Industrial hemp grain and fibre variety evaluation
Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance
To evaluate grain and fibre yield obtained from different hemp varieties in different agro-ecological
regions of Canada.
The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance (CHTA) is a not-for-profit organization which represents over 260 growers across all 10 provinces as well as numerous processors, distributors, developers and researchers involved in Canada’s rapidly growing industrial hemp industry.
Canada started issuing licenses to allow research on industrial hemp in 1994 and new regulations were included in the Canadian Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in 1998 to authorize commercial production of hemp under licensing and control of Health Canada (Cherney and Small, 2016). In Canada, hemp production is more concentrated in Southern Ontario and Quebec but recently, there have been more interest across many provinces as demand for the crop is increasing. The major increase in demand for hemp can be attributed to its many uses, among them; fibre, oilseed and its use in the pharmaceutical industry (De Meijer, 2014; Kaiser et al., 2015). Hemp fiber has high tensile strength and is useful for plastic bio-composites for vehicles, textile, rope, insulation, paper, absorbent and bedding material (Darby et al., 2017). An increase in the interest for production of industrial hemp also means that there is need for producers to effectively select varieties that can perform best in their areas of production. Therefore, there is need for testing available varieties in different agro-ecological regions in order help producers make better decisions. This study seeks to evaluate performance of hemp varieties in relation to grain or fibre yield in varying environmental conditions.