Harvesting, Drying & Curing Plants To Maintain Quality! (Garden Talk #117)

In this episode of Garden Talk, I interview Dr. Allison Justice. She has a PHD in Plant Environmental Science from Clemson University. She is also a consultant, owns The Hemp Mine, and created the CRC – which is a science-based research group. She has advanced knowledge in post-harvest production, so drying, curing, and that’s what today’s episode is about. She talks about some of the key information when it comes to harvesting, drying, and curing, and she also talks about some studies that have been done in those areas. What type of plants do you like to grow? Lettuce, bok choy, house plants, fruit trees, kale, potatoes, let us know in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this video please click that thumbs up button 🙂

Dr. Allison Justice’s Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/dr.justice_grows/

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★Timestamps★
00:00 – Podcast Intro
01:29 – Sponsors
03:01 – Introduction
08:19 – Ideal Time To Harvest
12:48 – Flushing Before Harvest
17:02 – Darkness Period Before Harvest
19:43 – Other Tips On Harvesting
20:17 – Water Activity
21:39 – Tools To Measure Water Activity
23:45 – Ideal Drying Conditions
26:56 – Ideal Length Of Dry
30:55 – Dangers Of Drying Too Long
32:51 – Study 60/60 vs Cannatrol Settings
37:45 – How Plant Studies Are Funded
43:33 – Is Freeze Drying The Future?
46:09 – What Is Curing?
47:48 – Burping / Off Gassing
53:41 – Best Method To Cure
55:38 – Storing In a Wine Fridge & Refrigerator
59:02 – Recent & Upcoming Studies
1:05:23 – Final Words

Welcome to the Garden Talk podcast where we interview Growers from all over the world both beginners and experts seeking to learn more about what they know about gardening and how they do things in their Garden what’s up everybody for you that don’t know me my name is Chris aka

Mr Grow and you’re tuned in to the Garden Talk podcast this episode number 117 in this episode I interview Dr aliceon Justice she has a PHD in plant environmental science from Clemson University she is also a consultant owns the hemp mine and created the CRC which is a science-based research group she

Has advanced knowledge in post Harvest production so drying curing and that’s what today’s episode is about she talks about some of the key information when it comes to harvesting drying and curing and she also talks about some studies that have been done in those areas if you want to see highlights of these

Podcast episodes search Garden talk clips on YouTube that channel is dedicated to short bite-sized clips of these episodes I actually did a poll on my YouTube channel where this podcast episode is posted to and 53% of the people that responded weren’t aware that have another YouTube channel I call it

My main YouTube channel where I show off the plants that I grow that channel has over 130 videos from the past 7 years so if you’re not familiar with it I’ll leave a link down in the YouTube description section below so you can easily get to it and subscribe one of my

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Amazon and the website spider- far.com and we are back welcome to the Garden Talk podcast today I am joined with Dr Alison Justice how you doing today I’m doing great glad to be here yeah thanks for coming on appreciate it we met last year at a conference uh had a good

Conversation you actually knew you before the conference very familiar with your work I went through the Utah State University the cultivation certificate program and I know you have a couple talks in there and uh one of them was on post Harvest production the harvesting drying and curing and that’s really what

I want to get into today is you just have so much experience in regards to that and we’ve come so far in the past 5 years alone it’s it’s amazing what we’ve uncovered so yeah I’m sure that you’re going to give us a bunch of insight and

I think uh a lot of my audience is going to learn some things today that they haven’t known because I feel like a lot of the stuff still isn’t widespread as much as it could be but before we get deep into things can you tell us a

Little bit about yourself and how you got into gardening yeah so you know I think I was I was born with it I was born with green thumbs um my grandparents my great grandparents their parents everybody has been Farmers for one thing or the other so uh yeah I I

Was basically born in a greenhouse um we grew trees uh be root ball and burlap um we did patunas and pansies at one point a little bit of everything um and so because of that I swore I was never going to go into plants when I was old

But here I am with a PhD in plant science um I don’t know it’s just one of those things when you’re little you’re not going to do what your parents do but you know I uh I I I loved it and I got into it obviously um but I I got my PhD

From Clemson University and in plant environmental science and um you know to be honest I didn’t know exactly wanted what I wanted to do after graduation and so um I did Consulting for a while with Pest Management for green houses across the US and started getting some calls for medicinal plant

Consulting and so I took a few jobs and loved it packed my stuff up and uh got a job first but I packed my stuff up and and moved to San Diego and stayed out there for about 3 and 1 half years um working for a vertical group uh which

Was wonderful I got to learn everything from SE to cell as they say it um um and then decided I wanted to to do my own thing and um you know have a little more freedom to research what I wanted and do what I wanted um and not be tied down by

Um you know hitting a bottom line per se so even though that is of course still important um but you know research and and commercial production is certainly a a different world to live in so moved back to South Carolina where um we’ve been growing under the hemp program um

Since since I guess 2018 and here we I own the hemp mine so that’s a a CBD company um we do everything from breeding selling genetics all the way to harvest and um consumer goods and that sort of thing uh but really what’s near and dear to my

Heart is the research aspect and um we created the CRC the Cannabis research Coalition with uh Dr fa at Clemson University and so we’ve been running that for about uh about 3 years now and it’s it’s really a three- tiered program I guess you could call it one is more of a

Membership model where you give money um and what you receive back in return is uh Early Access to research all the nitty-gritty that may not be published in a a peer- reviewed paper um Sops access to talk to you know hear and listen from some of the nation’s top

