During a cannabis production cycle, part of the plant material (pruning residues) presents a challenge for its recovery because of its low cannabinoid content. The volume of this plant residual material is expected to increase along with the number of cannabis plants grown in Canada. In order to maximize the potential of these cannabis residues, SiliCycle wishes to develop a cultural management strategy that will promote the use of this by-product for extraction purposes.
Silicycle has developed a new method for extracting molecules of interest, which are found in very low concentrations in leaves and immature inflorescences. SiliCycle, with the help of Biopterre, wished to increase the understanding of the impact of cannabis plant maturity on the composition of molecules of interest found in production debris in order to validate their extraction system.
At the end of the project, SiliCycle was able to validate their new extraction method on crop residues of different maturity levels and thus assess the economic potential of the process. In addition, a plant biomass packaging method was developed to improve plant conservation as part of the project.
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