Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's live broadcast, the Agilent Cannabis Virtual Learning Lab, a context-rich interactive knowledge base. I'm Megan Mazzone, and I'll be your moderator for today's event. We are pleased to bring you this webcast presented by LCGC and Cannabis Science and Technology, and sponsored by Agilent. I would like to share a statement from our sponsor. Agilent is a leader in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. The company provides laboratories worldwide with instruments, services, consumables, applications, and expertise, enabling customers to gain the insights they seek. Agilent's expertise and trusted collaboration gives customers the highest confidence in the company's solutions. We have a few important announcements before we begin. This webcast is designed to be interactive, and we encourage you to ask questions during the event.
You can submit questions by typing them in the Q&A box, which can be found directly below the video player. You can enlarge the slide window by clicking on the small icon in the bottom right corner of the media player. The slides will advance automatically during the event. If you have any technical problems viewing or hearing this presentation, please click on the question mark help widget in the top right of your presentation window. I would now like to introduce today's speakers, Heather Reese and Jean-Francois Roy. Heather brings over 10 years of experience serving the cannabis industry. She started her career as a chemist with a leading manufacturer of products for crop production and pest management. Shortly thereafter, she made the transition from the bench to the field as an analytical instrumentation technical support specialist.
Located in Northern California, she has been on the forefront of cannabis testing for years, providing a bridge between applications and implementation. As Agilent's national account manager for emerging markets with a current focus on cannabis and hemp, she interacts with new and existing customers daily to help them understand their current efficiencies and plan for the future. Heather's goal is to make the process of testing as simple and efficient as possible while maintaining a foundation of sound scientific principles. Jean-Francois has worked at Agilent for 15 years, focusing on chromatography and mass spectrometry. His work revolves around developing applications requiring mass spectrometry detectors with a focus on the Canadian market. He's located in Montreal, Canada, and has recently devoted much of his time to understanding the challenges of cannabis testing in various matrices. Thank you both for joining us today. Please get us started.
Hello, and thank you for joining us today to introduce the culmination of two years of effort, the Agilent Cannabis Virtual Learning Lab, a context-rich interactive knowledge base. For today's agenda, we'll be talking about why this virtual learning lab was created in the first place. We'll take a walk through it together, where you'll find helpful items for new and established labs alike. Please stick around to the end where you could gain access to some giveaways. Finally, to continue to support the industry, Jean-Francois Roy will take over and discuss some applications that Agilent has been working on. All right, let's get this party started. First, a little background on why this tool was created. Because this industry was brand new, it really was one of the first where a holistic approach has been necessary to ensure success.
It is common to have hours-long discussions about build-out, the space these workflows can take or require, and vendor considerations for cannabis testing labs. Sometimes this can be difficult to communicate and understand without a visual framework to reference, especially if it's the first time you're building a lab. Because this need comes up so often, we wanted to develop that visual framework, also referred to as a layout. For those who already have some understanding of the layout, we often dig a little deeper. Some other questions that might come up are things like, "What should go in each room?" "What are the spatial considerations for instrumentation and equipment?" "What do these items need to operate?" The final few questions center around resources and where to find them.
These include questions such as, "What's the best way to get me up and running as quickly as possible?" and, "Will you continue to support both my lab and the industry with the latest information or application notes?" Because we constantly strive to produce new information, we now have a centralized resource hub that is updated regularly. This approach makes it easier to find essential information as compared to more traditional vendor web pages. Taken together, these elements comprise the Agilent Cannabis Virtual Learning Lab, a multifaceted online resource that aims to address all the items mentioned above in one easy-to-follow interactive visual space. It's a great place to go when you want to dive in and see what an actual bench space or instrument looks like while navigating through a central library for up-to-date application notes, brochures, ordering guides, informational videos, and more.
