The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding Virginia Tech researchers David Schmale, Shane Ross and Hosein Foroutan to the tune of $500,000 to conduct studies on pollen dispersal among agricultural crops, including hemp and genetically engineered switchgrass, according to Virginia Tech Daily, the university’s news platform.
While the studies will provide insights for individuals with certain allergies, the broader implications for the U.S. hemp industry are important facets of understanding how hemp will fit into farmers’ diverse crop portfolios. Already, cross-pollination is a problem among neighboring hemp growers and cannabis growers who are tending their crops toward different ends (and different levels of THC).
“Having a validated and reliable long-distance transport prediction model for wind-dispersed pollen is critical to establishing appropriate isolation distances for GE crops and making informed regulatory decisions,” said Schmale, a professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The research team will use drone-mounted sensors to cross-reference the amount of pollen in certain areas against factors like weather, wind pattern and temperature to learn more about how far-flung pollen dispersal can be.
Research like this can help inform regulatory decisions. Even now, the USDA continues to fine-tune its legal hemp rules (due to publish before the end of the year).
“This research will forge new discoveries of atmospheric scales of pollen dispersal and will represent a significant milestone in the scientific exploration of the atmosphere—an undersampled and relatively unexplored ecological setting,” according to the university. “The results from this study will be of immediate value in the development of transport models for pollen, and may be useful for generating rational and informed approaches for managing crops with wind-dispersed pollen in the future.”
