Sanghyuck Park, PhD
Associate Director of Research, Institute of Cannabis Research, Colorado State University Pueblo
Colorado’s cannabis growers face escalating threats from climate volatility. The region’s Rocky Mountain topography exposes crops to sudden cold fronts and extreme heat events that suppress photosynthesis, degrade cannabinoid profiles, and reduce biomass, conditions that existing plant defense mechanisms are frequently insufficient to withstand.
This project investigates thermal stress memory, a phenomenon in which prior exposure to a sub-lethal stress stimulus confers a faster and stronger defense response upon re-exposure. This molecular memory can be epigenetically encoded through DNA methylation for long-term maintenance yet has never been studied in Cannabis.
By characterizing the transcriptomic and epigenetic landscape of thermal stress memory in Cannabis, this research will produce the first such dataset for cannabis and deliver a Precision Priming protocol for cannabis that enables growers to enhance stress resilience without genetic engineering and expand viable cultivation into regions currently considered too climatically unstable.