I do want to mention that while we will only briefly discuss lab layout today, if you would like more detailed information about that, please reach out to cannabis.inquiries@agilent.com, where a link to access a previous webinar about that can be provided. Now, let's take a tour of this space and discover the resources it contains together. Now, when you open the Agilent Cannabis Virtual Learning Lab, you will come to this screen. On the left-hand side, you see a few options to navigate, including the lab floor plan, which is where we are now, potency and pesticides testing, heavy metals testing, residual solvents and terpenes testing, and microbial testing. These three bars at the top simply toggle between viewing those panes and not viewing these panes. You will notice that the panes on the left correspond to the blue highlighted rooms of the lab floor plan.
That is because if you click on either the pane to the left or the room itself, it will take you inside of that room for you to navigate. We'll be doing this together shortly. Now, this generic lab layout will be of interest to new labs looking to add testing capacity, or those looking to bring testing in-house. If you're an existing lab or already an expert in the field, stay with me for a little while longer while I briefly discuss this layout. While there are many possible layouts for a cannabis testing laboratory, the goal of this layout is to bring awareness to the special spatial considerations for cannabis testing and is, as with any example floor plan, open to your interpretation and specific needs.
Please do consider a consultant before signing off on any lab space or layout design, as this tool is for demonstration purposes only. The layout you see here takes a hub-and-spokes approach, with sample preparation ultimately being centrally located. You'll notice the vault room, where the samples are stored, are near the sample prep lab, as well as the location for sample intake, accessioning, weighing, water activity, and moisture content. Most likely, you'll be wheeling carts around with raw samples that can take up a lot of space and can be a hazard. Thus, it would be wise to minimize the distance these carts need to travel anywhere in the lab. The miscellaneous lab toward the back could be used for things like dishwashing and autoclave, storage stability chambers, should you choose to offer that service, or any other service not shown here.
Everything from the sample intake room to the miscellaneous lab should have a special keyed entry. The utility room and storage are found in the back, where the special access may not be necessary. A roll-up door for ease of deliveries and waste disposal is optimal. Let's now get into some of the interactive features of this Virtual Learning Lab. If I click on the Potency and Pesticides room, I will physically enter that room. Once inside, you will notice the buttons at the bottom. The plus sign zooms in on the room, while the minus sign makes your view smaller. At any time, you can click and drag your way around the room in 360 degrees. Each of the instruments found within these rooms is shown to scale, as AutoCAD files were used to prepare this tool.
Hovering over each instrument is the workflow and associated instrument model name. As we make our way about the room, we see the Agilent 1260 Infinity II LC system with the Ultivo triple quadrupole mass spectrometer for pesticide analysis. A quick note, pesticide testing by LC-MS-MS is required in every state. Second is the Agilent 1260 Infinity II LC system for potency testing. Third, we have the Agilent Intuvo 9000 GC with a 7010C triple quadrupole mass spectrometer for pesticide analysis. Please note that this may not be required in every state, depending on your compound list and associated action limits. You will want to check with your local Agilent representative to be sure.
For the GC-MS instruments located throughout this tool, gas is required for all but not shown due to individual preferences on how to plumb the gas, such as utilizing tanks next to the instrument or from a centralized source. Finally, we have the Agilent Intuvo 9000 GC with the 5977 single quadrupole mass spectrometer for terpene analysis. These blue hotspots are where you can find additional resources and details about each workflow. Clicking on the hotspot on each instrument will pop up a short video explaining the instrument and associated workflow, such as potency testing.
The Agilent 1260 HPLC is the proven platform for potency testing of cannabis and hemp. Complete with potency kits, standards, and reporting templates, this solution will get your laboratory up and running quickly. The ease of maintenance of the 1260 HPLC and demonstrated robustness minimizes downtime and keeps the lab running smoothly. A variety of sample preparation methods are available based on your sample type, including the flower, gummies and hard candies, beverages, chocolates, and fat or lipid-rich products.
