Hemp

Organic Hemp Abruzzo Products based on Certified Hemp Sativa.
The Careful Choice of Producers and Type of Productions.

Hemp could save hundreds of millions of trees every year, produce all kinds of fabrics, manufacture non-polluting fuels, plastics and paints. The whole plant is usable, from the flower to the seeds. Hemp seeds could fill the protein shortage of developing countries. Save the environment, produce paper in a non-polluting way and without sacrificing trees, replace petroleum chemicals, improve foreign accounts and create new jobs.

"Sativa" means useful, and "cannabis" means hemp. Hemp is a plant that has been used since prehistoric times.

Botanical characters

Hemp is an annual species, with taproot and erect stem, more or less branched, robust, first full then hollow, up to 4 meters high. The leaves are mainly opposite, petiolate, palmate, with 3-9 lanceolate, sharp, serrated, pubescent segments. Generally it is a dioecious species, presenting the male and female inflorescences on different plants. The male flowers are gathered to form inflorescences, called panicles, placed in an axillary position, while the female ones are paired, always in an axillary position, but in correspondence with the two stipules, small, sharp and deciduous. The fruit is an achene, commonly called hemp seed or hemp seed. The shape is commonly ovoid, but sometimes almost spherical. The color is not uniform, but is more or less speckled, thanks to a network of vascular bundles located under the epidermis of the pericarp. Brown predominates, sometimes olive or reddish, but there is no lack of lighter, whitish and greenish fruits. It contains a single seed, enclosed in a thin pericarp with a horny, indehiscent, bivalve consistency (1000 seeds weight equal to 20-22 grams).

Environmental needs

Hemp is able to adapt to the most varied environments, even if the best production results are obtained in humid areas and with temperatures of 20-25 ° C throughout the cycle and in clayey and fertile soils.
The genetic improvement (made in the past also in Italy) has led to the constitution of varieties with a high percentage of fiber.

Cultivation technique

As a renewal crop, it requires deep plowing and subsequent refinement of the soil just before sowing. Sowing, at the end of April-early May, is done in rows 15-18 cm apart, in order to obtain, upon harvesting, an investment of 100-200 plants per square meter, which is achieved by using about 60 kg / ha of seed. From a nutritional point of view, hemp is very sensitive to nitrogen fertilization: the lack of this element leads to a significant reduction in plant development. To obtain a good production it is necessary to add 150 kg / ha of nitrogen, 150 kg / ha of phosphorus and 100 kg / ha of potassium. Irrigation is usually superfluous in the North. As far as weeds are concerned, once the emergency phase is over, hemp does not present problems because it has a very rapid development and shows a high level of competitiveness.
Collection and use

If the harvest concerns exclusively the rod, it is carried out in correspondence with the female flowering (first half of August); if the production of achenes is also to be obtained, it is postponed to the end of September. Once the harvest was done by hand; today it is mechanized, also due to the fact that hemp is now used for products other than those of the past. For the preparation of special papers, in fact, the green rod is used, which undergoes the scutching process to separate the woody part, or canapulo, from the fiber. A good production of green rod is equal to 120-150 quintals per hectare. The fiber obtained (12-15 quintals) is used for the manufacture of fabrics, filters and thermo-acoustic insulation. The seed (up to 15 quintals per hectare) can also be used from female plants, used for the extraction of oil used for the production of colors and varnishes. The material that remains from the scutching can be used as litter, while the extraction panels are used in zootechnical feeding.

Hemp is a herbaceous annual species, with a rigid and erect stem, whose height varies from medium to high. It has a well developed primary root with numerous secondary roots; clearly the morphology of the root system is connected with the soil / substrate on which the plant grows, tending to deepen if particularly loose or remaining superficial if compact.

Hemp varies considerably in its morphological and chemical characteristics as the pedo-climatic conditions vary.

When it grows in well-lit areas and on well-drained soils and with a good presence of nutrients and water it can reach

re a height of 5 meters in a cultivation period of between 4 and 6 months.

Hemp is a normally dioecious species developing male and female flowers in separate plants, although examples of monoecious flowers (flowers of both sexes in the same plant) are occasionally found in genetically dioecious individuals.

Hemp is an anemophilous pollinated species. Pollination can occur between plants even a few kilometers away.

Sowing takes place, in temperate climate countries, in the spring period and normally germination takes place in a period between three and seven days with the emergence of the epicotyl bearing two oval-shaped, fleshy and whole flap cotyledons. The first true leaf occurs at a height of 8-10 cm from the ground and consists of a pair of single leaflets oriented in the opposite way and with a serrated edge.

The successive pairs of leaves rise in opposite pairs and are differently formed in number of leaflets according to the sequence of development; in fact the second couple has three leaflets, the third has five, and gradually until it reaches even eleven-thirteen leaflets per single leaf.

The height reached by the plant and the length of the subsequent phenological phases depend on the date of flowering, determined in turn by the variety and the photoperiod, in fact it shows a double response to the photoperiod. In the first two-three months of long photoperiod growth (16-18 hours of daily light) it responds to an increase in the number of hours of daily light with an increasingly vigorous vegetative growth, managing to grow in height up to 10 cm per day during the long photoperiod summer days; afterwards it requires less hours of light per day (short photoperiod) to flower and complete its life cycle. The critical number of hours per day to induce flowering varies from 12 to 14 hours.

The knowledge of the response to the photoperiod is of fundamental importance in therapeutic hemp crops as the latter, not being carried out in the open field and therefore not following the normal biological cycle of the plant, must be conducted with criteria and absolutely not making mistakes in lighting. so as not to compromise production. The cultivation of therapeutic hemp is carried out in an "indoor" environment (ie in completely artificial environmental conditions) or "semi-indoor" (ie in a greenhouse with a special lighting and heating system); with these cultivation techniques it is possible to implement techniques of forcing or inducing flowering by simply adjusting the photoperiod and thus obtaining more annual cycles.

These crops are carried out with clonal material obtained from mother plants, kept in the vegetative state,

The male flowers are organized in panicle inflorescences, composed of numerous axillary racemes. The single flower includes: a 5-piece perigonium and 5 stamens (hanging when ripe and inserted on the bottom of the perigonium) with a short filament with bi-locular and dehiscent anthers depending on the length.

The female inflorescence looks like a false ear, large, straight and tufted; it is much more compact and leafy than the male inflorescence.

The single female flower is composed of: a stipule, a perigonal bract and a uni-locular ovary surmounted by two filiform stigmas protruding from the covering perigonal bract.

With maturation, the female flower will gradually become covered with glandular trichomes, which are the site of bioaccumulation of the active principles, cannabinoids and terpenes; the mixture of the latter gives each individual plant a distinct odor, while the cannabinoids are almost odorless.

The morphogenesis of the female flower is connected to a different number (quantitative variable) and to a different content (qualitative variable) of the glandular trichomes present on the perigonal bract and in general on all the aerial organs, thus affecting the quantitative and qualitative productivity in cannabinoids. . In the production of hemp for the pharmaceutical industry it is very important that the harvest is carried out in the phase of maximum cannabinoid yield. For this type of production, a morphological and physiological knowledge of the sites where the biosynthesis and bioaccumulation of said substances takes place is of great importance.