The Farm Bill was passed in 2018, legalizing the production of hemp. At that time, Bruce Bugbee, professor in the Plants, Soils and Climate Department at Utah State University, started conducting cannabis research and was looking for graduate students. It was just what Mitchell Westmoreland was looking for, so he applied and started working at the lab in 2019.
“So it really kind of just started as a love to grow plants. And then the more and more that I learned about cannabis and how interesting this plant is, the more I've kind of fallen in love with it,” Westmoreland said.
Westmoreland spends much of his time at the USU greenhouses and in the growth chambers studying light pollution, nutrition, light quality, carbon dioxide concentration and light intensity.
“Pretty much my entire goal with all of the research I do is to improve the flower yield, but also the uniformity and the quality of the cannabinoids in the flower,” Westmoreland said.
The cannabis grown in the USU labs and greenhouses is for medicinal uses only, meaning the plants have less than 0.5% THC.
“This is a pharmaceutical product, we've got to have good uniformity, if it's ever going to be successful as a medicinal crop," Westmoreland said.
Westmoreland added that he is excited about upgrades to the lab that will help further their studies. They include upscaling the walk-in growth chambers making it easier to receive real-time data on various studies, all at once.
He feels there is still work to be done to ensure uniformity and safety in medicinal cannabis and other agricultural crops.
“You know, I think there's a lot of potential to continue working on cannabis, especially as legislation shifts, you know, the support from the state of Utah, I think is a real positive step forward," he said. "But beyond cannabis just sort of moving towards more efficient and more sustainable approaches to agriculture, both in the field and in controlled environments where plants are increasingly being grown."
Westmoreland hopes to continue research on crops, specifically cannabis as the need for more information increases and as he wraps up his graduate program in the coming months.
