The race is on… who will be the 22nd State to legalize Medical Marijuana?
And what creative lawmaking will be utilized to bridge the cap between conservative lawmakers and liberal proponents of Marijuana as a socially acceptable choice?
Good news for Plant Breeders, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency which administers the Plant Breeders' Rights Act (1990) and the regulations that provide legal protection to plant breeders for new plant varieties, has accepted its first application for a Cannabis Strain. Though the application was submitted in December 2013 it was 6 months before it was published. Big C, as it is called (Botannical Name: Cannabis sativa subsp. Indica) has a long way to go before rights may be granted. The process involves testing and plant trials, and site examinations, and the breeder must be able to show that the variety is new, and different from all other varieties. It must be uniform across all plants bred from the same stock and hold its genetic integrity through successive generations which takes time to prove.
A few years ago, the cover of GrowerTalks asked the question, “Is marijuana your next crop?” At the time, I was thinking that my home state of Florida would be the 54th out of 50 states to approve any use of marijuana for any reason. Once again, history has proven my predictions to be completely wrong. That’s how Kerry Herndon, owner of Kerry’s Bromeliad Nursery in Homestead, Florida started his April article in Green Profit Magazine.
One of our installers gets suited up before putting the finishing touches on the GGS benches being installed at one of Canada’s Licenced Producers for Medical Marijuana. We have installed multiple rooms for this particular LP, and as per Health Canada regulations bio safety and security measures must be adhered to for all.
If you are getting your benching from one supplier, irrigation from another, and lights from someone else. Who is coordinating everything? Did you make sure that the benches are being designed to suit the irrigation system you chose? Did you make sure to define all the sensors you are using, and did you make sure not to forget to qualify whether the irrigation sensors are supplied by the irrigation company or the computer company. Is the company who is installing your air filtration and cooling systems completely aware of every detail in your lights, or did you forget something that will create a difference in the heat output and throw off your whole system? The automated growing equipment available to commercial growers when properly designed as an integrated system can not only provide better traceability and uniform quality, it can increase the amount of production.