Growers you know glass house um State House etc etc and so just a place to get together and talk about some of the problems you’re having um as far as growing goes um we’re also a contract research organization and so if somebody’s having problems or if they

Have a great product and they say you know we’ve we’ve had as much internal R&D as possible um let’s we need somebody else to verify it cuz you know how you know you can trust your own research but if you’re some trying to buy a product you don’t necessarily only

Want to listen to internal research so we’re that third party non-biased um you know nothing tied to to to support bias which I know later you want to talk about that in a little a little greater detail which I’m happy to um and then of course we do Consulting and Audits and

And things of that nature that’s awesome yeah you have so much going on and well yeah clemon University Dr y Vos big name there in regards to post Harvest production as well I know he had a talk at Utah State University you guys go real real deep into it and a lot deeper

Than I think the average homeg grower goes into it being able to expose some of the information here today I think is going to be really valuable so let’s just get right into it let’s get into uh let’s start with harvesting then we’ll get into drying and then curing so for

Harvesting talking about the ideal time to harvest a plant now it’s mostly known that when the tricomes are mostly cloudy that’s when they’re at the highest potency now some people like for it to turn Amber where the inside canabo go from THC to CBN is all of that still

True today is that still the ideal time to harvest a plant you know you said earlier that you said earlier that in the last 5 years we’ve come a long way but the deeper in I get the more I understand how much I don’t understand um so you

Know I I’ll give you what’s known today or at least what’s theorized today um because you know there’s more than what but any of us and any of our lifetimes are going to figure out you know this is certainly going to be something that’s done for hundreds of years um and and is

Why this industry is so exciting for me because if I were to study patunas or poinsettas you know there’s hundreds of of of uh journals out there with great information already so but yeah with with harvesting I would say the most important thing is to be delicate with

The plants um you know if you’re in a commercial setting a lot of times you’re rushed and hurry and you’re just throwing plants around you know every time you touch a tricol it will bust um for lack of better words so just being as delicate as possible having it touch

As little things as possible um will certainly keep your plant in a lot better state but as far as when you know what color uh the Tricom is you know I have found by you know by being a breeder and seeing lots of different varieties CBD CBG THC you know

Seeing all of the varieties that are out there that produce different cannaboids I I’ve yet to find a a true consistency of you know being able to say 10% Amber perfect Harvest um it it it doesn’t happen the same way with every variety so you know what what I always suggest

Is if you have a new variety and a lot of this is costly but this is this is perfect we scenario okay you have a new variety and the breeder says it’s a 8we plant at at we I mean the earlier you go the better and you can graph it out and

See how you know your THC CBD whatever it is um can progress and and where it Peaks and where it starts to decline and you can compare that to you know what it looks like under the microscope and then you have that to repeat from um but

Testing is expensive and you know it’s not necessarily worth it for everyone but I would just say repetition and growing a variety um and and a lot of it’s personal preference as well I mean I I like mine to be on the earlier side where they’re more they’re more clear um

And then there’s some people that they want it to be extremely Amber so a lot of that’s preference and um this is this is simply Theory but I do not think the Amber comes from the THC to CBN conversion I think it could be uh some sort of non-enzymatic Browning um like

Other plants do when they ripen so bananas and uh apples when you cut them there’s some uh en enzimatic Browning happening um and so that’s hope hopefully something I’ll get to dig into this year um finding people to work with that can test some of these more nitty-gritty aspects of the plant has

Has been pretty tough um and we finally got um a university other than Clemson that will test for carbohydrates and and um the pieces that can lead you down that road of starch to sugar conversion and you know what I truly think is the

The guts to what is equating to a a good cure got it yeah so it comes down to personal preference I personally like mostly cloudy with a little bit of Amber I talked to so many people who are just like oh 10% Amber 20% Amber but yeah at

The end of the day it comes down to personal preference like you had said you know if you’re looking at your tricomes and you’re counting them it can be tricky sometimes because are you looking at the top ones where you know the light is directly hitting them are

You looking at a a inside piece or a lower Bud because all that can be different throughout the plant too that makes sense now you mentioned the starch to sugar conversion which kind of relates to the next question I have here which is in regards to Flushing the

Plants before Harvest now there have been some studies that came out in regards to FL flushing the plants before Harvest whether or not it’s beneficial I’ve talked to many guests in the past I like to bring this question up because each person kind of has their own little

Little tidbits on it little insight on it and so I wanted to ask you this are there any benefits to Flushing your plants before harvesting it you know thus far there’s been a couple studies out about it and you know I think the only true solid takeaway we can have is

That if you stop fertilizing two weeks prior to harvest there’s no differences in what’s been tested so far and so that really is Turpin canabo yield um with I believe Mike’s work Mike from Clemson his work was showing that if you go further than two weeks of fertilizer restriction then

You’re going to start losing some yield which makes sense um but right at that two we Mark you’re not losing yield and you’re not losing any sort of potency um so what that tells tell me is stop wasting your fertilizer and you know you’re not having any negative from

Doing it so why do it um but again Theory and again again something that this year we’re going to get done is looking at what else is happening during that flushing process um you know when you flush you see color change you see um depending on how hard

And you know intense your flush is um you’ll see faster ripening um and so it’s my theory that that is in fact what’s happening is you’re cutting off the nutrients a lot of times you’re lowering the temperature so the plant is being pushed into maturation faster than it would be if it

Were still getting all the nitrogen and everything that um would be encouraging it to stay um grow I say vegetatively but I don’t mean it being in this vegetative form I just mean in bulk um you’re not pushing that nitrogen for excess growth the plant thinks it’s fall

