Hydrolife Canada February/March 2017

enjoy
COMPREHENDING YOUR
CANNABIS TEST RESULTS
BY JODI MCDONALD
No matter the reason
you tested your
cannabis plants, the
lab results are useless
if you don’t know how
to read the report.
Jodi McDonald gives
us the lowdown on
cannabinoid potency
reports and how to get
the most out of them.
People who send cannabis products to
the lab for testing typically fall into
one of three categories. The first type of
tester wants clinical confirmation of the
cannabinoids their expertise tells them
should be in the product. The second
type of tester is usually someone who
likes to experiment with the growing
conditions and wants to see how their
changes affected the potency of the product.
The final group of testers are worried
about dosage safety. They may have a
product of questionable provenance or
simply do not have enough information
on their cannabis to make decisions
about appropriate dosage.
While the lab results will provide
answers to all the above inquiries, what
most people don’t know is that there
are hidden gems of information in the
graphs and charts of a test report that
give added insight about their product.
Let’s take a closer look at a sample
cannabinoid potency report (Fig. 1). The
first thing you see at the top of the report
is the identification information about
the testing method. Immediately below
that, you will notice a picture (Fig. 2).
This is a chromatogram from a highperformance
liquid chromatography
(HPLC) instrument and it is essentially a
fingerprint of the product. This graph is
particularly useful for ongoing testing;
one can simply compare the graphs to see if
the peaks and valleys change—and thus, the
product itself changes—over time.
Below the HPLC chromatograph are two
charts that highlight the cannabinoid
potencies of your product. The first chart
identifies cannabinoid concentrations
(Fig. 3). As you can see, the delta-9-
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) level is
24.64 per cent (the product sample analyzed
in this example is a cannabinoid extract,
so the concentrations are much higher than
what would occur in dried flowers). The
graph also shows the concentrations many
other important cannabinoids, such as
cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabigerol (CBG).
The carboxylated, or acid, forms of these
cannabinoids are also listed (for a more
detailed explanation of these compounds,
read “Trust the Facts, Not Gut Feelings” in
the Dec/Jan 2017 issue of Hydrolife).
As you can see in this example, the levels
of tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA)—
the carboxylated form of THC—is at
56.26 per cent. This result tells us that the
tested extract has not been decarboxylated
very efficiently; ideally, the THC level
should be higher than that of the THCA.
In fact, if any carboxylated cannabinoid
concentration is higher than that of its
corresponding the decarboxylated form, we
know that the decarboxylation process is
not as efficient as it could be.
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