A new study has laid the groundwork for developing a standardised lexicon for understanding cannabis aroma, revealing scent patterns and exploring what drives them.
Current marketing relies heavily on the levels of THC, the chemical responsible for cannabis’ psychoactive effects, as a marker of quality. This has given rise to potency inflation in commercially available cannabis products, despite studies linking high THC levels to risk including severe nausea and vomiting, impaired driving and acute psychosis.
Researchers in the American state of Oregon – where medical and recreational cannabis are legal – now offer an alternate path for evaluating actual quality, building on previous research to develop a descriptive aroma lexicon of 25 terms that can be used as a common language, SciTechDaily reports
“Aroma plays a key role in how consumers judge cannabis quality, yet until now there’s been no standardised language to describe it,” Tom Shellhammer, co-author and professor of food science and technology at Oregon State University, told SciTechDaily. “This research lays the groundwork for a shared vocabulary that benefits consumers, retailers and growers.”
[See more: Cannabis often exacerbates existing mental health struggles, studies find]
The study called on a panel of 24 experts who had prior experience with sensory analysis of food and beverages. Researchers had them examine the aroma of unburned samples of hemp and cannabis, categories assigned to the same Cannabis sativa species based on THC concentration. Hemp contains 0.3 percent THC or less, while higher concentrations are classified as cannabis under US law.
They found samples from the two categories exhibited overlapping sensory profiles, although cannabis was more often described as “skunky,” “musty” and “animalic” (savory), while hemp had higher frequencies of “citrus,” “fruit” and “candy-like” aromas. Of the four distinct aroma profiles that emerged from the research, “fruit, berry, candy,” “citrus and chemical,” “cheesy and vomit/fecal” were predominantly associated with hemp, while “funky, earthy, musty, straw, fuel, black tea, woody and nutty/toasted” were associated with cannabis. These profiles are expected to evolve with more research.
The research also revealed that terpenes and volatile sulfur compounds found in hemp and cannabis did not strongly predict sensory perception, challenging notions that specific aromas are associated with specific terpenes.
“As the cannabis industry transitions from unregulated to legal frameworks, it’s critical to offer consumers tools for assessing product quality beyond terpenes and THC,” Shellhammer said. “This work begins to lay the foundation for that.”
