Testing Cannabis Plant Material for Cannabinoids

Testing Cannabis Plant Material for Cannabinoids

Professor DeBacco


Research Article
Nie, B., Henion, J., & Ryona, I. (2019). The role of mass spectrometry in the cannabis industry. Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 30(5), 719-730.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

One Reason Why Growers Test for Cannabinoids?
Growers want to know how potent their plant material is because the composition of certain chemical compounds can largely impact the value and expected price paid for their produced end product.



Why Is Testing for Cannabinoids Important?
There is increasing evidence that the ratios of CBD relative to other cannabinoids as well as endogenous chemicals such as terpenes and flavonoids exhibit a desirable entourage effect.
The synergistic interaction between cannabinoids and other chemicals may be responsible for the medical benefits in the individual.



Cannabis Testing and Pharmaceutical Testing Practices
Cannabis has cannabinoid percentages that are relatively high compared to other pharmaceutical compounds that may use bioanalytical trace analysis.
Since it is common to dilute cannabis or hemp plant extracts by 100-1000-fold or more to reduce the concentration of targeted cannabinoids to levels appropriate for analytical quantitative determination.
Analytical procedures need to be amended from current protocols to maximize the information content obtained.



Current Popular Technique
When determining potency HPLC/PDA, or HPLC using a photodiode array detector is commonly used in the cannabis industry because it is relatively easy and inexpensive to employ.



SIMLC/MS Analysis
The use of SIM LC/MS (Selected Ion Monitoring) techniques can reduce the potential for unknown interferences due to co-elution which may go unnoticed when HPLC/PDA techniques are used.



LC/UV Chromatography Compared to SIMLC/MS Analysis
SIMLC/MS analysis of this sample shows much improved selectivity and the absence of interfering chromatographic components.
This is due to the increased selectivity of SIM LC/MS techniques where only the protonated molecules of the targeted cannabinoid(s) are monitored.



HPLC/PDA Compared to LC/MS
In contrast to HPLC/PDA, if either LC/MS or LC/MS/MS analysis of the same sample is performed, the considerably higher selectivity of either of these techniques could facilitate qualitative identification of unknown compounds as well as mitigate the potential for unexpected chemical interferences for the quantitative determination of the targeted compound





Link to Lecture Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVty...

*Due to the description character limit the full work cited for "Testing Cannabis Plant Material for Cannabinoids" can be viewed at... https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XdXX...