Cannabis Sativa Cultivation Across Scales: Culture Condition Control from Whole Plants to In Vitro Production Systems

Cannabis sativa cultivation encompasses a wide range of applications, from medicinal to textile, including also biocomposites, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals. Each of these uses is characterized by distinct requirements in terms of quality and yield. Optimizing environmental and nutritional factors is essential to ensure consistent, high-quality production. Variables such as light quality and intensity, photoperiod, temperature, humidity and nutrient availability directly affect plant physiology, secondary metabolite biosynthesis, and fiber properties. The careful management of these factors supports biomass accumulation, enhances trait-specific characteristics, and promotes sustainable cultivation practices. Moreover, C. sativa shows varying responses to environmental contaminants, including heavy metals and emerging pollutants such as PFAS, which can impact both plant health and metabolite composition. Understanding and managing these stressors is critical for ensuring safe and high-quality biomass.In medicinal Cannabis, environmental and nutritional conditions play a crucial role in modulating cannabinoid and terpene biosynthesis, thereby influencing therapeutic efficacy and product consistency. In fiber hemp, similar factors regulate stem development, bast fibers’ properties, and overall yield. Beyond whole-plant cultivation, in vitro systems, such as micropropagation, as well as the cultivation of suspension cultures and hairy roots, have emerged as innovative platforms for the controlled production of bioactive metabolites and extracellular vesicles (EVs). In these systems, optimized growth conditions in flasks or bioreactors, together with the application of elicitors, strongly affect biomass accumulation, metabolite profiles, and EV yield.Complementing these approaches, -omics technologies, such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, provide powerful tools to unveil the complex responses of both whole plants and in vitro cultures. These integrated datasets enable the identification of key regulatory networks and support the development of precision cultivation strategies across scales.This Research Topic aims to gather contributions exploring strategies to optimize environmental and nutritional factors across all aspects of C. sativa cultivation, from fiber hemp to medicinal plants, including in vitro systems. Submissions may include reviews, perspectives, brief research reports and original research articles. Interdisciplinary studies integrating plant physiology, molecular biology, agronomy, and biotechnology are particularly encouraged. With this Research Topic we hope to foster efficient, standardized and sustainable Cannabis cultivation across whole-plant and in vitro platforms.Topic editor Roberto Berni is employed by Log2Go. The other Topic Editors report no competing interests related to this Research Topic. Topic editors: Gea Guerriero, Giancarlo Renella, Roberto Berni Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78774/cannabis-sativa-cultivation-across-scales-culture-condition-control-from-whole-plants-to-in-vitro-production-systems