They think oh no it’s time to you know close up shop and protect these seeds so we need to ripen so I would expect I suspect that flushing does help to push maturation that then changes those carbohydrates um from being starches to sugars I also think there’s some play in that as well

Um the starch the sugar conversion in those I don’t know probably first 5 days or so of drying um because it is still active um you know it’s it’s difficult to to say when a plant is dead because it depends on how you know it all

Depends on how much water is in It ultimately you know is this thing alive or not due to the water and it due to the water supporting some of the enzymatic activities that can happen um so I would expect you know those last few weeks of growing and then those

First few weeks of of dry first couple of weeks of drying to really be when those changes are happening um and like I said it’s been a couple year Mission trying to uh get the right testing available for this plant specifically to be able to check that that’s really

Interesting yeah ever since that study came out by RX screen Technologies back in 201 20 in regards it really showed no difference between the two I actually made a video on it and I talked about how yeah well the same Viewpoint as you it’s like well you can save money on

Fertilizer why feed the plant up until the end if it’s not doing anything differently for you the respones I got off of that was hilarious but now it seems like the biggest argument is the starch to sugar conversion and right now we just don’t have the data to back that

Up and it’s interesting that that’s the route that you’re trying to go to actively research and see if there is anything there so looking forward to seeing what comes out of there in the future yeah it should be interesting now what about giving the plants a period of darkness before Harvest that’s another

Thing that folks do in order to try to achieve a better result here are a varying number of reasons why people do it but 24 hours of darkness before Harvest 48 Hours of darkness before Harvest some people do even longer than that is there any benefit at all to

Giving your plants a period of darkness before Harvest uh you know again it’s been one of those things i’ I’ve kind of sat on the fence about um could see the the benefit of why and again I I would lend it towards being an act to encourage maturation

Um you know we’re we’re digging deeper into trying to understand what the the outer structure of the the triome gland um you know how it’s composed what it’s made out of and what really encourages it to crack or not um and and a lot of that works with

Canol um but you know I think there’s there’s something to be found about it it it strength um and with proper curing and harvesting not disturbing it making it stronger and more encapsulated um you know it’s always been interesting when you go into drawing rooms of large facilities you

Know you just smell it a mile down the road and if it’s the day of of uh Harvest or you know day after whatever um and you can smell it and you know my my thoughts always well if it’s in my nose it’s not in the plant you know

There’s TPS in the air and it’s not like they’re continuing to make these turpins and so you know at some point it’s going to be spent um and so if we’re able to preserve that triom head better you know does that make your quality last longer um that’s something that that we’re

Digging deep to and it’s hard I mean the it’s tiny it’s tiny and so you know learning the scanning electron uh microscopy and and really digging into that this past year and this year has been an eyeopener um and understanding again how much we don’t understand and being able

To see in detail that close cuz there are there are some drawbacks from it too as as cool as the pictures look look it’s also not the whole story yeah that’s crazy there’s still a lot so many people out there that prefer the darkness before Harvest and they’re kind

Of blind in the fact on whether or not it is beneficial so I guess that debate is going to is going to be ongoing from here I think so so any overall tips for harvesting or anything we kind of need to know about about harvesting before we

Move on to drying and curing you know I think I think for harvesting drying it’s is delicate you know you you’ve got to think of even if it’s 10 minutes where you’ve placed it in the sun you know if if we’re talking about for smokable

Flower um 10 minutes in the sun could do a ton of damage so you know being being fast at making your moves and you know being delicate and consistent with everything okay now let’s move on to drying talk to us about the goal of drying really water activity is one of

The things that come to mind right away so can you talk to us about you know what water activity is and kind of the overall goal of it and so on and so forth yeah so you know drying is the first thing that comes to mind is like

You said water activity for the point of not spoiling so we’re getting the water out just like we would any other Foods raisins whatever it may be um getting it down low enough to where um it does not support proliferation of microbes um now drying does not kill microbes um there’s

Lots of spores and bacteria that are super hearty um and we can dry it down to a crisp and those spores are still going to be there so once it’s rehydrated they could take over um but the point is to get that water activity low enough to to not support other life

Growing on it um and that’s really the difference between water activity and moisture content you know they’re they’re very related but the difference there is um available water for microbes to to uh persist in so goal KCK M from WR is 6 water activity and that prohibits the growth of moles and yeasts

And so on and so forth yes yep that is today’s goal okay now are there any tools that Growers can purchase in order to measure water activity yeah uh moisture content meters are pretty inexpensive but they are also very damaging um to get a proper reading you

Almost have to take a full bud and you know uh squeeze it it as tight as you can and then stick the prongs in um but again then you’re ruining a bud um and that’s not a great thing um the other thing which is you know it’s got it

Drawbacks too is a water activity meter um and they can be quite pricey $1,000 on up you know $10,000 for a really high-end one um so those aren’t my preference either um at least in the hom grower space you know the it it’s Overkill um one thing I like to do is

Put your plants in the drying room bring it down to where you think it’s just about right and if you debut your flowers put it in a jar and then have a humidistat in the jar once once you see the humidity level stabilize that is your uh water activity

So your humidity then turns into the uh water activity I mean you got to move the decimal two points but um um ultimately it’s the same so if you have a jar put a few buds in there and it reads 70% humidity after it’s leveled um because there’ll be a a time of

Fluctuation uh for the moisture to homogenize throughout but once you get to that homogenized state if it reads 70% let’s say then you’re at a 7 water activity and you you might want to keep the lid open for a couple of days or that sort of thing got it yeah I think

