My Name is Marco Troiani and I am a cannabis scientist. I have been the laboratory manager at different cannabis testing labs in different states and jurisdictions (in reverse order: Cannabinology, DB Labs, Steep Hill). Aside from my work as an analytical chemist I also do a lot of consulting for companies in the industry, mostly extraction labs, cultivation facilities, and medical doctors prescribing or recommending cannabis to their patients, as well as other testing labs.
In running so many cannabis samples for analysis, I have noticed a lot of useful information from the chemical side that I thought growers would be eager to have access to in order to improve their grow methods and yields.
I have put a simple letter together for our clients, explaining how the data from the laboratory can inform their decisions. This document has a strict focus on optimizing harvest time vis-a-vis THC specifically.
My questions are: Is this material easy to understand and follow, or is it incomprehensible? How would you make the content more relatable and easier to grasp?
Welcome @marco and thanks for sharing that info! In terms of presentation it looks straightforward and easy to understand. Do you have any clients that have started using this protocol to optimize harvest times?
Once the optimal harvest time has been found for a particular strain under a consistent growing protocol can you use the data to assume the same harvest week for the next batch or do you recommend live testing for every single harvest?
Yes we have clients who use this procedure in Nevada and more recently some of our clients in California have started using it as well. All of our clients remain anonymous until they give us permission to disclose their identity, which thus far is mostly happening among analytical laboratories. Businesses that actually handle and distribute cannabis are understandably more cautious.
As for your question about repeated testing, for clones of the same strain it is unnecessary, as the harvest time will essentially not be changed under the same growing conditions. When the plant is regrown from seed or a new clone is introduced into the grow house, new testing will be necessary to find that optimum time window.
Although testing can be expensive, this solution can actually be rather economic for growers, who often mass produce strains that perform well in the market. Approximately 10 extra samples are needed to find that optimum time window for a strain, but once its found each harvest off of those clones will follow the same cycle. What is recommended to cultivation facilities is to leverage your information before ordering expensive testing. If a grower tests every strain for 10 extra samples, the associated costs accumulate very quickly. But if instead a grower takes the “top earners”, strains that grow reliably and sell very well, and tests for the optimum harvest time for those, the invest-return relationship becomes very different. If 3 strains account for a 70% of a growers revenue every month, then paying for 30 extra samples in an investment in maintaining the top possible quality of those 3 strains that already represent most a cultivation facility’s revenue and reputation.
We generally allow all of our research to be shared, once it is published. This article has been shared privately with our clients, but we have yet to publish it in the cannabis industry media. Once we do, which will be rather soon, we will send you a copy which will appear as published, and then your free to share that copy over social media and the like, given that is not modified in any way.
