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Canada: Seeds of doubt
Charlie Mckenzie hour.ca
Thursday 09 Mar 2006 Forget Jesus and the loaves and fish, look what the Mounties can do with a bag of pot seeds Following a 14-month investigation, RCMP officers recently uncovered a Montreal organization selling marijuana seeds via the Internet. Trumpeting their latest victory against "the scourge of marijuana" - their term - the Mounties claim that the amount of seeds seized would fill 500 greenhouses with 400 plants, representing 42 million joints on the street. That seems comparable to the infamous "angels on the head of a pin" query that has forever plagued scholars and barflies alike. Even with all the CSI toys and tools at their disposal, how could the Mounties possibly calculate the number of joints in a bag of seeds? Marijuana being an unregulated industry, there's no such thing as a standard-sized joint. Size differs in various regions for various reasons, not the least of which are availability, quality of paper and, of course, level of individual joint-rolling skills. Vancouver's super-seed salesman Marc Emery - currently fighting extradition to the U.S. where he faces a life sentence for selling marijuana seeds to needy Americans - half a gram is the standard joint in Western Canada. "A lot, though," he added, "depends on the quality." Eastern Canadians are surprisingly more conservative. "Here they run about a third of a gram," said Montreal's Marc Boris St-Maurice, founder and former leader of the federal Marijuana Party, now with NORML Canada. "But that," he noted, "can fluctuate according to circumstance." Scientists and horticulturalists agree, in a manner of speaking... "The RCMP's yield prediction was probably based on average yields for a typical marijuana plant," explained David Wees, horticulturalist and faculty lecturer at McGill's Macdonald campus, but he questions the accuracy of their method. "It's possible the seed won't germinate, in which case the yield is zero; or the seed germinates but the plant dies; or the seed germinates and grows 'normally' but because of factors such as heat, light, water or soil fertility, the yield is lower - or higher - than expected." His colleague, Dr. Suha Jabaji-Harem, Associate Dean of Research for Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, readily concurred. "It would be extremely difficult," he said. "The age, health and storage conditions of the seeds would have to be considered, and for maximum yield, growing conditions have to be perfect so the plant is not under stress." Being illegal probably qualifies as being under stress, and - despite being one of our largest agro-industries - lack of regulation confines cannabis cultivation to somewhat substandard conditions. But when asked if one could really tell how much a single seed would yield, research scientist Daniel C.W. Brown, of London, Ontario's Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre, was very clear: "Yes and no," he said. "Generally, a larger seed is an indication of a better developed, more mature seed which should have stronger growth potential. But many factors could impact on the yield of the plant, e.g., genetic potential, nutrition, environment, disease and pest resistance, water availability, etc." Julie Plamondon, media relations officer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, had the final word, and unfortunately for our beloved Mounties it puts their claim of 42 million joints in serious doubt, challenging their credibility. "No," she stated emphatically. "It is not possible to determine plant yield simply by examining seeds, either by the naked eye or with a microscope." She did, however, thank us for our interest in agriculture.
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