That’s what a lot of hom Growers are doing today some pretty straightforward there really from what you’re telling me it’s not really worth it to go and spend money on a moisture meter a water activity meter for the average hom grower just putting the your buzz in the

Jar and and getting that humidity down you’re safe at that point so for drying conditions you know temperature humidity what are the ideal dry conditions you know I think the the traditional 6060 that everybody’s been using for forever um it works it works Five Points either way also works um you

Know I think being able to go slower on the days it takes to fully remove a certain amount of water um could is beneficial for Turing retention uh because the faster you’re bringer bringing that water out the faster you potentially could be volatilizing your tarping off too so um I think there’s a

A nice medium point which 66 de it achieves well um you know I think the time will come where we start to understand again how delicate these tricomes are you know one thing that you get when you’re using very traditional systems you know let’s say a a mini split and a

De when you’re looking at tracking over time even though your set points might be 6060 you’ve got these these pieces of equipment fighting each each other all the time you’ve got the AC coming on it’s getting cooler but then the humidity is also Rising because the

Humidifier is off or the de is off and then it switches places because then it’s you know then the de kicks on but then that makes the room hot um so it’s this constant cycle of on and off where you’re also seeing these huge spikes up

And down um so I kind of like to think of it like a balloon um um if you have a balloon filled with helium and you go outside and it’s a um you know a humid day versus a notum day the balloon will will float and it will expand and

Contract and um that’s how I think of the Tricom head is expanding and Contracting um because of this environment and at some point the expanding and Contracting will cause cracks and you know these small cracks how much how much Tarpin you know H how’s the loss um and so that’s what I’m really

Interesting interested in is taking a step further than just seeing humidity and temperature and understanding the pressure that goes behind it um because all of that is is wrapped around VPD and um really understanding the internal pressure of what’s in that cell and the the outside room pressure and not

Causing those swings to be so intense so stability is kind of more important than the temperature and humidity and the gr schem of things cuz like you had mentioned going and a lot of these folks that are drying in tents they’re having just that happen for me I have my

Humidifer kick on fans are going around sometimes I have exhaust fan come out I’m exchanging the air but there’s a lot of swings happening you know and it might be one or two degrees but those one to two degrees could be rupturing Tricom heads right exactly so overall

What would be the ideal length of dry in number of days I’ve heard anywhere from 7 to 14 days I hear 5 to 10 days we know the downsides of drying too quickly versus trying too long and maybe you can get into to that to begin and then let

Us know what the ideal dry time day is in yeah so I’d love to share with you maybe you can squeeze into the talk um it’s a graph we put out where it looks at Days 1 to 14 um it’s looking at humidity and temperature and and

Correlates the the V PD and it shows you know if you go out 14 days um it equates to this VPD and so on and so it shows kind of right in the middle there at 7 Days um if you are at that 6060 Mark you should be able to

Achieve it within 7 Days um it’s a really useful to Tool um but you know obviously you can you can go further than Le let’s say you’re at 60 60 and you go eight days well each day you go past you’re bringing more and more water

Out of that flow and you may think okay well I can just rehydrate it at some point um but we’re starting to see a lot of extreme rehydration can cause a lot of Browning as well um and so being able to pull it right at the right time and

Having to dry it a little more is okay but if you’re having to really really have to rehydrate it um you won’t have quite as great results so the goal is to get it right where you want it right when you pull it from whatever drying environment you’re

In now what about a 4day dry so I have the canol I know you’re familiar with the citrol I’ve got one right back there and I love it I’ve been using it for over a year now real consistent dries hands off as far as I’m not really messing around with the equipment now

You know humidifier and fan and all that stuff but I think in their normal settings 60 8° F and a 54 D point which I believe is 61% Rh I think it’s a 4-day dry period and then it transitions over to curing cycle and that’s the default

Settings that’s what they recommend is 4 days too quick of a dry um you know I don’t I don’t think it’s too quick um you know again we’re we’re working through all of these nitty-gritty details um with canot trol um I I think anywhere between that four

And 10day Mark is is okay um and again but until we can say you truly need 5 days at a water activity of8 to convert the starches to sugars because that is what makes for the better smoke it’s it’s hard to to say there’s much difference in in 3 days

As long as you’re not drying it out too much which I know their product doesn’t do um I also know their product doesn’t have the extreme swings um that the traditional equipment does that’s that’s part of you know what their purpose is to have extremely um consistent pressure um you know

VPD so no I don’t I don’t think it’s too short and you know I don’t I don’t think we’ll be able to measure that until we kind of backtrack to what is what is a smooth smoke all right quantify that and then backtrack from there to say all

Right well 5 days would allow this process to fully develop to equate to the perfect smoke at the end um so you know sometimes I feel silly not having answers but as a researcher you’re told you know you’re told to be okay with not having answers CU that’s your

Job is to find the answers not guess the answers that makes total sense now on the other side you had mentioned 4 to 10 days and a lot of folks are are drying for longer than that 14 plus days now I heard from Dr James f one of the talks

That he had he said the same thing same window I’m pretty sure was 4 to 10 days he talks about some of the D the dangers of drying longer than that can you get into that what happens after 10 days when you’re still drying yeah yeah so there’s certain danger if if you’re

Going out longer than 10 or 14 days and the reason that is is because any microbe that you had in your grow you’re taking it with you into the drawing room and the longer you have this Bud sitting wet um the more potential you have for Bettis growth and and P proliferation

All throughout the entire Bud um for the most part in traditional drying scents when you’re drying out a large bud it’s the outside of that bud that’s drying first and then the inside side and so that’s why when I say put the buds in a