Clicking the X at the top will take us out of the video. If I click on the blue hotspot for the monitor, this is where the additional resources can be found. Notice we have application notes, webinars, videos, flyers, and websites all in one spot and all specific to each application. If I click on this blue hotspot associated with pesticide testing, you will find different resources that are specific to pesticide testing. Please note that these resources will be continuously updated, so it would be a good idea to bookmark this tool. Additionally, we have tried to incorporate other necessary items to each room for your consideration. For example, here you will see rough pumps on the floor under each mass spec instrument. Not shown is the tubing that connects the rough pump to the instrument. This is what pulls the vacuum.
While monitors are shown, note that PCs are required. You will also notice a nitrogen generator under the LC-MS triple quadrupole instrument to supply the appropriate gas. If you need additional information about size, weight, power, and gas requirements, consult each instrument's respective site preparation guide. The site prep guides are not found within the context of this tool, so please reach out to your local Agilent representative should you need them. I can exit this room and enter another in a few different ways. If I click on any of the panes to the left, it will take me directly to that room or back to the lab floor plan where we were originally. I can locate the blue dot on the door, where it will take me into the next room.
If I hover over it, I see that this room will be for metals testing. We enter the room, we find the Agilent 7850 ICP-MS with the SPS 4 autosampler for heavy metals analysis. You will find the blue hotspot on the instrument for a short informational video and one on the monitor for additional resources. In this room, you will notice the rough pump for the ICP-MS in addition to some other necessities. In the corner, we have an argon dewar to supply the appropriate amount of gas to the ICP-MS. As I rotate here, you will find a hood and microwave digestion system. A means of digestion is required for heavy metals analysis, while there are various types of digestion systems available, all utilize acid and all must vent directly into a hood.
As such, it is a good idea to have a hood in this room. As before, if I hover over this door, I can see our next adventure will be to the residual solvents and terpenes testing room. As we enter the residual solvents and terpenes testing room, we find the Agilent Intuvo 9000 with 5977 single quadrupole detector and 8697 headspace sampler for residual solvent analysis. Next to it, we have the same configuration, only we've added a liquid autosampler to it so that we can also analyze terpenes on the same instrument. Again, we see the rough pumps that are required for both instruments on the floor. In some situations, it can be a good idea to have this room under positive pressure. That is because you'll be using many organic solvents throughout the laboratory.
As I scan this room to the right, I see both a freezer and a flammables cabinet to store those chemicals and standards. This time, instead of going through the door, I'm going to click back on the lab floor plan and enter our last room, the microbial testing room. I'm doing it this way, so you can notice that the micro and residual solvent rooms are situated next to each other. That is because if you choose to place the residual solvents testing room under positive pressure, which is an absolute requirement for your microbial testing room, then you won't need to run the associated plumbing all over your lab space. Finally, let's take a dive into the microbial testing room. In here, you'll find all sorts of fun things, including the Agilent AriaMx QPCR and Bravo automated liquid handler.
Due to the large differences in solvents for all of the other workflows, such as 15-mil extraction, but a one-mil final dilution, automating the sample preparation steps has been notoriously difficult. Here, however, we do have the ability, and we've successfully implemented this at many locations. As I scan this room to the left, you will notice a freezer, a large refrigerator, a benchtop incubator, a centrifuge, a microscope, and even some PPE. Some of the items located in this room will depend on the offerings that you choose to provide, so please speak with your Agilent or Medicinal Genomics representative to discuss. A reward for sticking around. Throughout this virtual learning lab, we've hidden additional hotspots for you to find. No, we're not going to tell you what they look like, nor where they're hidden.
Some of them will contain free consumables or a discount off your next consumables order. Take a look around the lab, see if you can find them, and you might just be one of those lucky winners. The link to access the Agilent Cannabis Virtual Learning Lab will be sent to you in an email after the webinar. You will also be able to access it via the chat during the live Q&A session directly following Jean-Francois Roy's presentation. Let me hand this over to Jean-Francois Roy to discuss some new Agilent cannabis testing applications.
