SweetSue's Perpetual 2.0 - THCa & CBN

SweetSue;3284859 said:

I stumbled upon this wandering through the offerings at MedicalJane. It was from the comment section of an article on CBN, which I was researching because prevailing wisdom is that when one roasts the cannabis for hours one should expect a certain amount of degradation to CBN, so why not find out what I'm dealing with?

I've since remembered studies proving that the degradation of THC to CBN when one roasts it is negligible, but I still found this bit about cannabinoid production from the perspective of plant biology incredibly interesting, so I thought I'd share.

I have one big problem with this research: you can have massive amounts of THCa and lots of CBN too. Just because your flower is older doesn't mean this is a bad thing! So let's talk about senescence. If you have ever watched a time-lapse film of cannabis flowering, you will notice there is a *first senescence when the white pistils turn red. You might even notice a sign of leaf yellowing, when chlorophyll is converted to a group of colourless tetrapyrroles known as nonfluorescent chlorophyll catabolites (NCC's), not in an attempt to harness the last sugars, carbs and starches as we were told, but simply to capture as much of the red light as possible in Fall. But if the grower doesn't harvest, the flower produces another cycle of white pistils and clear resin glands, and the leafs usually green back up. This is because there is a photoperiod built into your plant where it tests to see if it has been pollinated yet. If not, it goes back into flowering mode again and the bud swells. The precursor cannabinoids were simply SUNBLOCK that is no longer needed, because they are about to be swallowed up by the swelling bud. Instead the plant is going to send the terpenes and phenols to the surface of the bud to grow NEW cannabinoids.

Yes, your CBN levels are climbing. But now your bud is producing a whole new crop of cannabinoids including THCa. This cycle repeats around every 2 weeks for many months for most varietals. You can grow MASSIVE buds under the right conditions, especially Indoor where you can sort of "freeze the season" and overrule that photoperiod. Yes, there are lots of CBN's there. The claim that they produce a harsh smoke is bunk. They are not a sign that the bud is past it's point of ripeness. They are a sign that the grower let his buds swell up again and again, experiencing a First Senescence, a Second one, a Third one and often up to SIX or MORE. Each "Pistil Cycle" or "Senescence Cycle" grows another layer of bud like onion layers, and the atomic weight of the total number of cannabinoids are exponentially multiplying!

Oh, you don't like CBN's? Try treating your plant to UV-B radiation and purposefully turn those THCa's to THC before they can be downgraded into CBNa. Now you have loads of THC in a massive massive massive flower, so big you have to use lots of supports, so big you win the big Cup. Since the THCa has already been largely converted in the interior of your bud, it wont' decarb in the lab test which will just catch the overall ratio of THC now - nothing is left out. Will there be CBN's in your flower you grew for 3 to 5 months? Of course! But your THC levels are 5% higher than everyone elses because you used UV light to interrupt the downgrade, and your other Cannabinoids are also much higher than the competition. Winning!

See? Wasn't that fun?

You're welcome.


...... You bet I'm high. It's Friday night.

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