Jar and and wait a day or so until it levels out is because all of that moisture that’s in the interior of the bud is then coming to the outside and it it’s it’s equalizing um and so if if you’re leaving the center of that bud at you

Know 88 water activity or even higher you know every minute is a second the betrus or Fus serum or whatever you might have um could could really take over and and cause problems got it yeah that’s one thing that I don’t even risk I usually go around seven days sometimes

10 days at the max but if it’s going on Long longer than that I’m concerned and I’m actually checking inside the buds and looking for visual although that could be there it can be microscopic level it’s more than just a naked eye you know it could be there without us

Even seeing it so scary so you’ve done a lot of work with krol I know you’ve done a study with them that’s actually on the website kroll.com resesarch if I remember correctly real brief we I think a lot of people looking for more details in regards to that so can you break us

Down what that study entailed I believe it was the canol versus the traditional 6060 method there was I think 16% higher tarpine content in the canol drying can you talk to us about that yeah so that that was first stab at you know really trying to understand um their unit and

The flower it creates and and that sort of thing and so you know first stab is well let’s dry and cure at you know the two different methods traditional and and the canol system and let’s test what happens and the problem they encountered and uh problems we’ve seen other companies

Encounter when testing tpin is that if you don’t have your own internal lab there can be a lot of problems um and so you know you think about a a dried flower it’s got 2% 4% whatever it may be uh um by dry weight of Tarpin which is

Yeah that’s a small number if we’re looking at 100% 2% is very small um and so if we’re mailing samples even if you overnight it with ice something’s going to happen and so any of effect that could happen during transit or even if it’s just being drove somewhere anything

Within Transit is going to affect the turpine levels the other thing to think about is you know there’s lots of great Labs out there but there’s some that will grab your samples and maybe treatment one sits on the counter for an hour maybe treatment two doesn’t um and

So if we’re looking at getting true results on just 2% um that can cause a lot of problems a lot of skewed errors and so the way we overcame that is that U we work with a lab katcha and I told them you know I

Want to do the extraction at my lab and then I want to send you the liquid because the LI the solvent the solvent’s not going to lose turpins it’s going to be true to what exactly it was the second I pull it from whatever treatment

Is in um and so that’s what we send to the lab those are tested um and so we can have very accurate results and then of course have duplicates to uh to make sure there’s no off off problems so that’s how we did the tpping testing and that’s the only

Thing that made me feel comfortable to do tpping testing CU it’s so tricky um but yeah so getting results back from 7 Days traditionally drying and 7 Days in the canol that’s the results we got um the other thing that you got to be super careful about and and ask questions um

When you’re looking at any study like this is well what was what was the water content because that can also skew the numbers so for example if in the canol it’s a perfect Point 61 water activity and in traditional drying uh let’s say it went down to 058 you know that might

Not seem like a lot but in water weight that will certainly certainly skew the result so we made sure we had all of those bases covered to where we’re truly just looking at uh the tping that the plant produced um um compared to one to the other and so that’s the results we

Got was 133% um across the board Tarpin um each each individual tarpine there was some you know skewed but overall that certainly was the result okay now is there a like a white paper that folks can reference and and read more deeply into it is it was a peer reviewed or

Anything we’re going to duplicate it um so we had we had reps within the study but we want to duplicate it again before the final white paper mhm yeah it’s good to have a couple reps like that just cuz you never know what could have went

Wrong along the way and this is how you catch any problems that you may have exactly yeah that’s one thing I mentioned in uh handful of videos now is science is repeatable you need to be able to take that and repeat it over and over and over again in order for it to

Be fact EXA one study isn’t just fact right once study could say anything it could be wrong it could have there could have been something that went wrong with it and then it might another study might come out and it it’s not repeated results right so yeah I think you’re

You’re doing your due diligence doing things right in regards to making sure that it can be replicated and then uh and then going from there so looking forward to to reading the final paper yeah yeah no it was it was great results I was I was impressed I did make a video

On this actually and uh some viewers were concerned they mentioned that was a conflict of interest a little bit since katrol paid for the research so could you kind of explain how that works so CRC you mentioned that you are the owner of the CRC you did the research for

Katrol katrol pays money towards the CRC for the research to happen I understand how some people can consider that a conflict of interest but like in this industry how difficult it is to get funding and the barriers you face in regards to this like there’s no Government funding for you guys versus

Like other Industries like food and beverage there’s so much more Government funding and towards scientists and research velopment and all that stuff can you kind of break that I know it a little messy explanation there but can you kind of break down how that all works yeah yeah so funding is hard it’s

It’s extremely hard um you know USDA likes to say that there are hemp grants out there but they are not um they’re mainly for fiber and Seed production um and so if we’re talking floral research um there is nothing there as far as the government goes so our choices are donations

From anyone right anyone can donate um and that’s that’s our our our general donations is for our association and so so that’s for research that is not coming requested by a company it’s just something that you know the Growers might say ah rud AIDS we want x amount

Of our funding this year to go towards you looking at rude Aphid control da um but then as I was saying earlier another tier is um third party validation and so krol says Hey I want to do this study um we want you to perform it and give us results and I say

That is great I will perform this study um but in respect to their company I say if if you don’t get the results you want then I’m just just going to keep my mouth shut but if we get the results you want you’re you know I’ll talk about the

Work we’ve done um so there’s no there’s no paying me for certain results there’s just respect of use of results um and you know I would just want to make it clear when they pay for it it’s not like I’m going out and buying a new Volvo it’s Volvo I

Don’t know where that came from new car I don’t know how i’ buy a Volvo but um you know this this pays for our research the tests testing is extremely expensive um and it supports Us in what we’re doing you know even though it is a

