Cannabis has long been used for hemp fibre, hemp seeds and their oils, hemp leaves for use as vegetables and as juice, medicinal purposes, and as a recreational drug. The seeds, the cross, and the maintenance of the plants was performed by Ben Holmes from Centennial Seeds (who kindly donated his time and resources to the project. The plant is also known as hemp, although this term is often used to refer only to varieties of Cannabis cultivated for non-drug use. They give off a slightly weedy, piney skunk scent that gets stronger as the plant grows older. To understand whether diverse traits, such as leaf shape and cannabinoid production, are correlated to each other and to define groups, such as the misidentified “indica” or “sativa,” we decided to analyze a cross between a hemp type individual (Carmagnola) and a BLMT (Afghan Kush). Marijuana plants smell similar during the growing process and when they’re harvested and dried. My colleagues and I also discussed these issues within the industry (2). These problems in nomenclature have been previously been discussed by Jason Sawler and collaborators (1) they showed that, even though the industry assures us that two cultivars are 100 percent “sativa” they might be distantly related equally, two varieties that are colloquially classified as “sativa” and “indica” may be closely related. Indeed, this is the case of the variety Otto, which is not a hemp cultivar but a hybrid between the NLMTs and hemp (see Figure 2).

For example, from a legal perspective, the state of Colorado classifies any Cannabis plant that produces less than 0.3 percent THC as hemp however, biologically, such plants could cluster within the BLMTs or NLMTs rather than with hemp. Even though the industry assures us that two cultivars are 100 percent “sativa” they might be distantly related equally, two varieties that are colloquially classified as “sativa” and “indica” may be closely relatedĬurrently the cannabis industry’s colloquial – and misleading – information wrongfully groups Cannabis plants based on the leaf shape or cannabinoid content, particularly THC and CBD.

Marijuana leaf