Abstract
The Center for Disease Control estimates 128,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized annually due to food borne illnesses. This has created a demand for food safety testing targeting the detection of pathogenic mold and bacteria on agricultural products.This risk extends to medical Cannabis and is of particular concern with inhaled, vaporized and even concentrated Cannabis products . As a result, third party microbial testing has become a regulatory requirement in the medical and recreational Cannabis markets, yet knowledge of the Cannabis microbiome is limited. Here we describe the first next generation sequencing survey of the fungal communities found in dispensary based Cannabis flowers by ITS2 sequencing, and demonstrate the sensitive detection of several toxigenic Penicillium and Aspergillus species, including P. citrinum and P. paxilli, that were not detected by one or more culture-based methods currently in use for safety testing.
Highlights
Our knowledge of the natural microbiome of field-grown Cannabis in terms of rhizosphere bacteria, and endophytic fungi is limited to just a few focused studies1–3
Six of the 17 dispensary-derived Cannabis samples tested positive for yeast and mold in the TYM qPCR assay
Several toxigenic fungi were detected in dispensary-derived Cannabis samples using molecular amplification and sequencing techniques
Summary
Our knowledge of the natural microbiome of field-grown Cannabis in terms of rhizosphere bacteria, and endophytic fungi is limited to just a few focused studies. A few of these regulations are inducing growers to “heat kill” or pasteurize Cannabis flowers to lower microbial content. While this seems a harmless suggestion, we must remain aware of how these drying techniques may create false negatives in culture-based safety tests used to monitor colony-forming units (CFU). Even though pasteurization may be effective at sterilizing some of the microbial content, it does not eliminate various pathogenic toxins or spores. Aspergillus spores and mycotoxins are known to resist pasteurization. While pasteurization may reduce CFU’s used in petri-dish or plating based safety tests, it does not reduce the microbial toxins, spores or DNA encoding these toxins
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