Project for them the way I see it it’s really a project for the industry to help to help to understand what’s going on I mean if they were paying me to give results I would have probably went a little higher than than 133% or

18% but um yeah so it’s it’s hard um and I understand people say ah so and so sponsoring this this test but um I mean all you can do is trust me when I say we you know the results we give is what science gave us and we’re not falsifying

Anything you know just’s put it this way I’ve been back in South Carolina six years now and for the first 3 years we’ve funded our own research um and I felt like I’ve not gotten anywhere because it’s been slower than you know if you had some huge government grant

But you know the stuff we sell on our consumer good side that supports research um simply because I like doing it and I want to do it and I know there’s you know there’s thousands of people out there that this will certainly help not to mention the

Patients who take advantage of the plant science that’s discovered um and how that trickles down all the way but you know the C CRC has been great for us it brings in a little extra money um and and helps us get down some of the problems we’re having um so can I say

It’s not funded by someone no it’s funded by someone bunch of different Growers different companies but I mean all of our money personally or not has to come from somewhere so um all I can do is show the viewers and readers of research you know throughout the over

The years of of the research we’re giving and and uh just keep giving good results and and helping Farmers um that’s what we’re trying to do I appreciate you breaking that down yeah I think there are a lot of people out there just kind of ignorant of that fact

Of how the research is funded and you know where the money comes from I was ignorant uh just a few months ago until I actually sat down and did the research and try to figure out that hey the government isn’t spending money towards this industry like they are in other

Industries so it’s a lot harder for scientists to be able to conduct research and that’s why it’s so slow you know as far as doing the researching and getting information out there it’s just there’s no money here coming from the government that’s really funding it like there are in other Industries so

Appreciate you breaking that down for us yeah and there there’s no special research class that we can get in to you know have certain deductions or help with testing costs I mean cannaboids and tpin when test is 100 bucks and carbohydrate tests is $400 per test so it’s limit

Um so we appreciate everyone that can can help us out so we can’t end the drying section until we talk about freeze drying a lot more and more people are talking about freeze drying what is freeze drying and is it really the future uh I I’ve played with it a lot I have

Um in my opinion I think for bubble has I think for any sort of concentrate extraction that it’s great and and it’s got a place now I’ve seen some companies go out and buy millions of dollars of equipment and freeze dryers just for outdoor smokable flour and I tell you

The ROI is not there um so just to give you an idea I have a freeze dryer and it’s just one of the you know small 2x three maybe Harvest rights um and that is $3,500 with the pump and everything um and it’ll hold what a

Pound and it takes 24 to 48 hours to run the one pound so you can imagine um just a two lighter you know how how long and how expensive that process is so from a standpoint of Roi and making your money back I can’t see how that could be

Feasible um from a flower standpoint it keeps it the greenest I’ve ever seen um but it’s also very tricky to get the set points just right um I’ve done it and I’ve seen a lot of people do it where you put it through the process and it’s you know just it’s just

Dust um but it it it keeps the plan exactly how it is when you harvest it let’s just put it that way so if we are finding that certain things like starch sugar conversions um other certain aspects like that are important for that smoke you’re certainly not going to get it

With a freeze dryer um because again it it pauses it in time you know any any set starch that’s there will be there at the at the end of the freeze during cycle wow so it could actually be a bad thing it could be well interesting well

It’s priced too high for me so I’m not going to be doing any time soon I think it’s yeah for the average hom grower I mean that that price is is crazy maybe the the future it’ll come down you know there’ll be competition more people releasing freeze drying machines but uh

As of right now yeah I think it’s kind of price a little bit too high and too lengthy of a process for the average home grower agreed so moving on to curing what is curing and what happens during it so in my eyes curing is is not

Just dry curing separated you know very discrete separate times of treatment to the flower uh it’s really post Harvest handling so um it it all comes to go together with looking at the changes that are happening the the carbohydrate status um it’s going from a very wet

Plant where changes are fast to a more dry plant where the changes are slowing down because the water’s not there and available to let those enzymatic processes happen um and so in my mind it’s it’s a it’s a onef swoop um in order to prepare the flower for use

Um so you know people will say oh it’s for um for sweating for um just very generalized answers making the flower better but you know again here I am in my stance of that’s my guess of of carbohydrate change um but won’t necessarily be able to answer that 100%

Confidence until next year I say next year uh 123 25 we get on this talk again and um I’m hoping we have very different or actually I’m hoping we have the same answers just with some data and details behind it well we know that burping there is things that are happening right

So burping a lot of folks know about this basic method to where after it’s dried it’s putting into a jar turkey bag or Grove bags and they’re actually removing the lid of the jar and off gassing has happened and I know there’s been studies I think it was Dr James fa

Who is talking about the studies done the off gasing the CO2 levels O2 levels ethylene are you able to talk about any of that yeah so ethylene is you know I don’t think it’s looked at enough um and I understand why it’s very tricky to

Measure uh but if you look at cuting so poinsetta cuting that are shipped from Guatemala to the us for our Christmas poinsettas if you’re thinking about those pieces of plant um fruits and vegetables there’s so much money and so many businesses that exist just to control ethylene um because it is in

Short a ripening agent um we have been able to measure ethylene and so we know that ethylene uh the amount that’s produced is Extreme in growing and drying not as much as when the plant has dried out so during curing really um so we know the levels are extremely high

But we don’t know if that is a good thing or if it is a bad thing um because maybe we do want the plant to ripen which then is doing all of its conversions it needs to by having this push of Ethylene or is it beneficial actually to get down

