What causes cannabis to have a skunky odor?

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Why does marijuana have such an off-putting scent?

Skunk spray and well-preserved, unburned cannabis buds share many of the same smells, so it's possible to question why they're so similar.

Is it because of the skunk spray-like scent of cannabis that many find it so appealing? Prenylated volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs), a subset of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), were found to be the stinky culprits in both substances, according to a study published in the journal ACS Omega in 2021.

Chemical intuition led us to believe that sulfur-containing compounds were the source of this odor," the study's principal author Iain Oswald, an analytical chemist at Abstrax Tech, a business that manufactures the aromatic chemicals known as terpenes, said. The team reasoned that since "skunks have several VOCs in their aerosol spray," it was possible that cannabis had comparable qualities.

Amber Wise noted that while the sulfur origins of the plant's pungency were predictable, some of the compounds the scientists uncovered were unexpected. Medicine Creek Analytics in Fife, Washington, employs Wise as its scientific director and an analytical chemist, although he was not involved in the study.

If you want to call it "fart smell," "skunky smell," or "egg smell," these sulfur compounds are all known, at least to chemists, according to Wise. "What surprised me was that cannabis has its own set of chemicals."

VSC6 and VSC7, according to Oswald, have never been detected in plants before.

Marijuana's characteristic aroma is due to more than 200 secondary metabolites, tiny compounds that plants make to protect themselves from predators, such as insects, or attract pollinators. When it comes to potentiating the aroma of different cannabis strains or cultivars, the aromatic chemicals terpenes and a group of other six compounds were shown to be responsible for as much as half of the variance in odor. There are terpenes in cannabis that give OG Kush and Jack Herer distinct smells, such as terpinolene and D-limonene in Jack Herer and terpinolene and D-limonene in OG Kush.

Oswald and his colleagues — three of whom, including Oswald, have filed a patent on their results — aimed to zero down on the chemicals that give all cannabis strains their distinctive skunky stench.

As a result of their complicated architecture, VSCs have been challenging to study. As for VSCs in cannabis plants, they're negligible compared to terpene levels in the pungent fruit durian and hops, respectively.

However, "the amount really in the plant is very minimal, despite having a huge effect on the odor itself," Oswald explained. Because the human nose is susceptible to these substances, a little goes a long way."

To better comprehend the sulfur compounds' structures, Oswald and his colleagues used mass spectrometry in conjunction with a custom-built two-dimensional gas spectrometry apparatus. Using these methods, they were able to identify all seven VSC structures. VSCs placed in garlic have a prenyl group, which scientists found in five out of the seven samples.

To determine the spice of the diluted VSCs, a group of terpenes and cannabis flowers was also tested, and a trained panel of four experts scored the results. VSC3, the principal ingredient in "skunked" beer that has been destroyed by ultraviolet light, was noticed by the panel as the chemical that most vividly resembled the skunky odor of cannabis in a 2001 study published in Chemistry — A European Journal.

A long way away, VSC3 smells like weed, according to Oswald. In terms of terpenes, "they're quite reminiscent."

While the panel noticed that it had a floral perfume, it didn't have the Bacio Gelato cannabis strain chunkiness. The researchers' findings were confirmed when they blended Bacio Gelato cannabis' top 10 aromatic components without including VSC3. Despite this, VSC3 isn't able to handle all of the heavy lifting in terms of scent.

He said, "There's this synergistic effect," Oswald. As soon as we paired them, the taste panel exclaimed, "This is cannabis."

Regarding the foul odor of cannabis cultivars, VSC3 is a significant player, but Oswald pointed out that VSC4 and VSC5 can also play a tremendous aromatic function.

Cultivars have the strongest correlation with VSC3, according to Oswald. We'd all agree that it smells like marijuana if we ever found a cannabis cultivator who didn't have VSC3 but did have VSC4 and VSC5.

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Reference : https://www.livescience.com/why-cannabis-smells-like-skunk

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/rami-ganja-tanaman-hijau-lampu-7212762/

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