Hello, everyone. My name is Jean-Francois Roy. I'm an application scientist doing mostly mass spectrometry, and I'm based out of Montreal, Canada. Today, I will be talking about recent work that Agilent has been doing in the cannabis testing market, and you will see that this work is focused on terpene testing. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that Agilent products and solutions are intended to be used for cannabis quality control and safety testing in labs where such use is permitted under state and/or country law. The update work I will be talking about today will be compared to the original terpene testing work that was published a few years ago. The document number for this original application note is 5994-2032EN, and this is still the preferred terpene testing work that Agilent recommends.
However, again, the updated work, if you will, is the fruit of a customer request and discussion with our customers that have been using the original work. The first app note I will be talking about, obviously, is a reflection of this, where some of you have been asking for automation of sample preparation. This is exactly what we're showing in this first update app note, and the sample preparation was automated using the Agilent PAL3 Series II RTC or Robotic Tool Changing sampler. As can be seen on the left-hand side of the slide, the RTC rail can be fitted with multiple tools that can be used sequentially by the sampler. On the right-hand side, one can see that for the preparation of the calibrants, there's a lot of pipetting and diluting that is involved, as well as some vortexing.
The RTC rail and sampler can do that with a program, and that can be done, obviously, without human intervention. Once the program has been written, the sampler just does the calibrant preparation. Same thing can be done with the sample preparation. However, the only manual step here is step 1, where weighing of the dry flower has to be done offline manually, if you will, in a vial, and then those vials are loaded onto the sample tray on the sampler, and then the rest of the sample preparation can be done by the sampler itself. Benefits for this approach, obviously, reducing the error rate that is typically observed in this application. As well, there is a possibility of reducing the starting material, and thereby reducing solvent consumption as well, if this is something that the regulation that you are working with will allow.
Last but not least, human resources that are typically required to do the sample preparation can be assigned to other tasks in the lab while the sampler can work unattended 24/7. The second application note that I will be talking about uses 2 new features compared to the original work that is hydrogen carrier gas instead of helium, and the HydroInert mass spec source compared to the Extractor Source. A word on carrier gas. Helium, although sometime hard to source and sometimes also very costly, is still the preferred carrier gas option for GC. Agilent does not recommend converting to another gas.
There are multiple options out there to evaluate and ultimately to reduce your helium consumption, namely performing a helium audit, comparing your theoretical helium consumption, and compare it to your actual helium consumption and see if there are any major leaks in your pipes and tubings, as well as the gas saver option that will allow to reduce by half helium consumption during a run. Last but not least, the helium conservation module that will allow you to switch from helium to nitrogen while the system is standing by. Those options are readily available, and they will allow you to greatly reduce your consumption of helium. Hydrogen and nitrogen are viable carrier gas alternatives, but they both require special consideration. Namely, hydrogen is flammable, it's reactive, and it can also lead to premature failure of consumables.
Changing and converting from helium to another carrier gas will result in changes in chromatographic results as well as chromatographic parameters. This is definitely not a plug-and-play experience. One direct change that is associated with conversion of helium carrier to hydrogen is that you need to adapt your columns. Because of the physical properties of hydrogen, compared to helium, the internal diameter of a GC column when using hydrogen needs to be adapted, needs to be smaller. Typically as well, the stationary phase is also reduced. If we have a look at the original work for terpene testing that was published with helium carrier, this work uses two columns at 30 meters and 0.25 millimeter internal diameter and 1.4 micron film thickness. With this work that was published on hydrogen carrier, there's still two columns, but they are 20 meters each.
The internal diameter was reduced to 0.18 millimeters, and the film thickness was reduced to one micron. Another change between the original and the updated work is the mass spec source. To make a long story very short, hydrogen is very reactive and can lead to, again, in-source reactivity, leading to different fragmentation pattern. Agilent came up with this new source called HydroInert that will enable the exact same fragmentation and source, the exact same pattern when using hydrogen compared to helium. When combining those aspects together, one can compare the original chromatography that was established with helium carrier in about 30 minutes, separating 40 terpenes, and showing one internal standard. With the hydrogen carrier gas on Intuvo, runtime was reduced to about 21.5 minutes without any loss in separation.
