Shelf Testing 11 strains from 10 labs including Pree
It’s time for another round of shelf testing! We have 11 new strains right out of dispensaries here in Oregon, and each was approved for retail sale after testing by one of ten different cannabis labs. The kicker is that this time we included a strain that was originally tested right here at Pree! We’re taking a bit of our own medicine to see how the Pree-tested flower fared after a few months on the market.
The flower harvest dates and original test dates range from all the way back in July of 2021 through January of this year, so we expected to find some interesting results in terms of THC degradation. And as with our previous round of shelf testing, we ran each product three times (that’s 33 total tests!) to produce an average THC percentage and confirm an acceptable RSD% less than the OLCC-mandated 10%.
The results are in!
| Strain | Harvest Date | Original Test Date | Lab Name | Original THC % | Pree Average THC % | THC% +/- | RPD% from Original | RSD% of 3 Pree tests |
| Turpee Slurpee | 4/25/22 | 4/25/22 | MW Lab | 26.00 | 15.37 | -10.63 | 51.97 | 1.70 |
| Property Rent Money | 7/9/2021 | 7/21/2021 | Rose City | 23.80 | 15.08 | -8.72 | 44.86 | 1.90 |
| Apricot Crumble | 8/24/2021 | 10/21/2021 | Reference Labs | 26.52 | 17.24 | -9.28 | 42.39 | 1.40 |
| Neapolitan Cake | 3/16/2022 | 4/15/2022 | SC Labs | 17.30 | 13.57 | -3.73 | 24.19 | 0.30 |
| Georgia Pie | 4/18/2022 | 6/1/2022 | SC Labs | 22.60 | 20.27 | -2.33 | 10.89 | 1.77 |
| Indulge Dosilato | 6/20/2022 | 7/20/2022 | Juniper Labs | 26.69 | 19.63 | -7.06 | 30.50 | 2.22 |
| A-B Guava Juice | 9/9/2022 | 10/11/2022 | 3B analytical | 21.67 | 13.48 | -8.19 | 46.62 | 2.15 |
| Lemon Kush | 10/15/2022 | 1/6/2023 | MW Labs | 26.73 | 19.18 | -7.55 | 32.91 | 0.59 |
| Candy Chrome | 10/18/2022 | 12/2/2022 | Deibel Bioscience | 22.22 | 16.58 | -5.64 | 29.07 | 0.77 |
| Banana Pancake | 10/25/2022 | 12/19/2022 | Chem History | 22.01 | 16.51 | -5.50 | 28.54 | 1.07 |
| Mac Flurry’s | 11/16/2022 | 11/16/2022 | PREE | 26.37 | 21.16 | -5.21 | 21.92 | 2.28 |
| Blood Moon | 1/4/2023 | 2/9/2023 | Green Leaf | 28.40 | 21.96 | -6.44 | 25.59 | 3.02 |
What you’d likely expect to find here is the sharpest decline in THC percentage for the two oldest strains — no surprises there. That of course says more about cannabis degradation than it does about the results from the original labs.
One peculiar find was the next two on the docket, which had the smallest drop in THC and lowest RPD% as a result. Those seemed to be anomalies in an otherwise relatively smooth spread when accounting for harvest date. It might be worth noting that they started with THC numbers that were on the lower end of the spectrum, but still, this could be indicative of solid storage practices or perhaps the stability of the strains themselves.
Across the board, it’s important to remember that another major factor is the variance of the harvest itself. So even with degradation aside, a diverse and homogenized sample could still produce an accurate result that differs considerably from the few nuggets we took off the dispensary shelf. That could partially explain the broad range of differences — from 10.89% all the way up to 46.62% — between the original test result and the average of our three tests.
We were pleased to see that the Mac Flurry’s strain we tested back in November fell in line with the rest of this round. The general overall consistency across labs seems like a positive signal. While the state has many testing requirements for all of us to meet (sampling, homogenization, RPD, RSD, etc.), there is no uniform standard for the actual testing process itself. So some level of congruence in the results is a good thing for cannabis business, and a good thing for consumers.
