Cannabis pollen dispersal across the United States | Hacker News Reader

Cannabis pollen dispersal across the United States

nature.com

86 pointsPaulHoule78 comments

Another thing that happens to outdoor grown cannabis is pesticide contamination. Even if your farm is a good distance from some commercial agriculture, if they spray it can, and does, contaminate your crop -- which for regulated cannabis requires destruction. Literally burning (or composting) thousands of dollars of product.

And if the pesticides test are hot on the cross-contaminated cannabis; how much is on those apples three fields over?

Wouldn't composting risk having the pesticides go into the next crop further contaminating?

Although, to your point, they can just sell it to the nearby farms growing stuff we eat that isn't tested the same way...

Typically, and USA specific, the rules are to grind it up, mix with equal parts existing dirt/compost and then it's OK. So that dilutes it by half; then this compost is spread around and, like you said, can be used for other crops. Also, as the material sits in the compost pile, which should be agitated, the pesticides will leach out/break down.

I just got a message from WA-LCB today with updated pesticide information, working with WSU, so here's some details -- https://agr.wa.gov/departments/cannabis/pesticide-use

And here's the Action Limits defined in WA law: https://app.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=314-55-108

Many asterisks here but there are methods for remediating herbicide and pesticide contamination. Not saying it’s universally solved, but its not universally unsolvable either.

Edit: I meant to speak specifically in terms of compost production.

> which for regulated cannabis requires destruction

Which regulation is this that requires destroying a nearby crop... instead of the one the pesticide was actually applied to? I'm confused here. Pesticides don't "contaminate" crops in that way, they're literally intended to be use on the food.

I live in NZ where there are medical standards applied to legal cannabis - only recently have I seen dispensaries advertising non irradiated cannabis, presumably because the manufacturing facilities have progressed to no longer require it.

It might be something similar?

non irradiated?

It’s a common sterilisation technique [1].

[1] https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra...

Quite common for example for dried spices, which pre-irradiation used to have a risk of dangerous bacterial contamination if they were dried outside.

I’d imagine that there are different standards applied to things intended to be eaten vs things intended to be inhaled.

Some of it has to do with combustion breakdown products. Some Canadian producers got nailed with using (directly or indirectly) antifungals with that issue:

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2017/03/clarific...

Some of it has to do with highly effective lobbying by food manufacturers and a highly restrictive approach toward cannabis cultivation.

cannabis aint food

Well, sometimes.

Really? I'll mention that to the birds in my neighbourhood.

The seeds and oil are quite nutritious, and the leaves sometimes have a tinge of turpentine that fits well in a vinaigrette salad. It's also common to make cannabis butter for culinary as well as cosmetic uses.

these brownies are strictly for cosmic, err, cosmetic usage only officer

The regulations are because it’s inhaled. That it can be eaten is secondary

What's food is a matter of regulation now?

In fairness you can’t wash a dried pot flower like you would an apple.

systemic pesticides are actually taken into the plant, and dont wash out.

Big nope - pesticides are there to repel or kill bugs. A lot of times the recommendation is to wash fruit before eating it to remove pesticides or lead from fuel burned by cars in the vicinity, etc.

Uhh, no cars are emitting lead anymore? AV gas, maybe, if the field is near an airport that is a potential risk.

You can buy leaded fuel for racing. In theory lead contamination could be an issue near a speedway.

https://www.sunocoracefuels.com/fuels

I guess he meant general soot from burned fuel, as much if not more toxic than lead itself.

Residue levels are researched and regulated, along with drift trespass lawsuits and crop damage insurance.

I guess my answer to cannabis is that if the zero-tolerance remains a factor then it's a business risk decision to grow outdoors vs indoors.

How bad is smoking pesticide vs eating pesticides?

The eaten one goes through your stomach acid and can be flushed out naturally through the system. The inhaled particles may get stuck in your lungs or worse: absorbed. Lungs are not a through channel. Things absorbed there go to the brain, blood stream, a lot faster. The stuff you spray on plants is usually meant to kill or repel bugs and critters. So won’t be friendly to lung or brain tissue. Possible cancerous too.

These pesticides are a bit like the magical Chernobyl radioactive cloud, which, thanks to some miraculous high pressure and low pressures zones, neatly avoided some countries by flowing along their borders.

Here, the pesticides are magically contained by our stomach acids, and never pass the gut barrier to enter our bodies, making them absolutely safe.

The produce you buy at safeway comes from all over the place and spraying sometimes is done with a a crop-dusting air plane.

Nobody claims they are contained in food. Just possibly less absorbable than via lungs.

That’s a stupid comparison because country borders don’t have physical differences.

The stomach is nothing like the lungs. Inhale a glass of water and let us know how fake that difference is.

some chemistry occurs as a result of burning. dependent on substance it can be worse, or more immediate.

e.g. benomyl [fungicide] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benomyl

will produce cyanide as combustion product.

The fact that cannabis is so genetically unstable is very interesting. The root cause of the problem is that the level of CBD or THC produced by the plant in the resin is a result of polygenic expression— in other words, even if you have two strains of CBD-dominant crop, pollination can still result in increased THC in the next generation of the plant.

Fascinating. But there's a level of scientific understanding to your comment that I just don't understand. Do you have any recommendations for learning resources to better grasp what you're talking about?

Dude with 3 eyes screws a girl with 1 eye and births someone with 2 eyes

A closer result to the above would be a child born with 17 eyes to the same couple.

It just means that multiple genes contribute to the outcome, so it's not a binary flip of THC or CBD depending on a single gene - if it were like that, then two parents who had the CBD gene would almost certainly produce CBD kids. Polygene means that it's a more complex interaction, and you can't assume that two CBD parents will result in a CBD child.