To a certain drying point and then stop the ethylene production um because you don’t want it to go too far but again what are those metric points along the graph that we need to know here stop um and so Dr F and I share an ethylene sensor and it uh it’s finicky

It’s finicky you need a little bit of humidity you don’t zero it out properly it throws crazy numbers so I feel like it’s been a boot camp just learning how to use it properly um so that is is going to be a a goal this year um we’re

Doing a study with a company that that H that makes post Harvest let’s just say I can’t announce who yet but curing containers um and they’re very excited about the thought of ethylene and what it could do or does but again it’s just an exploration experiment it’s not we’re

Producing a product for them to implement um and so to be H this goes back to our our previous conversation is you know a lot of the sponsorship money is simply going towards exploration because we don’t know what the starting points are yet to to alter that one way

Or the other um so you know experiment one is putting flour in different types of containers and doing do measurements and that gives you your Baseline where uh after that you can say all right well at day five let’s jack up the ethylene content and um see what

Changes happened so yeah ethylene I believe is um a very important gas we need to take in account um and and start to figure out and hopefully again this is the year to do it um but O2 and CO2 to is also very important um you know it’s I would

Encourage you if you have a sensor and as a home grower especially because if you’re using a mini split um you’re recirculating that air and so even though you’re recirculating that air and you’re adding your CO2 because your plants are taking the CO2 away what does that mean about your

Ethylene are you also just compounding your ethylene content since you’re not actually bringing in uh fresh sourced air I was talking with a grower uh probably within the past year and he has a a dry room that went out of commission so he had to use an old dry

An old growing room to dry in well because it was a growing room he had a CO2 sensor in there and the numbers that the plants drying or producing which he would never would have looked at the CO2 content if it had not and in him dry in

The grow room which measures it um and the numbers were like well past what’s safe for a human to go in um and so you know again I don’t know what that what does that equate to exactly I don’t know but when you have levels of anything out of whack so extreme you

Need to understand and be able to apply apply optimization behind it and so it it’s just it’s wild being in an industry that we’re still on many things extraction you know especially on the patient side patients understanding all the different canabo everything at exploration right now um so yeah it’s

Exciting but it’s frustrating having to repeat you don’t know so many times but none of us do right yeah still a lot to learn still a lot to uncover and I agree with you very exciting that’s one of the reasons why I like to be in this

Industry you know I said in my videos times in the past is doing the same thing over and over again I mean that gets boring to me being able to learn new things un cover new things try new ways to grow it’s exciting it’s fun for

Me and so it makes a job more enjoyable so yeah looking forward to seeing what gets uncovered there in the future so with so many different ways to cure or store jars turkey bags Grove bags what have you found to be the best method and then are there any of those methods that

You would say aren’t good to do and you should avoid um you know it always comes back to there’s a there’s a million ways to skin a cat um and a lot of my work is is really working with the the large scale Growers who you know is looking at

Every penny spent um so for example sake even though stainless still is great and it’s easily cleanable and it doesn’t break like glass and it does a good job you know would it be possible for a commercial grower to go out and buy all stainless steel containers for thousands

Of pounds no probably not so you know a lot of my time and work is spent looking at those limitations of of really commercializing on a large scale and making the best call based from that um now if I’m at home and I’m growing my

Own and I’m putting it in my own you know resource that’s available there for me and there’s no limitations I probably would use glass I probably would use glass yeah I would use glass so that that’s my short personal answer um but that’s not always the answer for large production got it yeah

I know you hear through the grave Vine of people being concerned about microplastics you know so the turkey bags Grove bags so on and so forth but from what I’m understanding there’s no really research to back that up that’s just kind of a theory at this point so

It be interesting to see if anything gets uncovered there you know that that would be terrible if microplastics were leaking in there and we’re consuming them and there always something to worry about yeah storage want to ask you one more question in regards to storage so storage temperature a lot of people

Store in you know 60° Fahrenheit roughly say the higher the temperature the more Turin are going to volatize you’re going to lose it right but the lower the temperature goes down I’m being told it’s okay A lot of people are storing in a wine fridge that’s about 50 60 deges

Fahrenheit that’s one of my preferred ways to store some people in refrigerators which is just above freezing right uh typically what 33 to maybe 44° F any concerns in storing in a wine fridge or a refrigerator no I I think that’s the best the best move um I would

Just be very certain that the container seals properly you know whatever container you’re in is is sealed um cuz even in a refrigerator even though it would be slower it still can dry out um if it’s not maned properly so getting your drying down your curing and then

Holding um at the exact water activity you want in the lower temperature yeah I mean the the lower you can go the better um but I know some people they don’t necessarily have a a full wine fridge just for their their curing which would be pretty cool do you have that I do

Yeah I was using the wine fridge before the canol oh okay cool yeah because you know I live in Las Vegas and it’s very hot here and natural room temperature it’s I’m lucky to get 70° Fahrenheit room temperature normally it’s 75 sometimes 80° and I used to just store

It in those conditions and within 3 months Browning happening like those higher temperatures really degrade the product you know so uh once I switched over to storing in the wine fridge and yes I have them in sealed jars I also did in the Grove bags made sure the

Humidity was locked in at 60 to 62% but putting it in that lower temperature conserved them for a lot longer you know and I didn’t have any Browning you know I could have it for a year and there’s no Browning happening so yeah I was a

Big proponent of the wine fridge not for drying I want to be clear on that some people were trying drying in a wine fridge katrol now it’s just for drying and curing I think one of the biggest benefits of the canol is the drying a lot of people think oh well I’ll just

