Armidale’s cannabis mother plant grows five tonnes of weed per year
Roving security guards and hundreds of cameras protect a giant greenhouse which grows five tonnes of medicinal cannabis a year. Take a look inside here.
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Hidden behind a 10 foot barbed wire electrical fence, piped music escapes from an innocuous giant greenhouse on a remote farm 1000 metres above sea level in the Northern Tablelands in rural New South Wales.
Gowned staff inside the secret factory in Armidale fuss over rows of lofty medicinal cannabis plants cultivated under intense LED lights and under strict environmental monitoring.
An exclusive tour of the Australian Natural Therapeutics Group plant patrolled by roving security officers revealed the strict government and Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) conditions under which the species are grown at the site that produces five tonnes of commercially homegrown medicinal cannabis every year.
“It’s like a Catholic school here, we don’t mix the male and the female plants, if the females are pollinated they will form seeds that will reduce the production of cannabinoids that are the medicine – it’s the female unfertilised flower that is the medicine that we cultivate,” said chief scientific officer Justin Sinclair.
“These plants are beautiful, not only for how they look but for what they can provide, for example they can help manage chronic pain and the demand for medicinal cannabis medicine is growing in Australia.”
With demand high for the alternative therapy, the privately-owned natural therapeutics company, whose HQ is in Byron Bay, will launch on Friday its first batch of commercially produced cannabis oil for prescription ending a year of intense research using Australian-grown medical flowers.
More than 18,000 patients in Australia were prescribed medicinal cannabis by more than 1,465 medical practitioners, mostly general practitioners, by 2019.
An estimated 247,170 approved medicinal cannabis prescriptions have been issued in Australia to date, 50 per cent of whom have used it to treat patients for chronic pain and 20 per cent for anxiety, according to fresh figures released by the TGA’s Medicinal Cannabis Access Data Dashboard this year.
At the factory’s vegetation bay, dubbed the “Mother Room”, workers – all of whom are randomly drug tested and police checked – ensure more than 3,000 clones of Rocky, a variety of cannabis containing high levels of Tetrohydracannabinol (associated with psychoactive and pain relief), receive at least 18 hours of light to strictly control flowering and encourage fresh crops to be harvested every quarter.
Other bays grow varieties higher in cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical produced by the plant.
Each plant is barcoded and tracked and monitored by hundreds of security cameras panning the factory under the Office of Drug Control guidelines.
Workers in the Flowering Bay toil in an aromatic cloud of terpenes and to the tunes of Nepali pop music ensuring the 3,000 plants are exposed to at least 12 hours’ light a day, in compliance with Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP) guidelines.
“The music helps the plants grow and keeps the staff entertained,” said Daniel Grono, GACP general manager.
Although not a panacea, medicinal cannabis has shown to produce incredible results to help treat chronic pain, depression, epilepsy, insomnia and certain inflammatory ailments.
“Cannabis products are certainly not suitable for everybody, but some will profoundly benefit from their administration, while other patients get minimal or no benefit,” said Newington Medical GP, Doctor Jason Cooke.
“Cannabis receptors exist in many parts of the body, in particular the neurological system which act similarly to other neurotransmitters. Novel cannabis products exert therapeutic effects on the human body by differentially affecting the endocannabinoid receptors,” doctor Cooke said.
“There is no way of knowing who will respond – this is one of the significant limitations of aggregate trial data, which does not discriminate between individuals.
“It therefore risks the chance of denying an individual a valuable treatment option.
“It can be consumed in a capsule form, oil or vaporised, and has shown great promise in the management of chronic pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia, inflammatory disorders, seizures, nausea, anorexia, endometriosis, spasticity and muscle spasms but research is ongoing,” he added.
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Originally published as Armidale’s cannabis mother plant grows five tonnes of weed per year
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