The ideal moisture content for cured and dried cannabis that is sold to consumers has always been communicated as 10% - 14%. However, upon entering the industry 8 years ago, I immediately started to question this, especially when I saw the methodology that was primarily used for determining this moisture value.
Over the last several years, our laboratory, Modern Canna Laboratories, has been planning a massive study to compare multiple moisture techniques to better understand the TRUE water content in cannabis.
AND the results are finally in!
After analyzing 120 unique dried and cured cannabis samples via five different techniques and looking at the cannabinoid and terpene content of a subset of those samples before and after drying to understand the volatile and semi-volatile loss that occurs, our laboratory can confidently say that the ideal moisture content for cannabis has been artificially inflated by additional loss that occurs during the laboratory drying process.
As such, the industry needs to move away from the traditional Loss on Drying at a High Temperature (LoDH) and move towards other techniques like Karl Fischer (KF), Loss on Drying at a Low Temperature (LoDL), or Vacuum Oven (VO) with a properly validated method to accurately determine the moisture content for the cannabis flower products that are on the market.
So, if you see your cannabis products being labeled with a moisture content above 10%, start questioning those results and begin investigating the methods that laboratories are using to determine the value. Together, we as an industry can change the landscape for this type of testing so that producers, cultivators, and consumers alike are provided with the most accurate data possible about their products.
Without challenging the current knowledge, no industry, cannabis included, can move forward and improve and that was a major goal of this experiment. If you want to learn more about this study, please do not hesitate to reach out!
