Of all the commercial crops grown in Western Canada, few have a more troubled reputation than industrial hemp.
Frequently mistaken for its mind-altering relative, marijuana, hemp is heavily regulated, widely stigmatized and its versatility often overlooked.
However, University of Saskatchewan researcher Jon Page has a different view of hemp, the non-psychoactive version of the cannabis plant.
And if things go as planned, his latest research could clear hemp’s reputation once and for all.
“One thing I often say about cannabis is that it’s a good plant with a drug problem,” says Page, a National Research Council scientist with a PhD in plant biochemistry.
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“Hemp lags behind other crops in that for the longest time … from the ’40s until 1997, Canadian farmers couldn’t grow it,” he said.
“So when you have a crop out of commission … for that long, it just needs some investment and some people putting some time into turning it back into a viable crop.”
Hemp and marijuana are both derived from cannabis.
Marijuana comes from cannabis varieties that have been selectively bred to produce mind-altering highs.
By contrast, hemp varieties have been selectively bred to produce low levels of a psychoactive ingredient known as tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.
In Canada, approved hemp varieties have THC levels that range from trace amounts to about 0.3 percent by dry weight, the upper threshold that Health Canada allows when approving a new hemp variety for commercial production.
Approved hemp varieties rarely produce a crop that exceeds the 0.3 percent threshold, but because THC levels can be influenced by agronomic factors such as climate and soil conditions, hemp producers are still forced to contend with a long list of regulatory hurdles.
For example, producers must pass a criminal record check, provide GPS co-ordinates of their crop, agree to grow an approved cultivar, allow periodic inspections by Health Canada officials and submit crop samples during the growing season and after harvest.
“It’s quite onerous,” Page said.
“The fact that you have a testing regime for a crop at all is quite an impediment to commercial production …. I mean, when you think about it, how much more paperwork do farmers want anyway?”
Page is hoping to address these regulatory issues by eliminating THC levels completely.
Recently, he received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant to study the biosynthetic processes at work in cannabis and to determine whether the biochemical switch responsible for producing THC can be turned off completely.
If successful, even trace levels of THC could be eliminated in hemp, meaning regulatory measures could be reduced and costly inspections eliminated.
Page said such a breakthrough could have far reaching implications for hemp production and use in Canada.
Right now, Canadian hemp acreage is small and markets for seed and fibre are limited.
Most seed produced in Canada is crushed to produce specialty oils and some is used as an ingredient in specialty health foods, such as porridge and granola bars.
Fibres from the plant can also be processed to produce clothing and specialty papers, but harvesting the fibre can be difficult because hemp stalks are large and fibrous compared to other commercial crops grown in the West.
“One of the limitations is that … harvesting is a real nuisance, partly because the fibres are so tough,” Page said.
There are other applications.
For example, with rising oil prices and a growing emphasis on bioenergy production, Page thinks hemp has huge potential as a biomass crop.
Most hemp varieties grow quickly, maturing in 85 to 120 days and often reaching heights of four metres.
They also have few natural pests in Western Canada.
“Its amazing when you see the biomass that cannabis will put on in a single growing season,” Page said. “I think it beats almost any other crop in this area … so on the agricultural side, it has real potential.”
Another goal of Page’s cannabis research is to explore the production of biochemical substances that could influence human health.
For the past decade or more, pharmaceutical companies have been interested in the plant’s ability to produce a group of chemicals known as cannabinoids.
Page said a single cannabis plant can produce as many as 60 cannabinoids.
The most common, THC, is a recognized analgesic that is regulated by Health Canada and distributed as medical marijuana to approved users.
Page is hoping to shed light on other cannabinoids that could serve as key components in the production of new drugs.
Just as it may be possible to turn off the biochemical switch responsible for producing THC, it may also be possible to manipulate the biochemical pathways that produce other cannabinoids that affect appetite, brain activity, behaviour and other neurological functions.
For example, some cannabinoids are neuroprotective and could have important implications for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
“The pharmaceutical industry (sees cannabis) as a huge opportunity,” Page said.
“The plant itself is a real treasure trove of (chemicals) that have or could have useful effects as pharmaceutical drugs.”
He said research into the pharmaceutical properties of cannabis is limited but gaining momentum.
In the 1990s, researchers at the National Institute of Health in the United States determined that certain cannabinoids are capable of binding receptors in the central nervous system.
Subsequent studies determined that cannabinoids could fulfil a similar role as endocannabinoids, a group of chemical substances that are produced naturally by the human body.
“THC mimics the effects of these endogenous substances,” Page said.
“In the last 15 or more years … it’s become clear that this cannabinoid signalling system in humans and other mammals is very, very important for brain function. It fulfils a number of roles in the nervous system.
“So based on those discoveries and the development of that knowledge, there’s been a lot of interest by pharmaceutical companies in cannabinoid based drugs.”
Although the implications of Page’s research could have far-reaching, global implications, most of it takes place at the microscopic level.
He began studying hemp and cannabis after graduating from the University of British Columbia.
At the time, his research focused on the study of secondary metabolites, chemicals that are produced by plants to protect themselves against enemies such as fungi, bacteria, herbivores and insects.
“Plants can’t get up and run away but they can produce these chemicals to fend off a threat,” he said.
“I started out my career by basically isolating these chemicals and identifying their chemical structures. Later, I went to Germany to study the biosynthetic pathways leading to their production.”
His current research is aimed at learning more about the biosynthetic processes at work in the cannabis plant.
By understanding these processes, it may be possible to manipulate them and develop cannabis varieties that can produce a single cannabinoid chemical more efficiently.
“What (pharmaceutical companies) are interested in is a variety that produces one compound and one compound only, not a mixture that you typically get in plants,” Page said.
“What we want to know is, could this fundamental understanding of the biochemical pathways leading to cannabinoid production be useful in engineering varieties of cannabis specifically for pharmaceutical production?”
Funding for Page’s research project, $646,000 in total, is shared with Peter Facchini, a University of Calgary researcher who is studying the production of morphine and other chemicals known as alkaloids in the opium poppy.
Funding has been in place since Oct. 1, 2007, and runs for three years.
