Development of spectral markers for characterization of medical cannabis by Near-Infrared spectroscopy
Cannabis sativa, best known as the source of marijuana, is known for its medical properties for thousands of years. One of the main barriers toward the use of cannabis flowers as medicinal agents is the lack of uniformity in terms of the content of active ingredients. Therefore, in order to promote cannabis as validated medicine, it is necessary to work on two parallel areas: stabilizing the active ingredients in the cannabis plant; and second, creating a robust and reliable method to measure the active ingredients in each flower.
We are developing spectral markers based on NIR spectroscopy for detection and quantification of active ingredients in cannabis flowers, as well as markers for prediction of genetic features in the cannabis seeds.
Students: Sharon Lifshits
Collaborators: Cannabi-Tec Ltd.
Figure: (upper) A typical Cannabis Sativa flower; (buttom) A graph displaying the correlation between the NIR measurements (y-axis) and the known THC level analyzed by HPLC (x-axis) for different species (color)