Finally, the last App Note that was recently published is using 8890 GC along with hydrogen carrier and HydroInert sources. This is another request that we've had where, again, our original work was using Intuvo GC. Some of our customers wish to be able to use the 8890. What we've done here is, we're just showing that the work can also be done on the 8890 with hydrogen carrier. Although the chromatograms look highly similar, you will see that there are slight differences here in terms of resolution and retention times. All in all, chromatography is, again, highly similar between the Intuvo GC and the 8890 GC with hydrogen carrier and HydroInert source. The three update App Notes that I talked about today, the work in those App Notes was done by my colleagues, Sam Harad, Saurabh Patel, and Jessica Westland.
I'd like to acknowledge their work and thank them for this. I will also thank you for your attention, and we'll take any question that you may have.
I would like to remind our audience how to submit questions. You can submit questions by typing them in the Q&A box, which can be found directly below the video player. Greg, I'll turn it to you to ask the questions.
Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for sticking around and listening to this presentation. Like we said, we want this to be interactive, if you have any questions, please go ahead and type them in. We'll start by answering the ones that have been submitted already. I know we already answered this one, Heather, but let me ask this question from Netherlands. "Good evening. Can you supply the link to this virtual lab? Greetings from Netherlands." Where can they find the link to this virtual lab, Heather?
That should be supplied to you now in the Q&A portion. You should be seeing that now. There we go, just sent it to everyone. You should have that now. You should be able to log on and navigate throughout, and if you have any questions, you can drop them in. Additionally, you're going to get a follow-up email after this. It'll be located there as well. For anybody watching this feedback, hopefully you've already received the email, and you'll have access to it there, too.
Thank you so much, Heather. Next question here, I know you mentioned something about this in your presentation, too, for the audience here, "Can I find the voltage requirements and the ventilation needs for each instrument in this tool? If not, where could I find this?
Great question. Yes, that was in my presentation earlier. In case you missed it, every instrument has what we call a site preparation document. It is a good idea to get your hands on these prior to installation during lab build-out so you make sure your contractors have everything that they need, and you design accordingly. Quite frankly, labs can never have enough power. Those site prep documents are not contained within the context of this tool. You'll need to reach out to your local Agilent representative to acquire them. Service, as well as sales, should have access to them. If you're not sure who that is, you can always send it to the cannabis.inquiries@agilent.com email, which will also come in that follow-up email to this webinar, should you have any additional questions about that.
Excellent. Thank you so much, Heather. Next question, I believe, will be for Jean-François. Someone in the audience asked, "I noticed that you're recommending helium in some of these application notes. If you still recommend helium as the primary carrier gas, why do you present applications developed with hydrogen carrier gases?
That's a very good question. Basically, it comes down to the availability of helium gas and also the price tag associated with it. There have been areas where you cannot purchase helium pure enough to be used as a GC-MS carrier gas. Also, the costs in some areas, in some instances, have been prohibitive. We've had multiple customer requests asking if using hydrogen carrier was doable. As such, we have started working on it. As you just mentioned, we still recommend helium as the preferred carrier gas and as a note or rule of thumb, hydrogen carrier would need to be tested with every compound in every matrix for every application before the transfer can be effectively done. This is, again, not a slam dunk. Whenever you're transferring from helium to hydrogen, it needs to be planned accordingly.
Thank you so much, JF. We have another question here. Not sure it has to do with helium or hydrogen, but speaking of terpenes, do you experience any tailing or shouldering problems if one terpene is really high? I assume the person is talking about concentration when they mean really high. JF, do you think you could maybe answer with some of your experience, and I'll repeat the question. Do you have any tailing or shouldering problems if one terpene is really high?
