Is detasseling easier than identifying male from female from herm? I would think cannabis would take a little more time.
My dream is to have a garden of about 10,000 and just let it go with some selection and culling as needed but that would be awesome to grow at that amount if it were allowed. It would be a bit of a monumental task to establish at first.
People certainly do clones but to plant at a high density would be hard without potentially hurting the soil. Part of my motivation is promoting soil health for a myriad of reasons, but I’m talking about reducing soil disturbance, keeping soil planted, and keeping soil covered.
This is what Big Ag and the USDA have done. They have made us focus on growing plants because that lets them sell pesticides, pesticide resistant cultivars, and then fertilizers after the years of tillage the USDA said to do. I think a better view is to grow soil, if your soils are healthy and functioning correctly you will produce.
I’m not saying this idea will be for everyone, but I think its something reasonable to be considered and is more focused at small to midsized growers vs those doing large scale. They need to change to be more environmentally friendly but they aren’t going to until their hand is forced. Small farms that consistently produce high quality crops that sell for a premium, especially if enough small farmers change, is how you force the big boys to change
Thats not necessarily the result of the system, there are a lot of factors that go into that. I’ve got a grant pending final review right now to look at high density CBD planting from seed and am very confident based on previous studies that high density plantings are both possible and profitable for growers
1 Like
There are no federal grants for anything weed related because of it being federally illegal
My experience in Cannabis fields is that males are pretty easy to spot. Once flowering starts most males will bolt much quicker than females. We cleared a planting date trial plot of all males in maybe 5 or 10 minutes using amount of stretch as an indicator for plants to check. Not too difficult when rows are spaced so you can walk through.
I still think drones are a reasonable answer for identifying males. Ive seen drones accurately pick out Tar Spot on corn from 200 ft high. There is work to be done in terms of developing an algorithm, but that is getting easier everyday.
1 Like
The herm plants will be harder for the drones to spot
1 Like
or buds darker than the programmers are use too 
Absolutely true. Great point! I think the best answer here, honestly, is solid IBL parents. I havent seen much in genomic studies about herms to know what contribution is genetic vs environment vs both but with sequencing getting cheaper and the amount of genomic data available, it means its only a matter of time until we know the contributions of each parameter and can really dial in a solution
1 Like
Cannabinoid, fiber, and grain hemp research are all currently receiving either federal funding or funding through regional programs. My work at the University is funded by the USDA.
The great thing about CBD hemp is that the information applies to THC hemp as well. The difference is number of THC synthase or CBD synthase genes. And both use the same substrate molecule! What we learn in CBD applies to THC
1 Like
I’m not sure I understand this comment 
I saw some stuff like this on the autoflower forums. indoors one of the most impressive runs I saw was a guy in tent with flood table, four cheap amazon lights, and I wanna say a couple dozen plants. outdoors gnome/mandalorian has worked on some higher density commercial autoflower runs that were designed for resin production.
Overall I think OP’s thesis is backwards here; I would moreso say that legacy customers pulling hard for quality was big reason why this style of cultivation has never been popular in the developed world. As we enter legalization, the race to the bottom, and gas station weed this style of cultivation will become more popular. high density plants, automated everything, machine processed and packaged.
fewer plants = higher quality every time
2 Likes
Solid ibl parents reversed for fem seeds will still produce a handful of herm plants and on average a full blown male every thousand or so.
The cbd/ hemp research is transferable to thc weed. No grant money is available for thc money for farms at the moment. My buddy searched believe me
1 Like
This is why homegrow should always be better than dispensary!
1 Like
No that is very true. And it sucks because you guys miss out on stuff like cover crop credits and payments. I mean we are here growing hemp in America again, so things are at least moving forward. The other opportunity is to look for nonprofits or businesses that are looking at sustainable research. There are definitely some forward thinking funders out there
1 Like
I disagree on the quality part. You can still produce high quality cannabis at scale.
That was grown in a 5 gallon container with 7 other plants. Did it yield a lot per plant? Nope. Was the cumulative yield good? It was pretty close to what can I do with one plant per pot. One day I will get the opportunity to meet some of you and you can sample and give me your opinion!
Handling 10 pounds versus 500 or a 1000 or more is definitely harder to keep the quality up. It’s not impossible, but definitely harder especially if it’s all coming in at one time
3 Likes
This is where data science comes in handy! With a large enough sample of plants you can map offspring traits back to genomic regions. It takes some intense computing power, but its essentially how they diacover markers for breeding. Its a little more nuanced than that, but its possible.
Great point! They’ve got some interesting equipment now to harvest different hemp plants and I hope the next innovation is along these lines. However, i suspect drying single cola stems vs bushes or trees with lots of branching will help save room for drying
I think this brings up a great question. Where is the quality lost? I’ve seen stuff at grows that looks and smells amazing but is boofy in store. Was it a bad grow or was it bad post harvest management?