Do terpenes degrade over time? As anyone who’s ever learned their container of premium cannabis has turned dry and flavorless knows, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”
Terpenes—the fragrant “essential oils” that give different strains of cannabis their unique flavors and aromas—are notoriously volatile, beginning to degrade the moment the fresh cannabis flower is harvested.
This is a problem for those who want to access cannabis’s powerful medical benefits. As countless centuries of human experience (and numerous latter-day studies) have established, some of the terpenes found in cannabis may exert medicinal effects on our bodies, including anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-anxiety and others still.
Terpenes degrade over time, and that once-vibrant cannabis flower steadily becomes duller. But now, a revolutionary product aims to “turn back the clock by maintaining—even enhancing—the terpene content in fresh cannabis flower. Sound too good to be true? Read on for the flavorful details!
Do Terpenes Degrade? Reversing the March of Time
Few—if any—organic products are immune to the destructive effects of time. But the fragile terpenes found in cannabis and countless other plants degrade at an alarming rate. As one study found, after only a month of standard storage, control samples of cannabis had lost between 10% and an astonishing 50% of their terpene contents. We’ll leave it to you to imagine how flavorless and dull those samples must taste!
In the past, apart from taking extreme precautions—a Swedish study found that storing cannabis specimens in a dark freezer was the only way to preserve their terpene profiles—there wasn’t a great deal to be done about it. And that’s where a new packaging protocol called TerpSafeTM comes in. Developed by researchers at Vireo Health, one of the nation’s preeminent multi-state cannabis companies, this technology is a game-changer when it comes to storing cannabis flower.
TerpSafe was developed in tandem with Amplifi™, Vireo Health’s new line of cannabis flower. In essence, the new packaging concept applies very ancient technology—centuries-old laws of chemistry and gas diffusion—to solve a very modern-day problem.
The system makes use of a separate storage chamber containing the same all-natural terpenes found in the cannabis flower. Over time, the terpene contents of the two chambers will equalize, so that the terpenes that degrade from the cannabis flower will be supplemented—even enhanced—by those in the second storage chamber. Given the challenges of keeping just-cured cannabis flower flavorful, medically active, and fresh, it’s not too great a leap to suppose that moving forward, TerpSafe may change the way all cannabis is stored in the years to come.
What’s more, these assertions are backed up by a new, peer-reviewed study that conclusively demonstrated the efficacy of the TerpSafe system.
Do Terpenes Degrade? Learn for Yourself with New Enhanced Strains
Starting soon, you’ll be able to sample it for yourself! Vireo Health’s proprietary and patent-pending TerpSafe technology will be used for many of the products in the company’s Amplifi line of fresh cannabis flower. Thus far, the strains announced for general release include Ultimate Purple—a potent and enticingly sweet-smelling indica-dominant hybrid—and Gorilla Girl, a sativa-leaning hybrid.
We’re incredibly excited for these new strains—and their game-changing packaging—to hit our shelves in select stores soon!
