With hemp cultivation now underway in New Mexico, researchers and students at New Mexico State University are embarking on new studies to help crop growers produce high-quality strains suitable for marketplaces.
In one project, students in Geno Picchioni’s upper-division greenhouse management class in NMSU’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences grew hemp cultivars in a supervised classroom setting as part of a research project last fall.
The 2018 United States farm bill removed hemp from the federal government’s most restrictive classification of controlled substances, which paved the way for American farmers to cultivate and distribute hemp as an agricultural product. Hemp, a variety of Cannabis sativa, is commonly grown for industrial uses but must contain less than 0.3 percent of THC, the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis.
Following the bill’s passage, Picchioni, a professor in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, began making plans to bring hemp into his greenhouse management class. The process required approvals from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, New Mexico Department of Public Safety and many university administrators, including the Plant and Environmental Sciences Department Head Rolston St. Hilaire, ACES Dean Rolando A. Flores, Executive Director of Accreditation Shelly Stovall, General Counsel Roy Collins III, Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance Andrew J. Burke, and Chancellor Dan Arvizu.
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