This is a largely political problem. Cross pollination does not affect the utility of commercial help-only its legality. You can study wind dispersal, etc, but at the end of the day, the problem is a bunch of clueless old men.

> This is a largely political problem

Is it? "leading to contaminated seeds, reduced oil yields, and in some cases, mandated crop destruction" sounds not like a political problem, or you mean the causes for those things are political?

These issues at least partially stem from the politics surrounding cannabis. 'Mandated crop destruction' is absolutely a political problem, because it's just driven by seeds cross pollinating into plants that exceed the arbitrary political limit. Oil yields and contaminated seeds are not specified, but might be due to similar arbitrary restrictions, rather than actual issues with the product

Yields are real impacts from cross pollination and has zero to do with politics.

CBD only strains with THC, vice versa. Lower strengths etc. All impact product quality and impact.

The labeling of seeds as "contaminated" is a political issue. Its not like seeds being pressed for oil are not good for that purpose if they are arbitrarily determined to be contaminated. I suspect the reduced oil yields are the result of the destruction requirements not because the plant made less oil.

Isn't it also a problem for breeders? I would think pollenation could cause issues for indoor as well as outdoor crops, especially specific strain breeding and understanding pollenation patterns would help mitigate some of that.

It's not a very popular opinion, but I don't think any grower really knows what strain they are growing anyways. I think the strains have been so mixed and matched, and probably some growers will call theirs a specific strain just to sell more of it. And with how long Marijuana growing was underground, the sources of the seeds are totally undocumented. It's basically like a big game of telephone at this point.

I never thought about this. It would be interesting to run mass spec on resin samples from different growers to see the interval of genetic variation

And yet Headband really did feel like you were wearing a headband =)

The motor cortex goes across the brain like that.

AFAIK they mostly grow from clones, and thus, would be completely unaffected by pollination. Unless I misunderstand plants, pollination impacts the seeds produced, and therefore the subsequent generation. So long as it keeps being cut and propagated, rather than grown from seed, you could be relatively certain of near identical genetics.

I think hemp farmers use seed more than clones, which are more popular in the THC supply chain

Clones are good. But it is not possible to keep a clone line going indefinitely.

Periodically you need males and females doing their wonderful thing and mixing it all up from seed

For example, every apple variety out there. Every potato variety out there. Every garlic variety out there. Grape varietals. All gone because their clone lines expired. Not being able to propagate clone lines is why we can't have seedless oranges or watermelon or grapes.

What makes clone lines no longer able to propagate?

> But it is not possible to keep a clone line going indefinitely

What is the mechanism that prevents this?

I am no botanist

But I think the DNA degrades over time

Mēh! What we do not understand about genetics matters more than what we do....

I am no botanist

There is also little evidence that the strain has any effect on the pharmacological effects of cannabis, beyond the amount of THC per gram of flower (potency). Although it can greatly influence the smell/taste, which is meaningful.

However, if you’ve tried the “same” strain from multiple growers you’ve likely found that the smell can vary significantly, and (as a consumer) there’s really no way to know what the flower’s aroma (and appearance) will be without direct observation. This is aligned with your hypothesis.

I live in a state that 'inadvertently' legalized THC products when trying to pass hemp legislation in 2022, so... yeah. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It was followed closely by actual legalization because nobody in their right mind was going to try to roll it back and stay in office.

Yet corn hybrid production, which requires strict controls on pollination, is made to work. Is there a difference with hemp pollen or is the problem on the regulatory side?

The reverse problem here means it'll be harder and harder to avoid fertilizing females plants grown for flower outdoors!

It is really really annoying

Nature's gonna nature.

The fallacious line of thinking that one can fully isolate an outdoor planting is the more interesting issue this touches on, a skeptical take is that this fallacy continues to exist in regulation only for its utility of abuse by large companies seeking to profit from the commercialization of sterile GM crops.

I'm sure the upper echelon of commercial weed growers typically have a far higher education in landscape ecology than the captured regulators.

"The fallacious line of thinking that one can fully isolate an outdoor planting"

Who thinks that? It is about reducing unwanted pollination. So if you know the wind will come strong from this area and lots of hemp field are there, you can maybe protect your plants some time of the year, or know beforehand, that an area is not a good spot for you.

Monsanto, at one level or another. While they pinky-promise to not sue, if their corn gets into your corn and you replant the seeds, they've fought about it in court to mixed results.

Almost nobody replants their own corn. Almost all corn planted is an F1 hybrid, the first generation of a cross between two varieties. Subsequent generations perform very much worse. This is a natural thing not an engineered thing, many plants on the first generation cross between two varieties perform much better.

Most corn is also patent encumbered, but that is less of the reason.

Soybeans are actually different and before all of the patented genetics people did sometimes replant their own grown seed.

I thought Canola (which is a disturbing plant in general for food use) was their big hitter for that sort of thing?

> While they pinky-promise to not sue

They will not only "not sue", but they will compensate you for the cost of the contamination.

The only court cases where Monsanto (now Bayer) got damages involved farmers knowingly and intentionally replanting Monsanto's seeds.

But the cannabis industry is mostly large companies capturing regulators and litigating genetics, so I'm not sure the distinction is accurate.

In New York the cannabis industry is still largely grey market.

I have been trying to quit, we finally cut up the plants that we had from last year and put them in jars and sent them away but then somebody shows up with a jar of something they grew.

I don't think I'll ever buy weed from a dispensary because between being able to grow a few plants for myself and getting weed from friends who also grew it for themselves as well as knowing people in the industry (leaders in the trade association) it keeps showing up.

Why do my cannabis-sector ETFs keep going down then?

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