HEMP PLANT CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

Industrial hemp is an annual herbaceous plant with a tap root and a rapid growth rate. It can attain height upto 5 meters approximately, considering genotypes and growing circumstances. The plant has a short main stem that is virtually unbranched, when grown for commercial purposes. Two- third stem is bark comprises the long fibres for textiles (about one-third stem), and the woody inner component of the stem called hurd. The hurd, which accounts for approximately two-thirds of the stem fibre, is substantially shorter than the bast.

Finally the plant produces seed heads having seeds, seed oils, and the cannabinoids CBD. Hemp cultivars have different hurd, bast, and seed quality, and various planting densities are applied for attaining required properties. Significantly, these various plant and culture traits demonstrate that differentiating industrial hemp form marijuana is not a difficult ascetics suggest, and that the crops would not look comparable when cultivated for their intend uses.

This plant has a very small stem (the plants for textile fiber and for green building have a stem that can reach 3–4 m and a very large biomass made entirely of roots and inflorescences with high content of pharmaceutical interest compounds. This type of plant has already been partly developed by an innovative and green start-up such as Aeroponica Perrotta (www. aeroponica  perrotta. it) and is available for an industrialization project for the pharmaceutical industry. Because very low amounts of soil and water are needed for this cultivation technique, there is a higher benefit to utilize it. With this technique, about 360 g of dry roots at 10% humidity is produced per square meter of radical carpet, with a dry matter ratio between roots and inflorescence of 2:1. From this surface of roots, a series of compounds of pharmaceutical interest can be extracted, such as triterpenoids and monoterpenes, for  example the friedelin in quantities of about 360 mg/kg, a  very high value considering the values reported in the literature for a single plant of hemp