It was on Friday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that work has begun on the creation of the nation’s only hemp seed bank.
“When it comes to kicking Upstate New York’s burgeoning industrial hemp industry into an even higher gear, the Industrial Hemp Germplasm Repository is just what the doctor ordered,” Schumer stated.
“Not only will this facility act as the United States’ only industrial hemp seed bank, but it will also allow the world-class agricultural scientists at Cornell to help boost industrial hemp entrepreneurship.”
“I fought tooth and nail to secure this federal funding while also working to strip back the burdensome federal restrictions that held our farmers and growers back from being able to grow industrial hemp as an agricultural commodity because I knew the potential this crop had to transform the Upstate New York economy,” he said. “As work gets started at the Industrial Hemp Germplasm Repository, the seeds we have sown will soon be ready to harvest,” he added.
The facility will be “overseen by a curator charged with characterizing, maintaining and distributing seeds,” the announcement says, and the center’s stock will “help breeders and geneticists develop new cultivars, while also helping to identify genes for pest and disease resistance.”