Buy a wine fridge it’s like well go ahead and try to dry in a wine fridge it’s you know you’re not going to get a good result unless you do some sort of alteration to it anyways yeah I am a proponent of the wine fridge for storage

In particular and just wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit on storing at 60° versus in a refrigerator at 40° if there’s any any big difference between those two I think like you said it’s just the length of shelf stability um the colder you keep it the slower any

Of those degradation processes are and um the longer it lasts so yeah I think it all just matters of how pick you are with perfection and and wanting to keep it as green and and really Longevity if you know you’re going to smoke at all in in a month then maybe it’s not

Necessarily required to have your own fridge for for that and it’ll do just fine in the in a you know temp tempature control room um but yeah the the cooler I would say the longer is really the takeaway good to know couple more questions for you one of them in regards

To any studies that have been done recently in the past year or two that have uh revealed some valuable information that you feel like would be valuable to the audience you know there’s there’s a couple studies out of ug that have I don’t know if they’ve

Been published yet but it was a post Harvest study um and she was looking at Tarpin and um and hemp at different curing but you again going back to this this all exploration um hers was very dirty with you know the barn hanging the the 6060 method was the the best representation

And then she was looking at some of the Techni techniques she would do with uh tobacco so you know fire curing and and those sorts of things so you know there’s been some studies and some nice generalizations we’re able to conclude from them but you know if you’re looking

For extremely high quality smokable flow at least I haven’t seen it in the past couple of years um cuz again a lot of it has been on hemp with really the thought being outdoor hemp that you’re drying fast for isolate production one exciting thing we’ve gun um and about to start

Phase one on which we could certainly use your help on getting the word out on this so um are you familiar with miabi shields and um Riley um yes yep okay so they’re they’re both phds and uh basically PL plant chemistry they both have a little bit different specialty in

Each and so they now run the nonprofit nap the network of applied pharmac cognacy and so we’ve we’ve been friends for a while and been trying to find a way to work together and so we’ve now figured it out um we want to we want to do a

Large pro project that’s called this we’re calling it the science of smok ability um because basically everything from flushing to the Joint being in your hands is what we’re looking at um and really trying to put understand around what means or what represents a smooth

Smoke what is it about the color of Ash that matters um there’s been people say that certain smokes can make their tum tingly and go Nom which I’ve never experienced that so that one’s going to be a little hard harder to dig into but um some of these generalities that everybody expects you

Know I want my ash white I want it to be smooth I want it cure for 5 months you know we we really want to look at again the the end point so consumer preference and back it up to be able to say what’s doing what and so that’s a lot to cover

Um and so we’re breaking it into phases with phase one it’s going to be pretty easy pretty straightforward you have flower it it’s all ground to the same um Micron size it’s all um packed to the same density and it is all the same water content um excuse me it’s not the same

Water content you’ve got different water contents cuz we said all right well that’ll be the easiest is simply looking at water content and so some with a a 04 6 and 08 so you’ve got a high you’ve got a low and you’ve got what everybody says

Is just right all right very easy to get joints at three different contents like that that send those out to the public people that’s interested in the in the study and have it double blinded and then the people say all right well this SM smells the best this tastes the best

This smokes the best um you know we we’ll get super nitty-gritty into the uh the patient discovery which thankfully they’ve got experience on cuz I’m usually just with the plant but they’re really good at connecting the plant and the treatment with the person and and

How how to gather data from uh from a person you know that’s not something I have specialty and um so that’s where we kind of all come together as a as a nice group ranging from you know growing all the way to to smoking so phase one water

Content we’re going to have CBD joints and we’ll be mailing them out and getting test results back and and see what’s going on I mean the past 2 years I’ve done dug so hard into tobacco research it’s it’s been ridiculous but um you know if you think about

Cigarettes if you’re smoker and you go to one State versus the other or if it’s two years difference you’re going to expect that cigarette to be exactly the same and you’re going to be mad if it’s not um and so there’s science and there’s repetition and there’s there’s a

Lot that’s going in to get that cigarette exact um and that’s what we can do in cannabis you know we know we know when good ones are good um and there’s Growers that can produce good ones consistently but can you how do you convert that to be able

To show other Growers this is what’s good um until you have data behind that you can’t so that is our goal is first start with water content and then we’ll go on other things like uh certain elements that can accumulate that causes a bad smoke there’s certain elements

That can accumulate that um that will cause the Ash to break off faster than others um so phase two will be um elements cuz in tobacco they go deep into you know even the the government restricting certain applications of certain fertilizers in excess because it will mess with the smoking

Process super interesting I follow both of them on social media and they’re always coming out with interesting information speaking of social media Let’s uh let’s wrap things up can you tell the listeners how they can find you and what you have upcoming in the future yeah absolutely so Instagram of course

We’ve got um dr. Justice uhor gross and that’s my Instagram and then of course the CRC is just uh canis research Alliance look us up there we’ve got websites um easily googleable I won’t spell out all the long names the hit mine is our CBD brand and

Yeah follow us on basically all social media platforms awesome and I’ll definitely have a link to her Instagram down in the YouTube description section below so you can easily navigate to that and find her if I missed any questions that you think that relate to harvesting

Drying or curing drop them down in the comment section below love reading through the questions and maybe if there’s enough questions we can get her back on and see if we can get some of these questions answered so Dr Allison thank you so much for coming on today I

Appreciate it this has been uh this has been a great talk and I think uh my audience is going to get a lot of value from it so thank you for your time today and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day yeah thanks for having me talk to

You soon peace out everyone catch you in the next episode