Elevate Cannabis Flower and Profits with Post-Harvest Tips

Optimize Your Cannabis Crop: The Importance of Science-Based Post-Harvest Techniques

After months of carefully cultivating your cannabis crop and meticulously controlling every environmental factor, you’ve created healthy, potent plants. But if you’re still relying on traditional post-harvest techniques, you could be leaving profits on the table while also compromising quality. While there is a long legacy behind growing great cannabis flower, the “old ways” of drying and curing are not always backed by science, and in a competitive market, inconsistent yields or mediocre quality can quickly erode a cultivator’s reputation.

Taking a scientific approach to drying and minimizing handling can position growers for long-term success, ensuring that their product maintains its quality and maximizes profitability.

The Science of Cannabis Drying

Post-harvest handling is often treated as an afterthought by cultivators eager to get their product out the door and sold. However, these final steps are critical for preserving quality, maximizing yield, and ensuring shelf stability. A lack of consistent processes and precise repeatability can open the door to numerous problems, such as overdrying or underdrying, excessive handling, and insufficient environmental control. These issues can degrade trichomes, introduce contamination risks, and reduce profitability.

One of the most significant threats to profit is overdrying cannabis flower. Removing too much moisture not only reduces the sellable weight but also negatively impacts potency, terpene integrity, burn quality, and more.

Achieving Optimal Cannabis Moisture Levels

The key to effective cannabis drying lies in precisely controlling and monitoring water activity—the measure of tightly bound water molecules within the plant material. Maintaining cannabis flower with water activity at around 0.6 (the ASTM International standard range is 0.55 to 0.65) ensures superior shelf stability and prevents mold without excessively drying, losing critical weight, and cutting into profits.

Water-activity standards and measurement are widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industries to ensure safety and quality. As cannabis moves closer to federal legality, the industry should anticipate mandated water-activity testing requirements from governmental regulatory agencies.

Massachusetts regulators recently released a memo highlighting the importance of water activity, but for the most part, such analysis remains overlooked or misunderstood. Investing in a water-activity meter is a cost-effective step and one of the smartest moves a cannabis cultivator can make. Managing water activity levels effectively can increase yields by 5%-7% without changing nutrients, genetics, or other inputs, providing growers with critical data to precisely control drying, curing, and storage conditions.

Minimize Handling and Maintain Stable Environments

Every time cannabis flower is handled or transferred between environments, there is a risk of introducing contaminants and compromising the valuable trichome heads. Fluctuations in environmental conditions—whether in a room or a storage bin—make it extremely challenging to achieve consistent drying rates and water activity.

Optimizing post-harvest handling using science-based methods can provide significant operational benefits, such as:

• Increased profitability from higher salable weight.
• Consistently superior-quality flower.
• Reduced labor costs from minimized handling and transfers.
• Improved efficiency and consistency of operations.
• Lowered risks of compromised product safety and quality.

The Growing Demand for Consistency and Quality

As consumer education surrounding cannabis increases and legal markets mature, demand for consistently high-quality cannabis is on the rise. The days of simply producing cheap flower with maximum THC are dwindling. Instead, consumers are looking for superior quality, consistency, and safe products. Producers who optimize their post-harvest processes using validated tools and methods will gain a significant competitive edge.

This is especially relevant for pre-rolls, which are rapidly gaining popularity. Proper post-harvest handling dramatically improves the quality of pre-rolls, leading to higher sales and brand loyalty. According to Seattle-based industry analyst Headset, pre-rolls are experiencing strong sales growth across legal markets in the U.S. and Canada.

Advancing with Science-Based Approaches

The cannabis industry has made significant strides on the cultivation side by implementing the latest horticultural science and innovations. It is now time to apply the same disciplined, science-based approaches to the critical post-harvest stage. Good drying and curing practices are not just about preserving quality; they are also about improving profits and positioning a brand for long-term success.

For example, producers who have refined their post-harvest processes with scientifically validated methods and tools will find themselves better positioned in an increasingly competitive market. They will not only improve the quality and consistency of their flower but also reduce costs, increase efficiency, and build stronger customer loyalty.