The University of Guelph, based in Ontario, Canada, is now offering an online cannabis production course as part of the university’s existing horticulture certificate program.
The course, which is aimed at professionals and home growers, is already fully enrolled with 60 students.
Marjory Gaouette, manager for program development with Open Learning and Educational Support, said the university had a “significant increase” in people contacting the university looking for cultivation courses following cannabis legalization in the nation in 2018.
The course will include cultivation basics: lighting, irrigation systems, growing media, and managing pests and disease. Brandon Yep, a master’s student in the School of Environmental Sciences who designed and will teach the course, said the program “will clarify fact from myth and provide scientifically backed information on cannabis production.”
School of Environmental Sciences professors Youbin Zheng and Mike Dixon have published several recent groundbreaking studies on cannabis plant production that Yep will utilize for the course. Yep’s graduate degree is supervised by Zheng and he is studying ways to improve aquaponics for indoor cultivation. The system collects waste from fish grown in aquaculture and provides that waste to bacteria. Those bugs then break down the material and make its nutrients available to plants grown hydroponically.
About a dozen Canadian colleges and universities have launched cannabis-centric degree and certificate programs.
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