We haven't seen that. However, we've been working with a given defined concentration range. This is definitely a question that would need to be further investigated in terms of the actual concentration of the tailing terpene. One thing I'm going to say as well is just like potency, when the focus is on the major terpene, just like the major cannabinoids, you can use a given or certain dilution factor. If you're interested in the low concentration terpenes, then you may need to adjust the dilution factor, forgetting about the major terpenes, right? It always comes down to the difference in magnitude in terms of concentration of the terpenes. It sometimes is doable to analyze them all in one sample. Sometimes you also need to further dilute and do sort of a two injection or dual injection setup.
Dilution is the solution to pollution. Thank you so much, JF. Switching questions now for Heather. We have a question that came in to say, "Very cool lab layout design. How close to reality is this schematic?
Great question. As I mentioned in the presentation, the instruments were actually taken from their AutoCAD files. They are supposed to be to scale, right? We made the decision to only address the four kind of rooms or workflows, I would say, that we really operate in and have true expertise in, right? We do have expertise in the other areas, but individual preferences, the consultant that you're working with, prior experience, will all play into some of those other considerations. Within the context of the four rooms that you can go into, the goal was to make it as to scale and as detailed as possible. If there's any deviations from that, such as not showing the tubing going to a GC-MS instrument, for example, that was mentioned in the presentation.
Thank you, Heather. Speaking of the layout tool, another question that came about this, how did you decide which resources to include in each section?
Another good question. Those are meant to be our current and up-to-date pieces of information. Our goal is to continue to update this. We debated calling it a resource hub, for example. The naming of this was really something. We wanted this to be a twofold tool. As you may notice, it has implications in potentially fields outside of cannabis. If I'm just looking to purchase an instrument, you could see what it looks like. When it came to the resources, we wanted it to be as up-to-date as possible, easy to navigate, because sometimes going to other vendor web pages, it's difficult to find what you're looking for. Here, breaking it down by workflow, we're hopeful that it should be easy to locate and up to date.
As I mentioned in the presentation, you might want to bookmark it because our goal is to keep this as updated as possible.
Thank you, Heather. Another question came here, this time it's a little bit more technical, probably for JF. I'll ask the person who wrote this question to maybe rephrase, but I hope I get it right. I believe the person here is asking about the Intuvo system. For the Intuvo system, what are the connections or supplies you would recommend that would help with troubleshooting situations? JF, is there any recommendations that you would have on that? If I did not get the question right to the person in the audience, please write back and re-ask us this question if I didn't get it right. Just to reiterate, for Intuvo systems, JF or GC, what's the connection or supply that you would recommend that will help with troubleshooting situations?
All right. Maybe it will be a two-step answer. If we're talking about hydrogen, the type of consumables that you will want to use is definitely the Ultra Inert ones. Hydrogen is obviously very reactive, if you have any, what we call active spots in the sample flow path, it may lead to weird chromatography, severe tailing, and/or degradation of some compounds. The Ultra Inert consumables would be preferred. If we are talking about Intuvo generally, not thinking about specifically hydrogen or helium, my typical troubleshooting recommendation is, I would need to know more here if the customer has a specific issue that they're trying to tackle. However, in terms of the consumables that are required, everything is available on our website. As far as troubleshooting a specific symptom, we need to know more.
One recommendation I will make, if you are stuck with a given troubleshooting issue, is to try to simplify the system as much as possible. An example of this is instead of tracking 40 terpenes, just go in a very simple one compound setup, short column, and see if the problem is still observed, right? You will know right away that if it's compound dependent or it's system dependent. That's what I mean by splitting the system in half and keeping things simple.
Once you have identified the source, the root cause of the issue, try to see if it was just a faulty part that needed to be replaced, or it's dependent on the application and the fault keeps coming back, in which case we need to address this issue and see if it's a sample prep issue or a consumable that is not meant to be used in this specific application context. I hope this answers the question.
