Cornell University Houses First Industrial Hemp Seed Bank

Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Sciences is stepping in to help move forward the young industrial hemp industry in New York State and, specifically, in the Southern Tier and Central New York.

Cornell is to house the nation’s only industrial hemp germplasm repository.  (That’s a “seed bank” for most of us.)

A half million dollars in federal funding is putting U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service hemp seed bank in at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, New York.  The facility already maintains seeds and does research and development for other crops like grapes, cherries tomatoes and apples.

Professor Larry Smart of the Horticulture section of the School of Integrative Plant Sciences says the new repository will maintain hemp seeds for researchers to look for pest and disease-resistant genes to help build the varieties of industrial hemp plants for growers in New York.