Determination of Terpenoid Profile in Dry Cannabis Flowers and Extracts Obtained from Different Cannabis Varietes

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the terpenoid profile in dried cannabis flowers obtained from different varieties of cannabis plant and in cannabis extracts in order to investigate quantity of terpenes lost during extraction and purification process.
 Methods: GC/MS method for determination of terpenes was verified. The concentration of terpenes was determined in dry flowers as raw material and in decarboxylated and distillated cannabis extracts, using the same GC/MS analytical method. The extraction was performed using 96% ethanol as a solvent.
 Results: The obtained results indicate that dry cannabis flowers from different cannabis plant can be distinguished only by their terpenoid profile. The use of standardized cannabis-based extracts can be confirmed by determination of terpenoid profile. The purification process of the cannabis extracts removes terpenes. The percentage of major terpen beta-Myrcene decreased from 68% in dry flower to 15% in decarboxylated and, 1.9% in distillated cannabis oil after purification. The percentage of second major terpene alpha-Pinene decreased from 15% in dry flower to 5% in decarboxylated and, 0.7% in distillated cannabis oil after purification.
 Conclusion: Terpenes act synergistically with cannabinoids. Following the monograph for quality testing of cannabis extracts in the German Pharmacopoeia, the purification process is necessary to achieve a final concentration of cannabinoids (Tetrahydrocannabinol) of more than 95% in the final active pharmaceutical ingredient. The purification process removes terpenes that have proven synergistically pharmacological effects with cannabinoids.

Comprehensive Profiling of Terpenes and Terpenoids in Different Cannabis Strains Using GC × GC-TOFMS

“…Even though each study design was different, we were able to detect around four times more terpenes and terpenoids using GC × GC as compared to the reported GC studies [4,[18][19][20]30,35,38,43,44,46,47,49,[56][57][58][59]. The number of terpenes and terpenoids detected in the reported GC studies ranged from 23 to 109.…”