Hops are highly sensitive to the soil acidity and minerals in terms of the compounds the plants produce, so sharing plants is largely infeasible, plus because it's the US many of them are trademarked so there's no sharing for that reason

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Surely fertilizer and other additions can be used to adjust this, or genetic editing can be used to incorporate some stuff?

Okay, but almost everything is trademarked, doesn't mean it can't be bought/sold?

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 14 hours ago

That's a lot of expense compared to just importing US-grown hops, as there's a lot of soil to adjust

And yeah, trademarks on plants are no joke, there's a bunch of restrictions on buying/selling them etc.