Yeah. I assume it would be on a case-by-case basis too, JF. Definitely reach out to us, a member in the audience, to help you with your specific situation. One more question here when it comes to the lab layout design. Someone in the audience asked, I think this question goes for you, Heather, "I have additional questions about lab layout design. Who can I talk to about this?
Yep, great question. Go ahead and you can reach out if you don't know who your Agilent rep is. I know I've said this a few times already. You can send it to the cannabis.inquiries@agilent.com email. Greg, who's actually talking right now, monitors that email. I'm sure he promises to pick up your email and send it to the right hands. Go ahead and send it to that email note and we'll make sure that the right person contacts you to discuss that further. Additionally, we had a previous webinar, I believe it was in February, to discuss more specifically the lab layout and considerations for a layout, such as what goes in each room, where we do go a little bit more detailed there. That wasn't the goal today. Today was to introduce this Virtual Lab.
If you would like, I believe that the link to that previous webinar should be sent out, or we can send that to you. We'll be sending it to you, I think if you want to hear more about that. If you reach out to the cannabis.inquiries email, we can send you a link to that previous webinar we did in February that goes into much more detail to discuss the lab layout.
Thank you, Heather. I believe also it's in the resources section here. If you need that.
There you have it.
Feel free to choose either option to contact us. One last question that came in about hydrogen carrier gas, and JF, you might have touched on this a little bit more, but thinking ahead with new methods or new ways to reduce cost, are you working on developing other cannabis testing applications with hydrogen carrier gas?
Yes, we are. There's nothing officially published yet, but we are working on a residual solvent application note that will use hydrogen carrier gas. There's also an effort going on right now to better understand if hydrogen carrier can be used for pesticide testing. Again, we know that hydrogen carrier typically gives a bit less sensitivity compared to helium. Obviously in the pesticide testing arena, the action limits are typically very low. We are currently trying to see if hydrogen can be used as a carrier gas for pesticide testing in cannabis.
Thank you so much, JF. Please stay on the lookout for that. I do have another question that just came in. This is very pertinent and apropos with what's going on recently with recent research papers. A person in the audience asks here, "What system analytical method would you suggest for speciation of thiols, mercaptans, sulfides? These are important but understudied, tested compounds in cannabis." I believe a recent study was out about this, about how two strains with the identical terpene profile had actually different aromas and tastes. I think these are the next class of compounds that are defining aromas. Let me re-ask that question there, JF. I think it's for you, but Heather, feel free to jump in if you have anything to add, too. The question was, "What system analytical method would you suggest for speciation of thiols, mercaptans, sulfides?
These are important but understudied, tested compounds in cannabis.
That's a great question. As a rule of thumb, if you have to choose an application to migrate or to go from helium to hydrogen, you'd like ideally to pick compounds that are stable, unreactive. What we've got there, thiols, mercaptans, sulfides will react readily. As far as the recommendation is concerned, I would definitely go with helium carrier versus hydrogen, and to better understand them, classify them, see from a chromatographic standpoint where they elute compared to the terpenes and the cannabinoids. From then make an educated decision on how if hydrogen can be used as carrier gas. For sure, I would start with helium with those compounds, because in my opinion, they are very reactive, and hydrogen will be a challenge with those for sure.
Thank you, JF. I think that's about it for the questions that came in. Megan, I think I'll turn it over to you.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Greg. With that, we will be wrapping up today's event. I want to thank the audience for participating and attending today's event, and I would also love to thank our speakers for the wonderful amount of information they've given us today. I would also like to thank personally our sponsor, Agilent, for making today's educational webcast possible. We would like to ask everyone in the audience to participate in a brief survey. This survey will appear on your screen after today's presentation has ended. You'll receive an email alerting you when this webcast will be available for replay, and we invite you to forward that announcement to your colleagues who may have missed today's live event. Thank you so much to everyone for joining, and we'll see you next time. Have a great rest of your day