Cannabis Tissue Culture: The future of the crop

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Analytical Cannabis

Speaking at the Analytical Cannabis Expo Europe Online 2021, Verónica Codesido, PhD, Co-founder and Cultivation Accountable for MIFCO Biosciences presented her talk on cannabis tissue culture. Abstract: To have an effective participation in the national and international market of medicinal plants, it is necessary to address the paradigm of quality. This basically refers to obtaining products under controlled processes, with clean or organic production and in strict compliance with regulations. Development of medicinal plants must be focused not only in obtaining high yield in plant material, also higher secondary metabolites productivity, volume is only part of success, since the plant must then be dried and the active ingredient(s) that will determine the true quality of the product must be analysed. It is therefore necessary to follow protocols for the selection and propagation of planting material with high quality standards. In vitro plant propagation is a biotechnology technique widely used in economically important crops and is one of the biotechnological methods that has contributed most to the development of agriculture. It is applied in the mass production of horticultural, aromatic, medicinal, fruit, ornamental and forestry species. Vegetative propagation is carried out quickly and on a large scale, with great uniformity of the material obtained, reducing to the maximum the multiplication time and the space required for this purpose, having a greater control over the health of the propagated material. It is the fastest way to introduce new cultivars, in addition to promoting the conservation of germplasm in safe conditions and providing greater facilities for the international exchange of plant material. In recent years, it is estimated that some 800 million hectares are cultivated with micropropagated plants, not including transgenic plants, produced by more than 50 laboratories in Latin America and more than 1,000 around the world, where billions of plants are propagated every year. The use of this technique would be the future answer for Cannabis production necessities all over the world.