Abstract
Mineral nutrition is a major factor affecting plant growth and function. Increasing evidence supports the involvement of macro and micronutrients in secondary metabolism. The use of the appropriate nutritional measures including organic fertilizers, supplements, and biostimulants is therefore a vital aspect of medicinal plant production including medical cannabis. Due to legal restriction on cannabis research, very little information is available concerning the effects of nutritional supplements on physiological and chemical properties of medical cannabis, and their potential role in standardization of the active compounds in the plant material supplied to patients. This study therefore evaluated the potential of nutritional supplementations, including humic acids (HAs) and inorganic N, P, and K to affect the cannabinoid profile throughout the plant. The plants were exposed to three enhanced nutrition treatments, compared to a commercial control treatment. The nutrition treatments were supplemented with HA, enhanced P fertilization, or enhanced NPK. The results demonstrate sensitivity of cannabinoids metabolism to mineral nutrition. The nutritional supplements affected cannabinoid content in the plants differently. These effects were location and organ specific, and varied between cannabinoids. While the P enhancement treatment did not affect THC, CBD, CBN, and CBG concentrations in the flowers from the top of the plants, a 16% reduction of THC concentration was observed in the inflorescence leaves. Enhanced NPK and HA treatments also produced organ-specific and spatially specific responses in the plant. NPK supplementation increased CBG levels in flowers by 71%, and lowered CBN levels in both flowers and inflorescence leaves by 38 and 36%, respectively. HA was found to reduce the natural spatial variability of all of the cannabinoids studied. However, the increased uniformity came at the expense of the higher levels of cannabinoids at the top of the plants, THC and CBD were reduced by 37 and 39%, respectively. Changes in mineral composition were observed in specific areas of the plants. The results demonstrate that nutritional supplements influence cannabinoid content in cannabis in an organ- and spatial-dependent manner. Most importantly, the results confirm the potential of environmental factors to regulate concentrations of individual cannabinoids in medical cannabis. The identified effects of nutrient supplementation can be further developed for chemical control and standardization in cannabis.
Highlights
Cannabis sativa has been used for medical purposes in traditional medicine since antiquity and is currently being evaluated as a promising treatment for a wide range of medical indications (Grotenhermen and Müller-Vahl, 2012; Alexander, 2016)
humic acids (HAs) lowered THC, CBD, and CBG levels in both flowers and inflorescence leaves. This trend was observed with the minor cannabinoids (Figure 2), where HA treatment significantly lowered the levels of THC-C1, THCV, CBC, CBL, CBT, and DHC1 in both flowers and inflorescence leaves
The present study aimed to evaluate the sensitivity of the cannabinoid profile to moderate changes in NPK supply, and to HA supplementation, under sufficient supply of the mineral nutrients
Summary
Cannabis sativa has been used for medical purposes in traditional medicine since antiquity and is currently being evaluated as a promising treatment for a wide range of medical indications (Grotenhermen and Müller-Vahl, 2012; Alexander, 2016). The content and composition of secondary metabolites in plants is affected by both genetics and environmental factors (Gorelick and Bernstein, 2017). Soil fertility and mineral nutrition are major environmental factors affecting plant development, function, and metabolism. Macronutrients were reported to affect the terpene profile in aromatic plants (Piccaglia et al, 1989; Rioba et al, 2015), and there are conflicting reports concerning the effects of P and N supplementation on numerous secondary metabolites including flavonoids, glucosinolates and phenylpropanoids, biosynthesized from the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine (Dixon and Paiva, 1995; Jeliazkov and Margina, 1996; Arabaci and Bayram, 2004; Barreyro et al, 2005; Nell et al, 2009; Pant et al, 2015; Rioba et al, 2015). While emphasis is usually placed on the availability of sufficient quantities of the major plant nutrients, the potential biostimulant role of nutritional supplementation must be considered as well
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