem, male that has green stem.
[00:05:34.540]So, and it's the same thing,
[00:05:36.750]you could see different maturity type
[00:05:39.270]even with this one batch.
[00:05:41.080]Imagine when you go throughout the state of Nebraska,
[00:05:44.220]there is a huge, huge variation.
[00:05:47.330]So with this one, I said, we'll start with this one here
[00:05:50.710]and then clean it, backcross it
[00:05:53.300]and select an adapted varieties
[00:05:56.670]that are unique and have higher yield
[00:06:00.120]and meet all the requirement.
[00:06:01.680]So what we are looking for in hemp,
[00:06:04.639]we are looking for higher oil, higher protein,
[00:06:08.340]higher cannabinoids, because hemp used for,
[00:06:11.700]in addition to the feed and food,
[00:06:14.118]it's medicinal to produce CBD, CBG, CBA.
[00:06:19.280]So these are good for medicine.
[00:06:20.730]So we are selecting also for hemp that has low THC and CBD.
[00:06:26.780]I need to mention, as I should have mentioned earlier,
[00:06:29.690]that we're only allowed to work with industrial hemp,
[00:06:33.780]hemp that has less than 0.3% THC, okay.
[00:06:40.050]That's the psychoactive material.
[00:06:42.350]We're not allowed to work with anything
[00:06:44.630]that has higher, more than 0.3% THC.
[00:06:47.800]So we have to be careful.
[00:06:50.300]When we select a plant, we have to test them for THC
[00:06:54.020]and make sure that we maintain the THC at lower level.
[00:06:58.180]So, as I mentioned earlier, the only source of variation
[00:07:01.760]we have in hemp is the white material
[00:07:06.070]that are scattered throughout the state of Nebraska.
[00:07:10.520]To increase the variability, what I did,
[00:07:13.410]I took one line, I self the seed,
[00:07:19.000]I intercrossed it I should say,
[00:07:20.780]because you cannot self hemp.
[00:07:23.240]And create a large number of seeds.
[00:07:26.810]And then what I did, I did use the EMS,
[00:07:30.489]Ethyl methanesulfonate to mutate the seed,
[00:07:35.300]mutation genetics to increase the variability.
[00:07:38.770]And as you see in here, this is one side of a mutation
[00:07:44.270]that you have big variation in their leaves,
[00:07:47.850]and you could see in here.
[00:07:49.330]So the variation or that variation
[00:07:53.620]is an indication of a sterility.
[00:07:56.350]So this one here, what we're going to do after this,
[00:08:01.520]I'm crossing it with one male,
[00:08:04.070]all the females in here, cross with one male.
[00:08:07.780]And then I'm going to take the seed,
[00:08:10.120]and plant out in the field
[00:08:12.380]and then screen for different mutation.
[00:08:15.970]My main goal is to create male sterile hemp,
[00:08:21.860]male and female sterile.
[00:08:24.170]So when you plant that hemp,
[00:08:27.200]pollen from outside, it doesn't matter
[00:08:30.210]because one of the most important thing now
[00:08:33.520]of growing hemp especially hemp for CBD,
[00:08:36.510]farmers are scared so much
[00:08:40.330]of the wild hemp pollen
[00:08:43.400]that come and pollinate their plant.
[00:08:46.150]When that happen, that would reduce the concentration
[00:08:49.320]of CBD in their material,
[00:08:51.570]and then will bring them less profit.
[00:08:55.290]So that's one of the main focus for me now
[00:08:58.300]is to produce male and female sterile hemp
[00:09:02.370]and we're starting with EMS.
[00:09:05.450]And we are also going to use chromosome doubling
[00:09:08.520]with culture seem, double the chromosome
[00:09:11.690]and produce triploid like watermelon, seedless watermelon.
[00:09:16.150]So we are going to have seedless hemp,
[00:09:18.980]or what you can get is the bud
[00:09:22.750]that's loaded with CBD, or CBG, or CBN,
[00:09:26.692]that cannabinoids that could be used for medicinal reasons.
[00:09:32.040]The other thing, we're also looking for a big seed in hemp,
[00:09:36.660]big seed to see if we have higher protein in a big seed.
[00:09:41.740]Big seed, I guess like in sorghum and millet,
[00:09:44.260]will give you bigger seedling
[00:09:46.930]and would be able to compete with weed.
[00:09:49.050]One of the problem we have with hemp so far,
[00:09:52.240]because it's a new crop,
[00:09:54.780]we don't have any registered herbicide for it.
[00:09:58.110]So one of the objective with using EMS
[00:10:02.040]is to select for herbicide tolerant hemp.
[00:10:07.600]So we could use at least the ALS type of herbicides
[00:10:13.570]in hemp to control wild leaf and grasses.
[00:10:16.800]One of the unique thing about hemp
[00:10:21.140]is it's very easy to propagate.
[00:10:24.856]You could take something like this one here, that one here,
[00:10:30.960]you put some growth regulatory hormone
[00:10:33.770]in the bottom in here, and you put it in the soil,
[00:10:38.430]and then you cover it. And in 10 days, you have a plant.
[00:10:45.040]So since we cannot do any selfing with hemp,
[00:10:48.380]because it's dioecious crop,
[00:10:50.370]you could take cuttings from your favorite plant,
[00:10:54.130]and increase that population by cuttings. Okay.
[00:10:59.030]So you could grow hemp by seed. Like you see in here,
[00:11:01.143]we just put it in this seedlings tray,
[00:11:05.703]or you could do it by cuttings.
[00:11:07.612](bright upbeat music)

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University of Nebraska Edible Industrial Hemp Breeding Program

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