Industrial Hemp Variety Trials 2021–22 to 2023–24: Summary Report

• Download report PDF

  Download

Australia’s agricultural landscape has long been shaped by the emergence of new crops that transition into staples of the farming system through research, policy reform and market development. The Industrial Hemp Variety Trials (IHVT) echo earlier efforts to establish crops like canola1 and chickpeas in Australia, each of which faced initial hurdles before becoming commercially viable. Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is an annual herbaceous, wind-pollinated flowering plant indigenous to eastern Asia, but is now of cosmopolitan distribution due to widespread cultivation. It has been cultivated throughout recorded history, with the earliest human uses going back 6,000–10,000 years, and its harvest has been used
as a feedstock for manufactured products such as rope, textiles, paper and oil. While industrial hemp has been cultivated for a long time, it has not been subjected to the same intensive agronomic breeding and post-harvest research and development that has driven improvements in other now-major crops over the last 50–60 years.