With the new farm bill in place, along with enhanced opportunities for raising hemp as a crop, Colorado growers may welcome the news that the Colorado Department of Agriculture has cleared six new varieties for growth by the state’s farmers.

The state has approved additional hemp seed lines after testing to validate that their THC levels were within the legal limit. Colorado already has several other varieties approved for production.

In 2018, the CDA Approved Certified Hemp seed program trialed eight varieties of hemp across the state’s diverse growing conditions. The aim was to validate if they would grow mature plants that test at or below 0.3% THC concentration on a dry weight basis. The six varieties for 2018 are included in the complete table with this story. Each of the 2018 seeds joins the ranks on the CDA Approved Certified List.

To be CDA Approved Certified Seed, hemp varieties must be produced and labeled by members of the Colorado Seed Growers Association, according to the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies standards.

This list is updated with the approved 2018 varieties for hemp seed cleared by the Colorado Department of Agriculture for planting in the state. (Source: CDA, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.)

Seed tested in 5 Colorado regions
During 2018, the seed varieties were grown and tested in several regions of the state: Northeast, Arkansas Valley, Front Range, the San Luis Valley and Western Slope. These five locations have different daytime and nighttime temperatures, altitudes, lengths of growing season, and soil types. This provided CDA with a range of growing conditions for the trials. Growers planting with CDA Approved Certified Seed would be considered very low risk for testing purposes.

This program requires all seed packaging be tagged with both CDA tags and certified seed tags. CDA does not sell seed, and it has no information about seed availability or variety performance. Contact the individual companies listed for that information.

For more information on the certified seed program, visit the CDA industrial hemp webpage; or contact Terry Moran, industrial hemp certified seed specialist, at 303-869-9078 or email [email protected].

Source: Colorado Department of Agriculture, which is solely responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.