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The Phytochemical Diversity of Commercial Cannabis in the United States

Christiana J. Smith, View ORCID ProfileDaniela Vergara, View ORCID ProfileBrian Keegan, Nick Jikomes
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.05.451212
Christiana J. Smith
1Seattle, Washington USA 98177
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Daniela Vergara
2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado USA 80309
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Brian Keegan
3Department of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA 80309
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Nick Jikomes
4Department of Science & Innovation, Leafly Holdings Inc, 600 1st Ave (Ste. LL20), Seattle, WA 98104
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  • For correspondence: njikomes@gmail.com
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Abstract

The legal status of Cannabis is changing, fueling an increased diversity of Cannabis-derived products. Because Cannabis contains dozens of chemical compounds with potential psychoactive or medicinal effects, understanding its phytochemical diversity is crucial. The legal Cannabis industry heavily markets products to consumers based on widely used labelling systems purported to predict the effects of different Cannabis “strains.” We analyzed the cannabinoid and terpene content of tens of thousands of commercial Cannabis samples across six US states, finding distinct chemical phenotypes (chemotypes) which are reliably present. After careful descriptive analysis of the phytochemical diversity and comparison to the commercial labels commonly attached to Cannabis samples, we show that commercial labels do not consistently align with the observed chemical diversity. However, certain labels are statistically overrepresented for specific chemotypes. These results have important implications for the classification of commercial Cannabis, the design of animal and human research, and the regulation of legal Cannabis marketing.

Competing Interest Statement

D.V. is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Agricultural Genomics Foundation, and the sole owner of CGRI, LLC. N.J. is employed by Leafly Holdings, Inc. Leafly allowed N.J. to use some professional time to oversee this research project and work on the manuscript.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 06, 2021.
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The Phytochemical Diversity of Commercial Cannabis in the United States
Christiana J. Smith, Daniela Vergara, Brian Keegan, Nick Jikomes
bioRxiv 2021.07.05.451212; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.05.451212
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The Phytochemical Diversity of Commercial Cannabis in the United States
Christiana J. Smith, Daniela Vergara, Brian Keegan, Nick Jikomes
bioRxiv 2021.07.05.451212; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.05.451212

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