Lessons in Cultivation: Cannabis vs. Tobacco Curing

This article originally appeared in the July 2017 print edition of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.

Cannabis used to be so colorful: Acapulco Gold, brown Colombian, bright green Oaxaca big bud and, our personal favorite, redder-than-red Thai stick. The colors were the result of a variety of drying techniques that often involved drying the product under the sun, whose energy enacted chemical changes in the plant material, changing its color. This change is not something we see much of today because everyone cures in the dark to purposely avoid color change. Maybe it’s time to turn back the hands of time and see if we can learn anything.

Ask anyone what is happening in the drying room, and they will all answer “moisture removal.” Ask them what is happening in the cure room, and the answer, more often than not, is going to be “burping.” Despite a lack of specific knowledge about what is actually happening to the plant during the process, some growers say they are able to change and enhance the potency and effects during cure. If they can, there must be some chemical reactions going on. This would be really exciting because if we can identify and understand those reactions, we can leverage them. Let’s see if we can find any signs of those reactions.

To read the full article in Cannabis Business Times' July edition, click here.

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