New Analysis Discovers 21 Unknown Cannabinoids + Implications for Cultivation

[KnotsInMyThoughts]

I can't extrapolate much from this paper since I don't have a good understanding of the science, but I'd love to hear what you folks think of this

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-31120-2

"Cannabis is an interesting domesticated crop with a long history of cultivation and use. Strains have been selected through informal breeding programs with undisclosed parentage and criteria. The term ?strain? refers to minor morphological differences and grower branding rather than distinct cultivated varieties. We hypothesized that strains sold by different licensed producers are chemotaxonomically indistinguishable and that the commercial practice of identifying strains by the ratio of total THC and CBD is insufficient to account for the reported human health outcomes. We used targeted metabolomics to analyze 11 known cannabinoids and an untargeted metabolomics approach to identify 21 unknown cannabinoids. Five clusters of chemotaxonomically indistinguishable strains were identified from the 33 commercial products. Only 3 of the clusters produce CBDA in significant quantities while the other 2 clusters redirect metabolic resources toward the THCA production pathways. Six unknown metabolites were unique to CBD-rich strains and/or correlated to CBDA and 3 unknowns were found only in THC-rich strains. Together, these data indicate the domestication of the cannabis germplasm has resulted in a loss of the CBDA pathway in some strains and reallocation of resources between CBDA and THCA pathways in others. The impact of domestication is a lack of chemical diversity and loss of biodiversity in modern cannabis strains."

What can we do to encourage a broader spectrum of cannabinoids in a crop?

 

[ShroomySatori]

Just read through that, I am curious about how domestication would impact or restrict terpene profiles of strains as well. Is domestication/inbreeding reversible though? It's not like outdoor weed is extinct. I'm sure you could travel the world and find a landrace strain that is different. So they are proposing that domestication has resulted in 5 clusters of strains that are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of how they grow and produce cannabinoids.

It would be cool if they selected the same strain from a lot of licensed producers and compared the results, or grew plants from seeds of the same strain that were harvested together from the same plant and then did an analysis for weed from each grown plant that had the same originating parent plant.

I think they are saying that due to breeding pot higher in THC, resources of the plant for other cannabinoids like CBD and the trace cannabinoids become less prevalent. They are also making correlations between cannabinoids that I am guessing have related synthesis routes.

There are so many chemicals in cannabis apart from the cannabinoids as well, and so much of the population uses it so much these kinds of studies should have been done so long ago.

I like how THCV was mentioned... like is there a way to breed a THCV dominant strain? Or produce strains that are high in specific cannabinoids or terpenes based on the knowledge of routes of chemical reactions that the plant takes to produce the compounds in the resin glands.

To try and answer your question, well legalizing it worldwide and preserving/locating landrace strains would probably be a good start. Honestly no idea would like to hear from others. I'm not sure what they are saying has been lost in diversity. Is there not already enough diversity to work with? And compounds that haven't been researched yet that occur in cannabis.

Also, how relevant are these trace cannabinoids to the effect of weed? Has the potency of them been tested? Since then variation of a trace amount could mean a lot. I think terpenes definitely have an effect, and I am unaware of other families of compounds in cannabis that are therapeutic but they probably exist as well.

I have uni level science but only gr11 biology, I'm sure you'll get some good responses but yeah I really enjoy cannabis papers like that (to be clear it's not my field at all, I am far from that part of the spectrum of science)