Modern Canna
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
SAFETY
Moisture Analysis for Cannabis Flower – Understanding Water Content
The cannabis industry has come to recognize a moisture content of 10% -14% as the ideal range for cannabis flower. However, this range may be inaccurate due to deficiencies associated with the method that has become the industry standard for calculating these values. Cannabis material contains a high concentration of volatile and semi-volatile compounds which may cause moisture results to be skewed abnormally high when a traditional loss on drying (LoD) technique is used. As such, our laboratory conducted a study where several different moisture determination techniques were utilized, to compare moisture values. In this study, the laboratory analyzed over 100 unique cannabis flower samples through the traditional LoD, Karl Fisher, vacuum oven, vacuum desiccation, and low temperature LoD techniques. Additionally, a subset of the samples was processed for cannabinoid and terpene content before and after moisture determinations to better understand the decarboxylation of cannabinoids and loss of terpenes that occurs with the various methods. This allowed the laboratory to propose a standard method for determining moisture content in cannabis flower that limits the product degradation and ensures a true moisture value, that represents only the water content, is being determined.
BIO
Jini Glaros is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Modern Canna Labs in Lakeland, FL. She received her bachelor’s degree with honors in Biochemistry from the University of West Florida. In May of 2022, Jini earned a master’s degree in Medical Cannabis Science and Therapeutics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Before entering the cannabis industry, Jini gained valuable research experience at several well-respected institutes, including Emory University, the National Institute of Aging, and the University of Florida. She became the laboratory director of Modern Canna in January of 2018 and was promoted to CSO in August of 2022. Jini is extremely involved in the cannabis industry and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for Analytical Cannabis and CloudLIMS, is a member of the CASP Proficiency Testing Advisory Task Force with AOAC International, is a member of the Cannabis Working Group (D37) with ASTM International, and is a member of the CannMed 2023 Advisory Board.