I have heard that the only plant that can be crossbred with cannibas is hemp; NE factual basis 2 that?

Question

Please provide your source material(site). Thanque in advance!

Timothy

:o)

Answer 1

Cannabis and Hemp are the same plant.  Hemp (Cannabis) fibers are used to make clothing and rope.  The fibers contain no THC, so the clothing and rope would not be illegal.

Hop (Humulus lupulus, used in the manufacture of beer) is not closely enough related to the Cannabis sativa plant to allow the plants to exchange genetic material (fertilization) for a "successful" cross.  It would be possible, however, to "graft" a branch of a hop plant onto a Cannabis plant.  This is commonly done with various types of plants and trees.

Answer 2

They are in the same family, Cannabaceae,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabaceae ,

so I suppose it could be possible to make an intergeneric cross.  There are intergeneric crosses out there--wheat (Triticum) x rye (Secale) for Triticale to name one.  If a Cannabis x Humulus hybrid were formed, however, it probably would not be fertile.  What would you call it?  Humannabis?  Humulabis?  Cannulus?  Cannumulus?

Making an intergeneric cross would be facilitated by the fact that both Cannabis and Humulus are dioecious, i.e., have "male" (staminate) and "female" (ovulate) plants.  For the ovulate parent (i.e., female), it could be kept isolated from any males so that you would know that the only pollen used to pollinate the flower came from the pollen donor you selected.  For a person experienced in plant breeding this would be "easy as pie."  Might not be easy for a crime scene investigator though.

I doubt that you would want to get the active ingredients of hops (e.g., humulone and lupulone) into Cannabis.  They supposedly help you sleep, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to smoke a joint that would make them any sleepier than what that whacky backy stuff does already.

If you want to get THC into hops, however, you probably would have a better chance to use modern methods of genetic manipulation and insert the genes needed for THC synthesis into hops.  What a beer that would make!  This is probably illegal if it were actually done, so I would advise against it.  Not only that, the weirdos who are against GMOs wouldn't buy your product.